And now, under the golden light of the ballroom, he gave her the most humiliating order yet.
“Stay near the kitchen or the restrooms,” he whispered sharply. “Do not introduce yourself as my wife tonight. If anyone asks, say you work for the event.”
Emily froze.
Around her neck hung an old silver necklace shaped like half a sun. Whenever she felt ashamed or afraid, she touched it without thinking. Rosa had given it to her before she died.
“You were found after a terrible fire thirty years ago,” Rosa had once whispered from her hospital bed. “You had a scar near your collarbone… and this necklace in your tiny hand.”
That necklace and the scar were the only clues Emily had about where she came from.
Inside the ballroom, Daniel became someone else entirely.
He smiled, shook hands, laughed loudly, and moved through the crowd like a man born to stand beside billionaires. Emily obeyed him quietly and stayed near the dessert table, pretending not to notice that her own husband refused to look at her.
Then, without warning, the entire ballroom fell silent.
Richard Kensington had arrived.
He was the seventy-two-year-old billionaire owner of Whitmore Corporation, a telecommunications titan whose approval could elevate a career or end it overnight. He entered with his older sister, Eleanor Kensington, beside him, while security guards followed a few steps behind. Family
