Elena Landon hailed from a family of immense wealth and privilege.Her father was the world's richest man, and her three brothers had achieved extraordinary success in their respective fields.From a young age, Elena had been in love with her childhood sweetheart, Regan Judd. She had once been severely injured while saving him but had recovered fully thanks to her father's extensive resources.To test Regan's loyalty, she had feigned paralysis.But on the eve of their wedding, she caught him with her best friend, Kelly Lucas, who treated her with great disdain.Heartbroken, Elena decided to turn the wedding into a dismissal feast.In her moment of despair, Ian Burke came to her aid, retrieving her stolen bag.Upon learning of her betrayal, he offered to marry her.At the wedding, facing Regan's mockery, Elena publicly dismissed him as her husband and announced that the groom was someone else entirely.In a desperate bid to save face, Regan proposed to Kelly on the spot, and thus began a dramatic showdown at the wedding.
ER doctor Kate Reed believes she has a loving marriage—until one phone call shatters the illusion. While she's in surgery, her husband Mason Fadley claims his flight is canceled, but he's secretly with his sister-in-law, Sandy Young. When Mason collapses from expired drugs, Kate uncovers the affair—and learns her miscarriage was their doing. On Sandy's wedding day, Kate doesn't arrive to celebrate. She comes to expose their sins.
Tina Garcia's daughter, Candy Leed, clings to life after a terrible accident. She holds on, hoping her doctor father, Leo Leed, will arrive in time to save her. However, when Leo finally appears, he prioritizes his first love and her daughter, who are only pretending to be injured. He rushes them to the hospital and takes good care of them. Meanwhile, Candy, having lost too much blood, tragically passes away as she misses the critical window for treatment. Heartbroken, Tina then learns of the affair between Leo and his first love. Consumed by grief and anger, she vows to make them pay for what they have done to her daughter.
Two orphan girls die and return to the day they choose their futures. Cindy Walker grabs the gold coin from the wealthy Shaw family and pushes bread toward Lucy Walker, assuming she's condemning the latter to poverty. But Lucy is simply grateful for any family at all. Years later,the now-rich Cindy Shaw invites Lucy to a charity event as hired help, expecting to humiliate her in front of high society. When expensive gifts arrive for Lucy and her jade pendant is revealed, the crowd refuses to believe a servant girl could possess such wealth. They force her to drink,smash her pendant, and nearly hand her over to Cindy's adoptive brother Jacob Shaw,until her real family arrives to save her.