CHAPTER 1

Lily's POV

“I have been trying to tell you for a long time.”

Dorian's voice was calm. The kind of calm that didn't belong in the room where I had just walked in to see him cuddling another woman.

I stood still in the middle of the room. In the same room we had our first sex.

He leaned on the wall completely naked with a cigarette between his lips. He exhaled the smoke like none of this was a big deal.

“Tell me what?” My words drifted out in a low tone.

“That I have met a better person.”

His words didn't hit immediately. They didn't make sense. Just yesterday he had promised to take me on a vacation to celebrate our one year anniversary.

“You are breaking up with me?”

“I'm not breaking up with you,” he said. “I broke up with you a while ago. You were just too blind to see it.”

One year of my life gone. One year of rejecting other men for him. One year of working hard for his business not because of the salary but because of the way I felt about him. One year of doing everything he wanted and asked. I was foolish to believe the promises he whispered to me every night he held me in that same bed.

“Then why did you buy the anniversary card?” I choked, pressing the back of my hand to muffle the sound. “Why the flowers and wines?”

“Were they all fake?” I said. “Every one of them?”

“Yo-you told me we would be together forever just yesterday on that same bed,” I choked again, pointing toward the bed.

“So. Tell me Dorian, what changed.”

“What did you want me to do that I haven't done?”

I walked to meet him and grabbed his left arm but he yanked me away.

My knees failed. They found the floor. The pain didn't even hit. Streams of tears fell freely down my cheeks as my body shook hard.

He didn't respond. He just kept drawing on the cigarette.

Bella's giggle cut through the air as she got off from the bed slowly.

Unashamed. Bella was naked too. She walked towards me and crouched down a few inches away before raising my chin up with her fingers until my gaze met hers.

“Look at those beautiful glassy brown eyes,” she said sweetly as if I were a child.

Through blurred vision, I could see the corners of her lips rise.

She let go of my chin then stood up.

“Do you expect him to be with someone like you forever?”

My tears froze, replaced with a chilling look.

Everyone knew who Bella Jamie was. The daughter of one of the richest men in the city. She only trended on social media for the wrong things. She was rude to everyone and considered every other woman beneath her.

Bella was beautiful and arrogant in equal measures.

She walked back to Dorian and wrapped her hand around him like she was making a point.

“Know your place girl,” she said, without sparing me a look.

I watched him pull her closer. I saw their foreheads meet. I watched them kiss and moan gently.

It was clear at that moment that nothing was left for me in his life.

Maybe Bella was right. Dorian was the son of the richest man in the world and also his father’s potential heir while I was a nameless daughter of a nobody. How could I expect him to stay with me forever?

He found me at a jewelry store where I used to work as a sales rep. Two weeks in, he asked me to quit my job and start working in his father's company.

I picked up my bag and turned to leave.

“Lily.”

Dorian's voice stopped me.

I turned back and my eyes met his. Hope flooded my mind a bit. I begged him silently. Choose me. Tell her to leave. Say this is a prank.

“Don't bother to resume work tomorrow,” he said, leading Bella toward the bed.

“You are fired.”

The room was completely silent.

Even Bella held on to her smile for a moment.

Fired.

The word echoed louder than every other thing he had said tonight.

I looked at him. He looked tired. Not even an ounce of guilt edged his face.

I turned to leave.

I walked through the corridor. Down the stairs. Past Kara, the housemaid, whose face was carried pity I didn't ask for. Past the two other domestic workers who went silent the moment they saw me. Through the front door and out into the cold winter air.

As I stood on the pavement beside the road, the weight of it all settled on my mind.

He was gone. The job was gone.

And my mother was in a hospital bed battling for her life with a weekly medical bill that only my salary had been keeping up with.

I flagged down a taxi.

“No. 12. Wesley Street,” I said as I struggled to get in.

When a strip club appeared around a corner a moment after, something in me made the decision before my brain could catch up.

“Stop here,” I said.

The bartender gave me a weird look the moment I slid the shot glass to him for my fourth round of long island. But I didn't care. My mind was made up: I would take all the drops of every long island the club had until I forgot Dorian.

I was staring at the empty shot glass, trying to figure out a way to pay since I had no money in my purse when a voice sounded from my left.

“The bill is on me.”

I turned my head to see who it was.

A man had settled on the stool beside me. White hair. Grey suit. Green eyes that reflected lights in a way that made it hard to look away. He was still. Too still that I thought he didn't belong in a place like this.

“I don't need your help,” I said, making sure I was looking into his eyes.

“I know,” he replied, yet he signaled for the bartender.

I should have left. That was the best decision. Instead I stayed.

And that became the only mistake I made that changed everything.