I Signed Away My First Love, Then Married Someone Else Chapter 10

I Signed Away My First Love, Then Married Someone Else Chapter 10

No one answered.

But everyone understood.

Someone tapped the phone screen. “When did the Mercer family post this?”

“Five minutes ago.”

Ethan looked down at his own phone.

Five minutes earlier, he had been standing at the altar.

The officiant had still been asking whether he took Madeline as his wife.

What had he been thinking at that moment?

He had been wondering when Claire would arrive.

Ethan’s gaze swept across the garden and finally locked on Grant.

“Grant!”

The force of his shout made Grant recoil. “What?”

“Your sister got married, and you didn’t know?”

“I…” Grant opened his mouth. “I didn’t know until I saw the announcement either.”

“She’s your own sister!” Ethan’s voice went cold. “You didn’t know who she was marrying? You didn’t know who gave her that ring?”

Grant gripped his phone until his knuckles turned white.

“When did she… She never told me…”

Humiliation crept across his face.

But the distance between them was nothing new.

When Grant and Claire were brought home after being rescued,

Madeline had followed Grant everywhere, tugging on his shirt and treating him like her only brother for nearly a year before the Hales adopted her.

He’d always felt he owed something to the little girl who’d once been his sister. As soon as he had

the power, he gave her everything he could.

While their mother was alive, she’d kept him in check. “Grant, Claire is your sister.‘

After their mother died, he stopped considering Claire’s feelings.

He embraced every chance to play Madeline’s protective brother. When Claire began treating him like a stranger, he thought nothing of it.

When had Claire stopped coming to him as her brother?

He couldn’t remember.

But as he stood among a garden full of guests, clutching the announcement of his own sister’s marriage, he suddenly understood

that she’d stopped thinking of him as her brother years ago.

Someone murmured nearby.

“Wait. The announcement says she’s been legally married to Julian Mercer for three months, and her own brother had no idea?”

“Three months… Isn’t that exactly when she broke up with Ethan?

“Damn. I thought she was playing hard to get. She’d already moved on.”

Ethan stood motionless.

Each word drove into him like a needle.

Three months. Legally married. Already moved on.

His chest suddenly felt too tight.

Three months earlier, on that rooftop, he’d said,

“Whether you jump is your choice. I’m going back downstairs to make a toast.”

He’d assumed she’d do what she always did and come down when she finished making a scene.

Afterward, he’d only have to soothe her a little, and everything would fall back into place.

Wasn’t that what always happened?

She would starve herself, cut her wrists, or climb onto a roof. When it was over, she’d collapse asleep at her desk.

he next morning, she would text him as usual. “I want a cinnamon roll from Marlowe’s.”

He had grown used to it.

He’d taken her love for granted, like three meals a day that appeared right on schedule.

“No. This isn’t happening. I have to find her.”

That woman had tried to die for him three times.

How could he possibly have lost her?