After the Miscarriage, I Left My Ruthless HusbandChapter 1
A week before the wedding, bed photos of my fiancé and his personal secretary trended for the ninety-ninth time.
I broke down and confronted him.
Conrad swore to me with bloodshot eyes—he'd been drugged, it wasn't his fault. It was the last time.
Then came the day of the wedding.
Conrad had his arms around Desiree in a wedding gown, kissing her deeply, and I lunged at her like a woman possessed, tearing at the fabric of her dress.
He shoved me away with one hand, pulled Desiree behind him, and spoke without a trace of urgency: "Tracey, I thought it over. She's young, she's fresh, she's been mine for three years—I want to marry her."
"She gets the wedding. You keep Mrs. Graves. Fair enough, right?"
——
Everything behind my face went blank.
Conrad pressed a careless kiss to my forehead and didn't give me a chance to speak.
"Babe, sorry—Desiree wore me out last night and I forgot to give you a heads-up. My bad, dragging you out here for nothing."
"Just treat this one as a dry run, yeah? Your parents aren't around anyway, so stand to the side, take notes. That way you won't mess anything up when it's our turn."
I looked at his hand clasped tight around Desiree's, and something old and bitter rose through me.
I was fifteen when my father was killed saving Conrad. Murdered for it.
My mother heard the news. She waited until I was asleep, swallowed a fistful of pills, and went after him.
I didn't even have time to grieve.
The relatives came like wolves, circling my parents' distillery, ready to tear it apart.
It was Conrad who stood in front of me with a knife, his eyes cold and vicious as they swept over every single one of them: "Anyone who takes one more step today, I'll take them down with me."
He came out of it with three broken ribs. Spent a full month in the ICU.
If his bodyguards hadn't arrived when they did, he would have died there.
That became his permanent get-out-of-jail-free card in my heart.
He'd held me tight and sworn: "Tracey, don't worry. Everything your parents left you, everything that's yours—no one's taking any of it. Including me."
From then on, no matter how large the Graves Group grew, it remained the distillery's shield.
The day I took over the distillery after graduation, Conrad and I registered our marriage.
He cried that day, cried like a little kid: "Tracey Simmons—we're real family now. Finally."