Betrayed, I Married Their Greatest Enemy

“You smashed a glass across the boardroom table, Clara! You’re completely out of your mind!”

My father’s shout still rang in my ears. Two weeks ago, he stripped my title at our family firm and locked me inside our estate under the excuse of medical leave.

Then came the noises from the second floor.

Every afternoon, muffled groans and the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings seeped through the ceiling from Brielle’s bedroom. My stepsister loved bringing random men home just to flaunt her freedom while I was trapped.

I stormed up the stairs, furious.

“Brielle, shut up!” I pounded my fist against the mahogany wood. “Have some decency in this house!”

The latch clicked. The door swung open.

The man standing in the doorway wasn’t a stranger. He was tucking his white dress shirt into his trousers, his belt buckle still unfastened.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Gavin?”

Gavin stood there—my fiancé of two years, the man who had promised to stand by me when my mother died.

He didn't even look guilty.

“You shouldn’t be wandering the halls, Clara,” Gavin said evenly. “Go back downstairs.”

“What are you doing in her room?” My voice cracked. “Why are your clothes off?”

A soft laugh came from behind him. Brielle stepped into view, sliding her arms around Gavin’s waist. She was wearing my emerald-green silk robe, the tie pulled loose just enough to expose the red marks across her collarbone.

“Isn’t it obvious, sister?” Brielle rested her chin on Gavin’s shoulder. “He’s comforting me. Something you haven’t been able to do for anyone lately.”

“Take that off,” I choked out, lunging forward. “That’s mine. He is mine!”

Gavin caught my wrists in an iron grip, shoving me backward.

“Stop acting like a lunatic!” he snapped. “Look at yourself, Clara. You’re paranoid, violent, and exhausted. I can’t live like this anymore.”

“You’re sleeping with my sister!” I screamed, tears scalding my cheeks. “How long? Tell me!”

Brielle smiled, pressing a kiss against Gavin’s jaw. “Three months. Ever since your breakdown started. He needed a real woman, Clara, not a fragile wreck who jumps at shadows.”

Three months. While I was grieving, while I was drowning in panic attacks, they were rolling in her bed.

“You liar,” I whispered, staring at Gavin. “You gave me your word.”

“I gave my word to a sane woman,” Gavin replied coldly.

Rage blinded me. I lunged at him, reaching for the diamond pendant resting on my chest—the engagement necklace he gave me last Christmas. I wanted to rip it off and throw it into his lying face.

“Take your damn ring and this chain!” I yelled.

My fingers hooked into the metal, but suddenly the hallway tilted. A violent rush of dizziness slammed into my temples. My knees buckled beneath me.

As I tumbled toward the floor, my hand brushed against Brielle’s arm.

Brielle shrieked at the top of her lungs. She threw herself against the doorframe, knocking over an antique porcelain vase. It shattered across the floor.

“Help! Dad! She’s trying to kill me!” Brielle wailed, sliding down against the wall in faux terror. “Gavin, keep her away from me! She’s snapped!”

“Brielle!”

Footsteps pounded up the grand staircase. My father, Richard, appeared at the landing, followed closely by Brielle’s mother, Marissa.

“What is happening here?” Richard roared.

“She attacked me, Dad!” Brielle sobbed into her hands, trembling violently. “I just asked if she needed tea, and she charged at me! She tried to choke me!”

“That’s a lie!” I pushed myself up from the rug, my head spinning, the room blurring at the edges. “Dad, look at them! Gavin was in her bed! Look what she’s wearing!”

Richard didn’t even look at Gavin’s unbuttoned shirt. His eyes drilled into me with disgust.

“Enough of your paranoid delusions, Clara!” Richard shouted. “You humiliate me in front of the board, and now you attack your sister in my home?”

“She isn’t lying about one thing, Richard,” Gavin spoke up, stepping forward. His voice carried a calculated, sorrowful weight. “Clara did attack Brielle. I tried to separate them, but Clara is completely detached from reality.”

I stared at Gavin in horror. “Gavin, how can you do this to me?”

Gavin slipped his hands into his pockets, shaking his head.

“I loved you once, Clara,” he said, addressing everyone in the corridor. “I stayed by your side through your grief. But this is where it ends. I am officially breaking our engagement. You are a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

Marissa gasped softly, resting a hand on Richard’s chest. “Oh, Richard... this breaks my heart. But Gavin is right. We can’t keep her here anymore. If she’s turning violent against family, she needs professional confinement.”

“No,” I begged, scrambling back against the banister. “I’m not crazy! I swear I’m not crazy!”

“Call the estate security,” Richard ordered the butler without a shred of pity. “Lock Clara in her bedroom. Tell Dr. Albright we’ll transfer her to the Pine Ridge Sanitarium first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Dad, please! Listen to me!”

Two burly guards grabbed me by the arms, dragging me down the hall toward my room. I thrashed and kicked, but the dizziness paralyzed my muscles.

They shoved me inside and slammed the heavy oak door. The lock turned with a final, heavy thud.

Silence crashed over me.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I crawled across the floor, trembling from the cold sweat breaking out across my skin. Why was I so dizzy? Why did my hands shake like this every single afternoon?

My knee hit something hard under the nightstand.

A small amber pill bottle rolled across the parquet floor. It had slipped from my pocket during the struggle.

I picked it up. It was the daily stabilizer Dr. Albright had prescribed for my anxiety after my mother passed away.

I ran my thumb over the paper label. A corner of the sticker lifted slightly.

I froze.

Flipping my thumbnail under the edge, I peeled the top label back. Underneath it was another printed tag.

A completely different medication name was stamped on the original plastic beneath: *Haloperidol*. A heavy, high-dose antipsychotic drug meant for severe schizophrenia.

They weren't treating my grief.

They were drugging me.

Someone had been slowly poisoning my mind to make me look insane.

Terror cut through the fog in my brain. If Richard sent me to Pine Ridge tomorrow, I would never walk out alive. They would drug me into a vegetative state, take my mother’s company shares, and leave me to rot.

I had to run. Tonight.

I waited until two in the morning, when the house fell into dead silence.

Using a silk scarf, I forced open the latch of my second-floor balcony window. My body felt heavy and uncoordinated from whatever chemicals lingered in my veins, but adrenaline kept my limbs moving.

I gripped the thick ivy trellis clinging to the stone wall and scrambled down. The rough vines tore into my palms, but I didn't care. When my feet hit the wet grass, I sprinted toward the perimeter gate.

The electronic wrought-iron gates were locked, but the pedestrian side-door was slightly ajar.

I slipped through into the dark access road outside the estate.

The moment my bare feet touched the asphalt, the ground tilted sideways.

A wave of nausea hit me like a sledgehammer. My vision doubled, turning the trees into warped shadows. My legs gave out completely, and I crashed onto the damp pavement, gasping for air.

*Get up,* I told myself. *Get up or they’ll catch you.*

Two blinding headlights pierced the darkness, rounding the curve at high speed.

The roar of a high-performance engine tore through the quiet night. Tires screeched as a black luxury sedan drifted to a sharp halt barely three feet from where I lay.

The driver’s door opened with a dull thud.

A tall figure stepped out into the glare of the headlamps. He wore an immaculate charcoal coat, his sharp, aristocratic jawline etched in shadows.

Julian Cross.

He crouched beside me, sliding a gloved hand behind my neck to support my heavy head. His dark eyes locked onto mine, completely devoid of fear or disgust.

“Julian...?” I rasped, my throat raw. “What are you doing here?”

Julian pulled me up against his chest with effortless strength, his deep voice dropping to a low, quiet murmur against my ear.

“My mother has waited for you for many years, Clara,” Julian whispered. “She told me that if the people inside that house ever started calling you crazy, I had to take you away immediately.”

Before I could ask what he meant, my vision blacked out.

***

When my eyes opened again, bright fluorescent lights stung my pupils.

I wasn't in a sanitarium. I was lying on an examination bed in a sterile, private medical suite.

Julian Cross stood near the window, his arms crossed over his chest, speaking in low tones to a man in a white lab coat.

“She’s awake, Mr. Cross,” the doctor said quietly, stepping toward my bedside.

I struggled to sit up, but the IV line in my forearm pulled tight. “Where am I?”

Julian stepped closer, his gaze unreadable. “A private clinic under my family’s name. You’re safe from your father here.”

The doctor held up a digital tablet containing a freshly printed toxicology report, his brow furrowed with deep concern.

“Miss Clara,” the doctor began, his tone grave. “We just ran an emergency screen on your blood work. We found dangerous levels of three separate prescription neurotoxins in your bloodstream—compounds you were never legally prescribed.”