The glass double doors of the Crown Harbor Hotel opened into the biting December air of Manhattan, but the winter chill was nothing compared to the ice freezing over my veins.

There were my sketches. Not just the wedding gown, but an entire portfolio of evening wear, haute couture line sheets, and asymmetrical draping techniques that I had spent late nights drafting at our old kitchen table in Connecticut while Dominic was still struggling to get his first boutique off the ground.

Every single sketch bore a digital signature stamp: Designed exclusively by Vanessa Moretti for Caruso Design Group.

I stared at the screen, the pieces clicking together with sickening clarity.

Vanessa wasn't just Dominic’s chief marketing executive and his favorite socialite companion. She was the fraudulent face of a creative empire built entirely on stolen property. For years, Dominic had praised me for my “cute little hobby,” encouraging me to sketch for “relaxation,” all while feeding my original designs directly to Vanessa to establish her reputation as a visionary prodigy.

And tonight, at the grand gala, they were debuting my masterpiece—the gown I had poured my soul into—while the man who had promised to protect me raised his hand and struck my face in public to defend the thief.

A sharp, cold fury flooded my veins, burning away every trace of the grief I had felt in the ballroom.

"You think you own me, Dominic," I whispered to the empty room. "You think because you hold the money, you hold the power."

I plugged a high-speed encrypted flash drive into the USB port and began transferring every single file, contract, financial audit, and original digital sketch out of his secure server and straight into my own personal cloud storage.

As the progress bar ticked toward one hundred percent, the front door downstairs unlocked with a heavy click.