Given to a Beggar: A Marriage's Darkest Secret

There were no tears.

No hysterics.

Just a dead, chilling calm inside me, with a single flame of revenge flickering to life.

In the car, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.

On the other end was Elora Wade, my father's most capable lead investigative journalist.

A woman known in certain circles for being able to "dig up secrets from the dead".

"Elora. It's me, Claudia," I said, my voice unnervingly steady. I want everything on Dylan's stand-in. His background, his family, every single transaction record between him and Dylan. The more detailed, the better."

Elora paused for a few seconds. "Miss, what do you mean by look-alike stand-in?"

I forced a smirk, my tone flat. "Dylan is a narcissistic control freak. He would never tolerate a sloppy imitation. To make sure that beggar could play his part perfectly, Dylan wrote a manual himself. Dozens of pages long.

It detailed everything. Even the private, intimate details of how he thought I should be handled.

The digital copy is in my cloud drive."

Elora's voice took on a new gravity. "Understood, Miss. You'll have everything you need within three days."

I interrupted her. "No, I need you to do one more thing. Inform my father that it's time to act. Start with the smaller stuff. The tax evasion at his company. The intern exploitation scandals. I want him to watch, helpless, as the empire he's so proud of is slowly eaten away from the inside, like termites gnawing at the foundations."

By the time I finished, the car had arrived at the villa, where I'd shared with Dylan.

I didn't return to the bedroom filled with humiliating memories.

Instead, I walked straight to the very back of the house, to a room that had been sealed shut for eight full years.

It was my dance studio.

Eight years had passed since I last set foot in here.

Inside, all the mirrors were covered with thick white cloths.

I walked over and gestured for the cloths to be pulled away, one by one.

The mirrors reflected a stranger.

Her face was pale, her figure frail.

I leaned against the cold bar, slowly lifting my right leg.

At the ankle, there was a grotesque scar, ugly and painful.

I had once felt inferior because of this scar, a constant reminder that I was a cripple.

A cripple that could never stand on stage again.

But now, looking at the wounded version of myself in the mirror, I felt an unprecedented sense of calm.

Dylan destroyed my dance career and my dreams.

But he probably never imagined that he also built for me a larger stage with his own hands.

A stage centered around revenge, with the entire Larson family as its backdrop.

And now, the show was about to begin.