Sophia pressed closer to Elijah, her lips curving into a pout.

"Baby, is this the woman you told me about? The one who keeps showing up everywhere?"

Elijah wrapped his arm tighter around her. "Don't worry about her. She's nobody."

Nobody. Four years of marriage and I was nobody.

I looked him dead in the eye. "Elijah, I am your wife. We are legally married. Tell them the truth."

He didn't flinch. "I've never married this woman. She's delusional. She fabricated a whole relationship in her head after I rejected her."

The crowd that had gathered murmured in agreement. Poor Sophia. What a crazy stalker.

I pulled up our marriage certificate on my phone and held it up. "This is our marriage certificate. Dated four years ago. Elijah Marcus Grant and Vivienne Ashford."

Sophia glanced at it and laughed. "Oh my God, she actually photoshopped a marriage certificate! That's a new level of pathetic."

The security guards tightened their grip on me.

Then a voice boomed from behind them.

"What's all this commotion about? You're disturbing our guests!"

Robert Langford pushed through the crowd. Sophia's father. A stocky man with a red face and cheap cologne.

I knew him. Two years ago, Elijah had asked me to lend Robert three hundred thousand dollars to save his failing construction business. I'd wired the money that same day. Robert had shaken my hand and called me "the most generous soul he'd ever met."

"Mr. Langford!" I said. "You know me. I'm Vivienne. I lent you three hundred thousand dollars two years ago. Tell them who I am!"

Robert squinted at me, then turned to Elijah.

"Son, is this that crazy girl again?"

"Yeah, Dad. Same one. Won't leave me alone."

Robert marched up to me, his face twisted with disgust.

"Listen here, young lady. My daughter is the love of Elijah's life. He built Meridian Corp from the ground up and Sophia stood by him through it all."

"You think you can just waltz in here with your fake documents and steal my son-in-law?"

He shoved me in the chest. I stumbled backward into a guard, who pushed me to the floor.

My knees hit the marble hard. Pain shot through my legs.

"Mr. Langford, you sat in my living room and cried when you couldn't pay your workers. I transferred the money while you watched. How can you stand here and lie?"

He kicked my shin. "I don't know you! Stop making up stories!"

Sophia crouched down in front of me, tilting her head with mock sympathy.

"Sweetie, I get it. Elijah is handsome, he's successful, he's rich. A lot of women want him. But he chose me."

She held up her hand, showing me a diamond ring. MY diamond ring — the three-carat emerald-cut my grandmother left me. The one I kept in my bedroom safe.

"See this? He proposed with his grandmother's ring. A family heirloom."

My blood went cold.

That ring had been in the Ashford family for four generations. My grandmother wore it for sixty years before placing it in my hands on her deathbed.

And now it was on this woman's finger.

"That ring is MINE," I whispered.

Sophia stood up and sighed dramatically. "Security, she's clearly mentally unstable. Please remove her before she hurts someone."

The guards hauled me up. My phone had fallen to the floor and one of them stepped on it, cracking the screen.

Elijah walked over and looked down at me. His voice dropped low, so only I could hear.

"Vivienne, you should have stayed overseas. You were never supposed to come back."

Then louder, to the crowd, "I apologize for the disruption, everyone. Please, go back inside. The champagne toast is about to begin."

He turned his back on me. Sophia looped her arm through his. The crowd followed them toward the ballroom, whispering and laughing.

Robert spat on the ground near my feet. "Pathetic."

The guards started dragging me to the exit again.

That's when a black Maybach pulled up outside the hotel entrance. Then another. Then three black SUVs.

The doors opened simultaneously.

Daniel, my family's chief attorney, stepped out of the first car. Behind him, sixteen men in dark suits — the Ashford Group's private security detail.

And from the last SUV, a woman in a charcoal Chanel coat stepped out, her silver hair swept back, her posture that of someone who had never once in her life been told "no."

My mother.

Eleanor Ashford, Chairwoman of the Ashford Group.

She took one look at me — on my knees, bruised, bleeding from a cut on my arm — and her expression went absolutely glacial.

"Who," she said, her voice cutting through the night air like a blade, "touched my daughter?"