The one who ran away. The one who was a stain on my reputation.”

Cold dread coiled in my gut, silencing the throb in my shoulder. “What did you tell them, Robert?”

He looked me dead in the eye, devoid of any warmth at all.

“I told them you died. Three years ago. A tragic overdose. I told them you were a ghost, Elena. And ghosts don’t show up to high-society weddings covered in mud.”

The air punched out of my lungs.

He hadn’t just disowned me. He’d erased me. To secure a wealthy son-in-law, my father had buried me alive.