The storm outside hadn't stopped.
Each crash of thunder felt like a cruel reminder of how completely her world had collapsed.
Amelia sat on the cold marble steps outside the cathedral, her slender arms hugging her knees, the tattered remnants of her wedding dress trailing along the rain-slicked ground like the discarded dreams of a woman no longer wanted.
Her bare feet were numb, her skin pale under the merciless rain.
But what hurt most wasn't the biting cold.
It was the burning humiliation.
The way every glance earlier that night had pierced her like sharpened daggers.
"She really thought she could marry into the Blake family?""Poor thing… abandoned like a stray dog."
The words echoed in her ears, circling her mind like vultures drawn to a dying soul.
Her trembling lips parted as she let out a shallow, broken breath.
Why… Why me?
She lifted her face to the storm, raindrops blending with her silent tears.
The moon hung high above the clouds, a pale witness to her downfall, as if mocking her from behind its silver veil.
A sudden gust of wind whipped her hair across her face.
She flinched, as if the very air was punishing her for daring to hope in the first place.
Her heart felt like shattered glass—each beat sending jagged pain through her chest.
In that moment, something inside her broke.
The naïve Amelia, the girl who believed love could conquer everything…
She died on those cold cathedral steps.
Clenching her fists, she slowly pushed herself up, her soaked wedding gown weighing her down like chains forged by her own foolishness.
With every dragging step back to her cold, empty apartment, a new resolve took root beneath the ashes of her heartbreak.
She didn't need Ethan Blake.
She didn't need anyone.
Her reflection in the rain-splattered window stopped her dead in her tracks.
Gone was the wide-eyed bride-to-be.
In her place stood a woman with eyes colder than the storm, lips pressed into a thin, determined line.
From that day forward, she vowed—
"The next time you see me, Ethan Blake… it will be when I stand above you."
And when she turned away from the broken reflection, she didn't look back.
Not at the cathedral.
Not at the shattered dreams.
Not at the man who had ruined her.