I looked up to see Gabriel approaching, surrounded by a crowd.

The whispers behind me instantly vanished.


Gabriel and I had grown up together.

When we were five or six, our families arranged our marriage.

If anyone bullied me as a child, he was the first to stand up for me.


When he got in trouble, I was the first to plead for mercy on his behalf.

Before all this, no one would have doubted that I was Gabriel's true love.


But today, on my twenty-second birthday, he brought another woman.

Vivian was slim and delicate, clinging to his side like an innocent damsel.

Gabriel smiled, whispering something intimately in her ear.

She looked at me, her expression suddenly panicked and flustered, then rushed forward.

She bowed deeply to me, a full ninety degrees.