The Substitute Bride's Revenge

Family Betrayal

"These can't be right."Aria hunched over the quarterly reports, the numbers swimming before her eyes. Each column told the same story—a downward spiral that had begun years ago, almost to the day her father had married Victoria Pierce.She tucked a strand of dark curls behind her ear. Her fingers left a smudge of ink on her cheek, unnoticed as she recalculated the figures for the third time.The office around her had emptied hours ago. At twenty-four, Aria was often the first to arrive and the last to leave, desperately trying to keep her father's legacy from crumbling beneath the weight of mounting debt.The business degree she'd worked so hard for at State University—scholarship-funded, unlike Vivian's designer education was being put to use in ways her professors had never covered: how to stretch payments, which creditors to prioritize, when to beg for extensions.Her phone vibrated on the desk. A notification from Instagram. Without thinking, she tapped it open.Vivian Pierce's p...