A week before my wedding, my fiancé paid a man to destr0y my face with ac:id so he could secretly marry another woman. While pretending to remain unconscious in the hospital, I heard him say, “If she’s left scarred, even better.” I didn’t scream. I waited until he left and asked for one thing… because I had just discovered that the attack wasn’t his worst betrayal.

The smell of sterile antiseptic was the first thing that clawed its way back into my consciousness. It was a sharp, clinical stench that burned the back of my throat, a synthetic barrier trying—and failing—to cover the sickening smell of scorched skin.

My skin.

I didn’t open my eyes. The dark was a merciful shield, but it could not protect me from the phantom sensations coursing through my nerves. The right side of my face was locked in a vice of thick, heavy bandages. Beneath the cloth, every nerve ending burned with a silent, agonizing fire, as if microscopic needles dipped in molten iron were pulsing beneath my cheekbone, my jaw, and down the side of my neck.

Then came the voices. They drifted from the foot of my bed, low and hushed, assuming the woman lying under the thin white blanket was drowning in the deep, chemically induced slumber of morphine.

“If Genevieve shows up to that wedding with her face untouched, Sabrina will never be able to take her place.”

The sentence hung in the quiet room, cold and absolute.

I knew that voice better than I knew my own heart. It was Christian. The man whose songs had topped charts worldwide, the man whose voice had lulled me to sleep through five years of shared dreams, long tours, and quiet homecomings. It was a voice that millions paid to hear—velvety, rich, and dripping with raw, convincing emotion.

Hours earlier—or had it been days?—I was standing inside a sunlit bridal boutique in downtown Indianapolis. I was laughing with the seamstress, smoothing down the intricate lace of a ivory silk gown that had been tailored to fit my frame perfectly. We were one week away from the wedding of the year. Christian Prescott, the golden boy of acoustic pop, marrying Genevieve Vance, the quiet, dedicated woman who had stood beside him before the record deals, before the sold-out stadiums, before the endless flashing cameras.

I had stepped out of the boutique into the crisp autumn air, reaching into my bag for my phone to tell Christian the dress was perfect. That was when a man emerged from the alleyway. He was wearing a faded baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. He had smiled, stepping into my path, holding up a camera. “Excuse me, are you Genevieve? Can I get a quick photo for Christian’s fan page?”

I had paused, smiling out of habit, preparing to answer.

Then he reached into his jacket, pulled out a clear glass bottle, and flung its contents straight at my face.

The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow. The liquid hitting my skin. The sudden, unnatural sizzling sound. The blinding, horrific heat that tore through my epidermis in a fraction of a second. My own screaming echoing off the brick walls of the alleyway as I fell to the asphalt, clawing at my face while the world spun out of control.

Now, lying in Room 412 of St. Jude Medical Center, I remained frozen. I kept my breathing shallow, mimicking the heavy, rhythmic rise and fall of an unconscious patient.

"You could have ended things with Genevieve," another voice said. It was Gabriel, Christian’s longtime manager and closest confidant. Gabriel sounded sick, his voice strained and breathy. "You could have canceled the wedding. Called off the engagement. Made up some story for the press. Why pay a hitman to throw acid on her?"

My heart stopped beating for a long, terrifying second. The room seemed to tilt beneath me. He paid for it.

Christian answered. There was no tremor in his voice, no guilt, no hesitation. It was the calm, measured tone he used when negotiating contract clauses with studio executives.

"Because if I left Genevieve one week before the wedding, all of America would start looking for Sabrina. The media would tear her apart. They’d track down her past, her family, everything. I needed Genevieve to be unable to show up, and I needed everyone to believe I was the devastated, devoted fiancé standing by her bed."

"You're out of your mind, Christian," Gabriel hissed softly. "This is a human being. This is Genevieve. She’s been with you since you were sleeping on my couch!"

"And I'm grateful for that," Christian replied smoothly, his footsteps softly padding across the linoleum floor. "Which is why I'm taking care of her. At least find her a decent surgeon eventually."

"At least?" Gabriel spat. "We need to fly in the best reconstructive specialist from Johns Hopkins immediately."

"It's not necessary right now," Christian said. "If she's left scarred, even better. I'll take care of her. She'll have a luxury house, endless money, private nurses. She’ll be completely dependent on me. After this, who do you think is ever going to want her? Who else would look at a monster like that? She’ll never leave me."

A cold, dark void opened inside my chest. Five years of love, of sacrifices, of late-night conversations where he held me and told me I was his sanctuary—all of it dissolved into ash. I wasn't his partner. I was his puppet. A public relations shield carefully constructed to project an image of wholesomeness to his squeaky-clean fanbase.

"She can't have children anymore anyway," Christian added, his voice dropping slightly, casually dismissing a tragedy that had shattered my soul three times over. "I took care of that a long time ago."

I felt the blood drain completely from my brain. My fingers twitched beneath the sheet, but I forced them to stay still.

"What do you mean?" Gabriel asked, horror creeping into his voice. "Genevieve had three miscarriages. She almost died during the last one in Chicago!"

"Dr. Lawson adjusted a few things," Christian replied coldly. "Vitamins, hormone treatments, daily supplements he prescribed for her 'fertility maintenance.' Doses designed to make sure her body rejected every embryo. I couldn't risk her getting pregnant and ruining the rollout of my second album. And now, it doesn't matter."

Three miscarriages.

I remembered the cold steel of the ultrasound tables. The silence of doctors shaking their heads. The nights I spent weeping into my pillow, wondering what was wrong with my body, why I couldn't give the man I loved a family. And every single time, Christian had sat beside me, stroking my hair, whispering, “It’s okay, baby. It’s not your fault. It’s just bad luck. We have each other.”

He hadn't been comforting me. He had been monitoring the results of his poison.

"And what about the boy?" Gabriel asked, his voice barely audible now.

"Leo is four years old now," Christian said, a sudden note of warmth entering his voice—a warmth he had never truly felt for me. "Sabrina is tired of hiding him in that townhome in Naples. After the legal wedding—the private one I'm having with Sabrina next week while Genevieve is recovery-bound—I'll bring Leo home. Genevieve won't have the face to go public. She won't be able to give me children. She'll be lonely, scarred, and grateful. Eventually, she'll accept the boy as her own and raise him while I'm on tour."

"And you still plan to marry Genevieve publicly?"

"Of course," Christian said. "It's convenient. My brand as the devoted, tragic romantic is worth tens of millions. Sabrina just wants her private ceremony and her security. I can give Sabrina her ring in secret and still keep Genevieve as my public shield. Everyone wins."

He paused, then added, "Now get that guy out of the country. The one Gabriel hired through your contact. Pay him double, make sure his passport is stamped for Brazil by midnight, and burn the clothes he wore."

"I'm handling it," Gabriel said quietly, sounding defeated, dirty, and exhausted. "I'll go set up the transfer."

I heard the door open and close as Gabriel left the room.

Silence reclaimed the space, save for the hum of the heart monitor connected to my arm. Then I felt the bed dip slightly.

A hand—warm, familiar, and soft—reached out and gently wrapped around my left hand, the hand untouched by the attack. He squeezed my fingers with the exact tender pressure he always used before stepping onto a stage.

"Wake up soon, my love," Christian whispered into the quiet room, leaning down so close I could smell his expensive bergamot cologne mingled with the hospital soap. "We still have a wedding to have."

I held my breath, keeping my facial muscles utterly slack, hiding the mountain of ash and iron settling inside my soul.

He kissed the uninjured knuckles of my left hand, stood up, and adjusted his coat. I listened to his polished dress shoes click rhythmically against the floorboards until the heavy oak door clicked shut behind him.

The moment the latch caught, my eyes snapped open.

My left eye was clear; my right eye was partially swollen behind the white gauze. The ceiling tiles above me were bright, blinding white. I didn't shed a single tear. The fire on my face had burned away every tear duct, every drop of sorrow, every ounce of the naive girl who had loved Christian Prescott.

A minute later, the door handle turned again.

I expected Christian returning to retrieve something, but it was Gabriel. He walked in with his head down, holding a stack of medical release forms. When he lifted his gaze to check the monitors, he stopped dead in his tracks.

I was staring directly at him.

Gabriel’s face went chalk-white. The papers in his hands trembled. He looked at my single visible eye, seeing the raw, terrifying clarity burning within it. He realized instantly.

He had been standing at the foot of my bed. The room was small. The silence had been thin.

I had heard every single word.

Gabriel opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He took a slow, terrified step backward, reaching behind his spine toward the door handle, as if he were standing in a cage with a wounded, dangerous animal.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't reach for the emergency call button.

Instead, I slowly lifted my uninjured left arm and raised one pale, slender finger to my lips.

Shh.

Gabriel froze, his hand paralyzed on the brass knob.

"Help me," I whispered. My voice was raspy, dry as paper, but it carried an authority that made the experienced talent manager shiver.

Gabriel swallowed hard, his throat working uselessly before he managed to speak. "Genevieve... I... I didn't know what he was going to do today, I swear to God I didn't know about the acid until—"

"Help me," I repeated, my tone dropping an octave, slicing through his panicked excuses.

"To report him?" Gabriel stammered, looking frantically toward the frosted glass of the door. "I can call the police right now. I can tell them about the money, the guy, the—"

"No," I whispered. I slowly shook my head on the pillow, despite the blinding flare of pain it sent through my neck. "If you call the police now, his high-priced lawyers will post bail in two hours. He’ll destroy the evidence. He’ll silence the doctor. He’ll make me look insane."

I locked my eye onto Gabriel’s trembling pupils.

"First," I said, every word dripping with cold, deliberate ice, "help me stay alive."

Gabriel stared at me, his chest heaving. In that moment, looking at the bandaged woman who should have been broken, weeping, and helpless, he realized something that Christian Prescott had failed to see for five years.