---- Chapter 18 Clara, kneeling on the floor, her face red and swollen, seemed to find a last reserve of desperate courage. "You're a hypocrite, Liam!" she screamed, her voice hoarse with tears. "You can't blame me for this! | was never anything more than her substitute, and you know it!" The livestream comments, which had been a sea of shock, now shifted. "Substitute?" "What does she mean?" "Is Ava Ross a brunette too?" "You sought me out because | look like her!" Clara continued, her words tumbling out in a frantic rush. "Because | have the same birthday! You bought me the same gifts, you took me to the same places! | was your practice wife, your stand-in for the real thing! Don't you dare pretend this was all me!" The accusation hung in the air, a shocking twist in the public drama. Liam froze, her words hitting him with the force of a physical blow. Because it was true. He had been drawn to Clara's resemblance to me, to the easy familiarity of it. It had made the betrayal feel less real, somehow. But his guilt quickly hardened back into rage. He would not let her tarnish my name, not now. "Don't you ever," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "compare yourself to her again. You are nothing like ---- her.' He turned to his man holding the phone. "Give me that." He took the phone. His fingers flew across the screen, logging out of Clara's account and into his own. His profile picture was a professional headshot, but he quickly changed it to a photo of me and him, a candid shot from a vacation years ago. We were laughing, happy, the sun setting behind us. Then, he started a new livestream on his own account. The thousands of viewers who had been watching Clara's downfall immediately flooded over to his. "My name is Liam Kane," he said, his voice raw but steady, his face filling the screen. "And | need to set the record straight." He told them everything. He told them about our twenty years together, from the sandbox to the boardroom. He talked about the company we built, the life we shared. He pulled up photos from his phone-us at prom, at our college graduations, breaking ground on our first project. He even showed them the intricate, beautiful designs for our wedding, the ones | had created. "This is the woman | was supposed to marry," he said, his voice breaking as he showed the world my smiling face. "Ava Ross. The love of my life. And | destroyed it. | was weak, and | was a fool. | had an affair with the woman you just saw, Clara Bell. It was a mistake. A terrible, unforgivable mistake." He didn't spare himself. He painted himself as the villain, the ---- cheater, the liar. And in doing so, he painted me as the victim, the wronged woman, the tragic heroine. He was rewriting the narrative in real time. The public's opinion, so easily swayed, turned on a dime. Clara was no longer a wronged mistress, she was a scheming homewrecker. Liam was a flawed man, but one who was publicly confessing his sins, begging for forgiveness. And |... | was a saint. The fallout for Clara was immediate and catastrophic. Within the hour, her top sponsors had pulled their endorsements. Her social media was a toxic wasteland of hate comments. Her fans abandoned her in droves. She had been publicly and professionally executed. And Liam had been the one to pull the trigger.