From Fiancée to Avenger

I should have known something was wrong the moment Naomi Diaz walked through those glass doors.

She arrived on a Tuesday morning, three weeks before everything fell apart. I was reviewing quarterly projections in my office when Dallas texted me: *Naomi's here! Come meet us in the lobby.* The exclamation point should have been my first warning. Dallas never used exclamation points.

When I stepped off the elevator, I found them standing beneath the bronze company logo, bathed in the cold morning light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Naomi looked smaller than I remembered from Dallas's childhood photos—delicate, almost fragile in her cream blouse and navy skirt. Her hair fell in soft waves around her face as she laughed at something Dallas said, one hand resting lightly on his arm.

"Serena!" Dallas's face lit up as he spotted me. "Come meet Naomi. She's joining us as a project coordinator."

Naomi turned, and her smile was warm honey. "It's so wonderful to finally meet you properly. Dallas has told me so much about you." She extended her hand, and when I shook it, her grip was surprisingly firm. "I hope you don't mind me being here. When Dallas mentioned there was an opening, I just couldn't resist. We have so many memories in this city."

"Of course not," I said, forcing my voice to stay pleasant. My other hand drifted to my engagement ring, twisting it once around my finger. "Welcome to the team."

Over the following days, Naomi wove herself into the fabric of our workplace with unsettling ease. She had a gift for appearing whenever Dallas was free, materializing in doorways with coffee or questions about filing systems. During meetings, she'd lean forward with wide, attentive eyes, asking Dallas for clarification on points that seemed obvious to everyone else. "I'm sorry, I'm still learning," she'd say with an apologetic smile. "Could you explain that again?"

And Dallas would explain. Patiently. Thoroughly. While I sat across the conference table, watching my fiancé's attention shift away from me like sand through spread fingers.

The real shift came during lunch hours. Before Naomi, Dallas and I ate together in his office, discussing wedding plans and baby names—I was three months pregnant, just starting to show. After Naomi, Dallas began accepting her invitations to the café downstairs. "She doesn't know anyone here yet," he explained when I questioned it. "It would be rude to say no."

I started finding them there by accident, or what I told myself were accidents. Naomi would be recounting some story from their childhood, her laughter bright and musical, and Dallas would be grinning in a way I hadn't seen in months. Once, I heard her say, "Remember when you saved me from Tommy Peterson? You've always been my hero, Dallas." Her eyes glistened as if holding back tears.

I wanted to remind her that I was the one who'd saved Dallas from his bullies. That I was the one whose family secured his position as heir. But the