/0/82602/coverbig.jpg?v=7fb2657223d22dfbfc2ea673eec9ba6b)
I barely had two pennies to rub together, living in a small back-house room the Petersons let me use, but at least I had Tiffany. Tiffany Peterson, my beautiful fiancée, was my world. That was, until she didn't come home from whatever party she' d gone to. The next morning, Julian Astor III, New York' s notorious playboy, appeared. He smirked, waving Tiffany's silk scarf in my face. "Found it in my penthouse this morning. Tiffany left in a bit of a hurry. You'll be seeing a lot more of her." Tiffany confirmed it all, not a trace of remorse on her face. Our engagement? "A formality, darling. Julian is my future." Later, Julian returned to my room, his goons beating my only friend, Mike, just for asking questions. Julian then detailed intimate acts with Tiffany, twisting the knife. When I confronted the Petersons, my adoptive parents, they sneered: "You're a nobody, Alex. An orphan we took in out of charity. You will go along with it." My supposed family, the people who raised me, were selling me out, orchestrating my humiliation for their social climb. My world shattered. How could this be happening? The woman I loved, my adoptive family, all conspiring to humiliate and discard me like trash. Why? What had I ever done to deserve such betrayal and cruelty? Broken and devoid of hope, I started packing my worn duffel bag – the only thing left from my parents. Then, something fell out: a faded photograph of a woman with my eyes, wearing a unique crescent-moon pendant. A stranger named Chloe Vanderbilt later saw it and whispered of "a prominent family, a lost heir, connected by a crescent symbol." Was there more to my past than I knew? And could this secret be my only way out of this nightmare?