Mia's fingers clenched, the silk sheets a flimsy barrier against the chill of the hotel room. Her breath hitched, the phantom touch of a stranger's lips still lingering on hers. It had been a dream, a vivid, searing dream, yet the betrayal it echoed felt agonizingly real. The memory of Riley, her fiancé, with Loretta, her best friend, was a fresh wound, tearing at her composure.

The same dream, night after night, since she found them, intertwined and oblivious, on the eve of her wedding. The tears, she told herself, weren't for Riley—she'd never loved him, not truly. They were for Loretta, for the shattered trust, for the mockery of friendship. The family merger, the desperate need for the Osborne’s port… it all seemed to fade against the raw sting of personal betrayal. She would not cry for them, not a single tear.