By the time the expensive vintage champagne reached Ava Knox’s plain black heels, nearly forty wealthy guests in the grand ballroom were laughing.

While Ava and Alexander were building their future, Damian Cross was rotting in a cold cell at the Manhattan Detention Complex.

His bail had been set at two million dollars—an amount he couldn't possibly pay after Sterling Global froze all his personal assets. His high-society friends had completely abandoned him. Victoria Langford had blocked his phone number the morning after his arrest and announced her engagement to an oil executive three weeks later.

Sitting in the visitor's room, Damian stared across the plastic partition at his father, a small-town accountant from upstate New York.

"Dad, you have to mortgage the house!" Damian screamed frantically, his eyes bloodshot, his hands shaking in handcuffs. "You have to get me out of here! Ava did this to me! She lied to Sterling! She tricked him!"

"Damian, stop it!" his father wept, shaking his head in absolute despair. "The evidence against you is overwhelming! You stole nearly a hundred thousand dollars from your company! You brought this on yourself!"

"No! It was Ava!" Damian snarled, his face contorting into an ugly mask of pure malice. "She was supposed to be nothing without me! She was supposed to suffer!"

A dark, dangerous idea took root in Damian’s mind. If he was going down, he was going to take her down with him.

Two days later, during a preliminary bail hearing, Damian’s court-appointed public defender stood up and presented a leaked audio recording to the judge and the gathered press reporters.

The recording was a taped phone call from six months ago—a conversation between Ava and her old roommate, where Ava emotionally talked about needing money to pay off her mother’s back taxes.

"Your Honor!" Damian’s lawyer shouted toward the bench. "This recording proves that Ava Knox entered a fraudulent relationship with Alexander Sterling purely for financial extortion! She manipulated Mr. Sterling to secure corporate assets and orchestrate a malicious prosecution against my client!"

The media burst into a frenzy. Within three hours, tabloid headlines across the country read: "GOLD DIGGER OR FIANCÉE? THE FRAUD BEHIND STERLING'S BRIDE!"

Ava sat in the penthouse living room, watching the news reports flood the television screen. The commentary was vicious, picking apart her past, her old jobs, and her family's poverty.

The front door opened, and Alexander walked in, surrounded by four senior legal advisors. His face was thunderous, his eyes dark with absolute fury.

"Turn off the television," Alexander ordered the staff sharply.

"Alexander," Ava stood up, her face pale. "They're saying I tricked you. They're releasing my personal bank statements from two years ago—"