PROLOGUE
Justine
I Didn’t Hear No Bell
“You really need to see this, Justie.”
“What is it?”
“Jacob just purchased a seventeen-million-dollar home for Miss Thang!”
My breath caught in my chest. I was unable to exhale as I registered what Mommy was saying. I heard through the grapevine that Jacob purchased an elaborate mansion for Destiny and her kids. But why was that bit of news broadcasted in the Miami Herald for all to see?
“That house belongs to you,” Mommy’s pressured tone cut into my thoughts like a knife. “She doesn’t deserve a damn thing. If she hadn’t come along, Jacob would be my son in law by now…” she rambled on.
I hummed to block her out.
Sitting in a pear green, Baroque antique chair reading the morning news, Mommy wore a flawless up do. With her makeup picture perfect and her back straight as a board, she sat prim and proper in her seat as she talked to me.
Everyone bragged about how I mirrored her cover model beauty and trim physique. If I was so perfect, why didn’t I have the only man I ever loved? Hell, the man I was groomed to live in matrimony with would soon be another woman’s husband.
“I can’t Mommy. I just can’t read about him and her. Don’t keep putting it in my face,” I said. I couldn’t even say their names aloud, much less read about their perfect little marriage.
I looked away from my mother in shame. It wasn’t enough that I was hanging on to my sanity by a tiny little thread. She was still pressuring me to get Jacob back.
I couldn’t stand to listen to her pine on and on about Jacob and the black damsel that swept into his life and became all he needed and more. My parents had arranged for Jacob and I to have a relationship like their own, but our ship sailed and I wasn’t on it. Destiny boarded in my place, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.
I didn’t want to read the headline news. However, I saw it in plain sight from where I sat. “A Fairytale Comes True: Billionaire Jacob Turner Purchases 17 Million-Dollar Home as Gift for Soon-To-Be Wife.”
Underneath the headline was a larger than life picture of the couple smiling for the camera as Jacob’s hand rested just above her hips. They had an entire spread on the power couple, their unconventional love, future, and inherited empire.
Without reading the pumped-up drivel, I figured Destiny doted over Jacob, while boasting about her upcoming duties as his wife. She’d probably said something about him completing her, and he said she was the love of his life, or some other Romeo and Juliet lines.
I re-read the headline.
Wife.
Wow.
She was going to be his wife.
I had every intention to kill that bitch to prevent this day from coming. If I had it to do over again, I would squeeze the trigger as soon as she opened Jacob’s door. Her shrilling scream and pleas for her life wouldn’t affect me, if given another chance to end this nightmare.
Murderous thoughts were exactly the reason I couldn’t get sucked back into the world of Jacob and Destiny. Me in their world would be fatal for someone. Thoughts like these rendered me powerless. To know the love I had for him was unrequited broke a part of me beyond repair. When I felt broken and weak, I wanted to do something to take my power back. Slowly crushing Destiny’s windpipe wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Two weeks ago, I snuck into the pricey home the article bragged about and made love to Jacob one last time. While he may have pretended to think I was Destiny, he knew. How could he not recognize how it felt to touch me inside? She couldn’t have possibly snuffed out everything we shared.