He Bet on My Love, Then Lost Everything

I set the frosting-smeared napkin on a silver tray and unpinned the enamel badge on my dress that read FUTURE MRS. CALLOWAY.

Sabrina was still laughing. She leaned against Luca and asked, “Elena’s really mad this time. Who’s volunteering to talk her down?”

Luca raised his whiskey toward Adrian. “Her fiancé, obviously. They’re getting married at St. Patrick’s next Saturday. Might as well get used to it now.”

Adrian didn’t come to me right away. He stared at the buttercream on his fingers as if the sight had finally caught up with him. Phones were still pointed in our direction, though, and he’d never lower his head with an audience watching. He cleaned his hand with a monogrammed handkerchief before approaching me. “All right, sweetheart. That’s enough.”

He said it as if I’d caused the scene.

“What’s enough?” I asked. “Your game, or my reaction to it?”

His expression flickered, but Luca stepped in before he could answer. “Don’t turn this into something it isn’t. Would Adrian have spent six months planning a wedding if he didn’t love you?”

“Exactly.” Sabrina rested her cheek against Luca’s shoulder, all polished sweetness. “Sure, Adrian approached you because of a bet, but then he fell in love with you. You got the happy ending. Why obsess over how it started?”

The emerald on her left hand flashed under the chandeliers. Four years earlier, Luca had asked her to help him set up his proposal to me. When I opened his bedroom door, I found them under the same blanket. Sabrina had been holding a camera, while Luca pulled a ring box from beneath the pillow and told me they’d wanted to capture how “cute” I looked when I got jealous.

I ended ten years of loving him that night.

Afterward, Sabrina told everyone I’d never learned to take a joke and that Luca had only fallen for her after I pushed him away. It wasn’t the first time she’d made me the punch line. In college, she told me a charity ball had a Roaring Twenties theme. I walked into a strict black-tie fundraiser in a beaded flapper dress while everyone else wore evening gowns. She filmed me freezing in the doorway and sent the clip to our alumni chat. When I told her to delete it, she teared up and said she’d mixed up the dress code. By the end of the night, everyone was asking me not to embarrass her.

Every one of her jokes ended the same way. Sabrina created the spectacle. I got hurt. Luca and Adrian explained that I was the one ruining the mood.

“Do you honestly believe saying you didn’t mean it erases what you did?” I asked her.

Her smile dimmed. “I’ve always treated you like family. How can you think I’m that awful?”

Luca’s face hardened at once. “She’s trying to explain, and you’re putting her on trial in front of everyone.”

Adrian frowned. “Elena, don’t turn our engagement party into a circus.”

I almost laughed. Ten minutes ago, he’d turned me into the evening’s entertainment. Now the circus was my fault.

Around us, the people who had toasted our future suddenly found their glasses fascinating. These were bankers, heirs, political donors, and old family friends. A few looked uncomfortable. None of them put down their phones.

That was the ugliest part. Adrian’s love hadn’t been entirely fake. He knew I hated sleeping with the closet door open. He’d flown to Milan on six hours’ notice when my father died, and he still carried the worn Saint Christopher medal my grandmother had pressed into his palm. But the second Luca questioned his pride, Adrian chose the approval of the room over the woman he claimed to love.

I removed the diamond clip that had caught frosting near my ear and slipped it into my clutch. When I headed for the exit, Adrian caught my elbow, then released me the moment I looked down at his hand.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

He lowered his voice. “Fine. Go cool off. The wedding isn’t canceled, though. My driver will pick you up Saturday morning.” After a pause, he added, “I’m still marrying you. What more do you want from me?”

[He thinks marriage is a blank check. As long as he signs it, I’m supposed to be grateful.]

I had been raised to believe marriage wasn’t a prize a man handed to a woman. It was an alliance built on mutual loyalty. Without respect, an alliance was just a contract waiting to be torn up.

Adrian knew almost nothing about the family I had left behind in Milan. He certainly didn’t know that some of the money and connections that had helped his company grow had quietly come through me.

Outside the hotel, rain glossed the Manhattan streets. The doorman put me in a black town car, and I finally checked my mother’s reply.

[If you leave him, the resources our family put behind Calloway Harbor won’t stay with the company. Are you sure this is what you want?]

I typed back without hesitating.

[I’m sure. I’m leaving.]