BETRAYALS BOND

My fiancé stood me up for the 88th time, leaving me at the courthouse to rush to his adopted sister' s side.

I went home and overheard their twisted plan: they wanted me to get sterilized so I could raise their secret love child.

When his sister later tried to poison me, he screamed at me to apologize. He even locked me in the basement, knowing my severe claustrophobia, to punish me for "upsetting her."

The man I loved was a monster, and I had been his fool.

After he left on a business trip, I packed my bags, accepted a dream job across the country, and sent him one last text.

"We are over."

Chapter 1

Jody POV:

The eighty-eighth time my fiancé left me stranded was the last.

The air in the city courthouse was thick and stale, smelling of old paper and cheap disinfectant. I sat on a hard wooden bench, my fingers tracing the cold, intricate metal of the engagement ring Arthur had placed there six months ago. The diamond glittered under the fluorescent lights, a promise that felt more like a lie with every passing minute.

Three hours. I' d been waiting for three hours.

"Jody Campbell and Arthur Lowery?" a clerk called out, her voice flat with boredom.

I stood up, my legs stiff. "He' s on his way," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. It was the same excuse I' d given her an hour ago.

She gave me a look that was a mixture of pity and annoyance before calling the next name on her list.

My phone buzzed in my hand. Arthur' s name flashed across the screen. Relief, weak and pathetic, washed over me for a split second before the familiar dread settled back in.

"Arthur, where are you? They' ve called our names twice."

"I' m so sorry, baby," his voice was a low, apologetic murmur that used to make my heart melt. Now it just made my stomach clench. "Something' s come up."

Something always came up. And that something was always named Claudia.

"What is it this time?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet. I already knew. I always knew.

"Claudia' s not feeling well. She says she has a headache and she' s feeling dizzy. I have to take her to the hospital."

A headache. He was abandoning our appointment for a marriage license-our third rescheduled appointment-for a headache.

The week before, he' d missed my graduation dinner because Claudia had a nightmare. The month before that, he' d cancelled our vacation because Claudia felt lonely. Eighty-eight times. I' d kept a tally on a hidden app on my phone. Eighty-eight plans cancelled, eighty-eight promises broken, eighty-eight times I was told I was less important than his adopted sister.

"Jody? Baby, are you there?"

I stared at the peeling paint on the opposite wall. "She has her own car, Arthur. She has a driver. She can call a doctor to the house."

"You don' t understand," he said, his voice laced with that familiar, frustrated guilt. "She needs me. She saved my life, Jody. I owe her everything."

The story was his shield, the one he hid behind every time he chose her. When they were kids, Claudia had supposedly pushed him out of the way of a speeding car, breaking her own leg in the process. It was the foundation of their toxic, co-dependent bond, the debt he felt he could never repay.

"I have to go, baby. I' ll make it up to you, I promise. We' ll go tomorrow."

He didn' t wait for my response. The line went dead.

I stood there, the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the dial tone. The muffled sounds of the courthouse faded into a dull roar. It felt like the world was underwater, and I was sinking.

Slowly, I lowered the phone. With numb fingers, I twisted the diamond ring. It slid off my finger easily, leaving a pale, indented mark on my skin. I looked at the brilliant stone, a symbol of a future that would never happen. A future where I would always come second.

I walked over to the trash can by the exit, its metal lid slightly ajar. Without a second thought, I opened my hand and let the ring drop. It made a small, unsatisfying clink as it hit the bottom, lost amongst discarded coffee cups and crumpled papers.

"Ma' am?" The security guard by the door was looking at me, his brow furrowed. "You just… did you just throw that ring away?"

I didn't answer him. What was there to say?

He seemed to understand. He shook his head slowly. "He' s not worth it, kid. Any guy who stands you up at the marriage license office isn' t gonna show up for the real thing."

His words struck a chord deep inside me, a truth I had been refusing to see. Everyone saw it but me. My friends, my family, even a stranger at the courthouse. I was the fool who kept believing in his empty promises.

The memory of our first meeting felt like a scene from a different life. I was a junior chemical engineering student, tutoring to make ends meet. He was Arthur Lowery, the charismatic heir to a tech empire, who' d burst into the campus library like a storm, charming and brilliant and utterly captivated by me. He pursued me relentlessly, with helicopter rides over the city and private concerts and a thousand whispered promises of forever. He' d even bought the building my favorite struggling bookstore was in, just to keep it from closing. He' d made me believe in fairy tales.

Then, a year into our relationship, Claudia had returned from studying abroad.

At first, it was subtle. A dinner he had to cut short because Claudia called, crying about an exam. A weekend trip postponed because Claudia had the flu. But the intrusions grew more frequent, more demanding. My life began to revolve around her needs, her whims, her manufactured crises.

Arthur always had an excuse. "She' s just fragile, Jody. She' s been through a lot."