That was the day he found my diary.
When I was little, my parents died in a cruise ship accident. They never came back. So Orion took me in, raised me, and became my family.
For years, our relationship was simple. Harmonious. Safe.
Until I grew up and realized I didn’t just see him as my uncle.
I loved him.
I knew it was wrong. I knew there was no future for us. So I buried those feelings deep, locking them away in the pages of my diary.
If Orion had never found it, maybe I could have kept pretending.
But he did.
And he ripped my diary to shreds right in front of me.
“How could you even think something like this?” His voice, usually calm and composed, was sharp with anger. “I’m your uncle! Blood or not, we are family. That will never change.”
I had never seen Orion lose control before.
But that day, he looked at me like I was something repulsive.
I wanted to explain, but what was there to say?
In the end, all I could do was lower my head, apologize over and over, tell him I was wrong. That I shouldn’t have felt that way.
But Orion wasn’t interested in apologies.
The next day, he resigned me from the job I had lined up and, under the pretense of “furthering my education,” sent me overseas to a university in the middle of nowhere.
And to make sure I had no way of coming back, he even hired bodyguards to keep an eye on me.
At first, I didn’t understand why he was going to such extremes.
Then, a month after I left, the headlines dropped.
Orion was getting married.
The wedding was all over the news, a lavish, extravagant affair. That was when I finally understood, he had already given his heart to someone else.
I watched the wedding video over and over again.
The way he looked at Melissa… the warmth in his eyes, the softness in his smile…
He had never looked at me that way. Not once.
And that was when it hit me.
All those years he kept me by his side, it was never love. Never affection.
It was just duty.
Because the only person he had ever truly loved… was her.
“Miss John, please get in the car.”
The assistant’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
