After He Left Me at the Altar, I Inherited His Worst Enemy

Chapter 1

Ethan Hart had spent ten years chasing me, acting like it was a done deal that I’d be his wife someday.

Then, the night before our wedding, I overheard him talking with a friend.

“So you’re really marrying Claire Morgan,” his friend said. “What about that girl you’ve been seeing on the side?”

Ethan went quiet for a moment. “She’s just a placeholder. She’s not even in the same league as Claire.”

“If she knows her place and doesn’t make trouble, I might keep her around. Claire’s generous. She won’t mind.”

The next day, the “girl on the side” stormed our wedding and turned it into a circus.

When she shoved me hard off the stage, Ethan didn’t even look my way. He lunged to catch her instead.

All because she pressed a jagged shard of glass to her own throat and screamed, “Pick one. Me or Claire Morgan?”

Ethan panicked. He shoved me aside even though I was hurt, then snapped, “Get out of my way. I’m taking her to St. Mary’s Hospital. If anything happens to her, I’ll make you pay.”

That was the moment something in me went cold.

That night, I booked the first ticket to Boston and got as far away from him as I could.

...

“Claire Morgan, you couldn’t sign your own surgical paperwork,” Ethan’s voice came through the phone, edged with irritation. “You called me over and over for this.”

“Just because Sienna Blake got hurt, you had to go and break a bone too. I’m exhausted, stop making my life harder.”

Ever since Sienna had crashed the wedding, he’d vanished with her for half a day.

This was my twentieth call.

He’d hung up on the first nineteen.

His tone made me pause, then I forced the words out anyway. “Sienna pushed me.”

“The doctor said a family member has to sign. You’re already at St. Mary’s, can’t you spare two minutes to come over and do it?”

His answer was the sharp click of the call ending.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Bring me the consent form. I’ll sign it myself.”

The doctor hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want to try Mr. Hart again? Maybe he didn’t hear you clearly.”

“Yesterday he had the whole hospital on standby. He told everyone to be ready in case Sienna showed up at the wedding and you got hurt, so we could treat you immediately.”

“Normally, if you even had a minor cold, he’d pull every specialist into a consult and sit by your bedside for days.”

“If he knew you fractured a bone and Sienna did it, he’d lose it. You’re the most important person to him.”

I gave a small, bitter laugh. I used to believe that too.

Now, it didn’t feel true at all.

When I insisted, the doctor finally handed the paperwork over and I signed.

Right up until the last minute before surgery, I still gave Ethan a chance. I kept waiting for him to show up, just once.

The only thing that arrived was a post from Sienna.

In the looping clip, Ethan held a bowl of steaming chicken soup, cooled it with a careful breath, and fed her spoon by spoon. Then he tucked the blanket around her like she was made of glass.

Caption, [You said these three years with me were the luckiest thing in your life. I’ll spend the rest of mine proving you were worth it.]

Sienna’s smile looked downright blissful.

It was almost impossible to connect that image to the woman from a few days earlier, the one who’d been cut off overnight and went out drinking to numb it.

Drunk and shaking, she’d shown up at my door, tears streaming as she jabbed a finger at my face.

“I was Ethan Hart’s secret girlfriend for three years. I gave him everything. And he never once touched me,” she cried. “He kept saying Claire Morgan was the only woman he’d ever marry. So tell me, what makes you so special?”

“I tried making him soup like you do. He slapped me and said I wasn’t even close,” she went on, voice cracking. “He said I’d never measure up, not my face, not my personality, nothing. He told me to stop pretending I could be you.”

She was worked up, wild with it. “He said I was just a stand-in, someone he picked up when he was bored. The second you came back to London, he’d throw me out.”

Then her eyes went sharp and ugly. “Why did you come back to London, Claire. Why couldn’t you just die in Boston?”

Back then, Ethan had been furious that she’d come after me.

He slapped her without hesitation and threw her out.

He stared at Sienna like she disgusted him. “We’re done. Stop showing up and harassing me. And wishing that on Claire, are you out of your mind?”

“If you’re that desperate to die, do it without dragging anyone else into it.”

“Claire’s the only one I see. There’s no one else.”

And yet, at the wedding, he ran to Sienna again without even blinking.

Like he was terrified of losing something precious, he rushed her straight to St. Mary’s for treatment.

My surgery didn’t take long.

When the anesthesia wore off and I came back to myself, the door to my room flew open.

Ethan strode in fast, all urgency and sharp edges.

For a second, I thought maybe he’d finally come to see me.

Then he grabbed my hand, the one with the IV, and yanked it out from under the blanket, turning it over roughly as if he was searching for something.

When he didn’t find it, he snapped, voice tight with anger.

“Claire, where’s your wedding ring?”

“Hand it over. Now.”

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