Five months before my wedding, I caught my fiancé sitting with my younger sister on his lap.

For the next four days, Port Mercy was alive with gossip.

The news that Cole Marston had been stripped of his corporate position and evicted from his luxury penthouse hit the local tabloids like a bomb. Photos of Tessa carrying garbage bags full of clothes out of Cole’s apartment building circulated on social media, sparking a wave of public mockery.

Tessa and Cole had moved into a run-down, two-star motel on the outskirts of the city. Without Cole’s corporate access, they couldn't even pay for a decent dinner.

On Thursday afternoon, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but I answered anyway.

"Emma! You bitch!" Tessa’s hysterical voice shrieked through the speaker. "Look at what you’ve done to us! Cole and I are eating fast food in a filthy room! The bank froze my credit cards!"

I sat back in the swivel chair of my new office at Marston Holdings—where Adrian had reinstated my authority over my father’s original logistics firm. "Hello, Tessa."

"Don't 'Hello Tessa' me!" she screamed. "You need to go to Adrian right now and tell him to drop the charges! Tell him it was all a misunderstanding! If you don't, I’m going to tell the press that you drove Cole to financial ruin out of jealousy!"

I let out a quiet, amused laugh. "Go ahead, Tessa. Call the press. Tell them how you slept with your sister’s fiancé for five months while helping her plan her wedding. I'm sure the public will be very sympathetic to your story."

"You think you're so smart sitting in Adrian’s castle, don't you?" Tessa spat, her tone turning venomous. "Cole never loved you, Emma! He told me every night how boring you were! How he only stayed with you because your father’s land deeds were worth millions!"

"I know," I said calmly. "And now he has neither me nor the land deeds. Enjoy the motel, Tessa."

I hung up the phone before she could scream again.

Just as I set the phone down, Adrian walked into my office. He was wearing a dark charcoal suit, holding a manila folder under his arm.

"That was Tessa?" he asked, a small smile playing on his lips.

"She’s getting desperate," I said.

"They're going to get even more desperate," Adrian replied, laying the folder open on my desk. "Cole just contacted an underground asset liquidator in Chicago. He’s trying to sell forged copies of your mother’s original land deeds to a rival real estate group tonight."