I spent the next day walking around like a ghost in a house that wasn’t mine. Servants looked at me with pity. They knew. Everyone knew.

Brayden had a new wife now.

I barely had time to sit at the long dining table before Alessia strutted in, wearing silk pajamas like she owned the house. She plopped down across from me, chin high, a smug smirk painted across her face.

“Well, well,” she cooed. “The little slave girl survived. I was almost sure you wouldn’t.”

I ...