n. And I was good at what I did-I knew that. I had a talent for reading people, for understanding what clients n

. "Mixing business and personal l

ly. "We're solid, Lila. And think

rking side by side with the man I was going to marry, building something together. It f

id yes.

but cultivated on my own merit. Within four months, I'd brought in connections that were transforming the company's trajectory. The Har

asting on her future husband's company-I was a valuable asset in my own right. Miles seemed proud of me too, or

in or the strategies I'd developed. I was always just "my talented fiancée," as if my identity existed only in relationship to hi

notice. I told myself that once we were married, once I'd been at the c

sual references that painted a picture of tragedy and duty. How his father had remarried when Miles was twenty, finally finding love again after years of being a widower. How the new wife, Margaret,

les, who'd been twenty-two at the time, became the guardian of his sixteen-year-old stepsister overnight. He'd been th

ther had abandoned her when she was a baby. My father and her mother were her whole world, and then they were just gone. I promised my fat