PART 1

“If Genevieve arrives at that wedding with her face intact, Sabrina will never be able to take her place,” a sharp voice echoed down the hall.

I heard that brutal phrase a week before I was supposed to marry Christian Prescott, one of the country’s most famous pop artists, while I was pretending to remain unconscious in a private room at St. Jude Medical Center in Columbus.

Hours earlier, as I was leaving a bridal shop in downtown Indianapolis, a strange man approached me under the guise of requesting a photo for Christian. He suddenly pulled a glass bottle from his coat and splashed severe industrial acid across the right side of my face. I clearly remember the agonizing fire on my skin, my violent screams, and the cold pavement rushing up to hit me before everything went dark.

When I woke up in the hospital bed, my entire head was wrapped tightly in heavy medical bandages. I was terrified to open my eyes because I feared discovering what was left of the face Christian had kissed for five straight years.

Then I heard the heated voice of his talent manager, Gabriel.

“You could have simply broken up with Genevieve, Christian!” Gabriel yelled in a hushed, furious tone. “You could have called off the lavish wedding publicly, so why on earth did you pay a criminal to do this to her?”

My heart stopped beating in my chest as I listened to the deadly quiet in the room.

Christian responded with a terrifying calm that chilled me far more than the icy air conditioning flowing through the room.

“Because if I dumped her a week before the wedding, all of America would be hunting down Sabrina and destroying our reputations,” Christian explained casually. “I needed Genevieve to be physically incapable of showing up so everyone would view me as the devastated, grieving fiancé.”

Gabriel gasped loudly and called him a sick monster.

“At the very least, hire the best reconstructive surgeon in the country to fix her,” Gabriel pleaded desperately.

“There is absolutely no need for that,” Christian replied with cold indifference. “If she is permanently scarred, it works out even better for my public image because I will take care of her forever, offering her a private home, money, and round-the-clock nurses so she will never want to leave me.”

I felt as though the air had been entirely sucked out of my lungs while I lay completely paralyzed under the sheets.

Then Christian added something far more sinister that shattered my entire soul.

“Besides, she can no longer bear children anyway since I took care of that permanent issue a long time ago,” Christian remarked coolly.

My mind immediately flashed back to my three agonizing pregnancy losses over the past few years. I remembered those terrible early mornings in the emergency room when Christian held my hand, stroked my hair, and swore to me that the losses were not my fault.