Chapter 3

After I treated the burn, I came back to find all three of them still in my apartment.

“This is my apartment. You’re the ones who need to leave.”

Adrian’s face changed. “I’m the man you’re marrying next week.”

“Not for much longer.”

For one naked second, panic broke through.

Then Luca glanced at him, and Adrian’s pride snapped back into place.

“Fine.” He grabbed his jacket. “You get one night. Come to the office tomorrow, and we’ll clean up the damage from the party.”

At the door, he looked back at me.

“You love me, Elena. Don’t make a decision you’ll regret.”

Sabrina left between them.

I watched the three of them disappear down the hall.

Once, Luca had been the person I trusted most in the world.

We had grown up together, and I had loved him for ten years. When Luca and Adrian were struggling to keep Calloway Harbor alive, I stayed beside them while they rebuilt it. Money and connections from my family quietly opened doors neither of them knew belonged to me.

Then came the cruel jokes.

The fake proposal with Sabrina under his blanket.

The videos of my humiliation.

Every time I got angry, Luca said I was too sensitive. Sabrina cried. Somehow, I ended up apologizing.

After I finally walked away from Luca, Adrian was the one who helped me put myself back together.

He stayed up with me when I couldn’t sleep. He listened when I talked about things I was too embarrassed to tell anyone else. Once, when my stomach condition flared during one of his meetings, he left halfway through and came home to take care of me.

I had believed Adrian was different.

Eventually, I fell in love with him.

What I hadn’t known was that Luca, Sabrina, and Adrian had been treating my feelings like a private game long before tonight.

Luca had once been certain I would never stop loving him.

Now Adrian was just as certain I would never leave him.

And Sabrina had spent years learning exactly how far she could push before one of them stepped in to defend her.

After they left, an encrypted email arrived from the office that managed my private holdings.

[Subject: Urgent Review — Calloway Harbor Group Voting Rights]

The attachment showed that my thirty-eight percent voting interest had been transferred to Sabrina three days earlier.

The authorization page carried my signature.

I’d never seen the document in my life.

I stared at it for a long time.

I had helped Adrian and Luca build Calloway Harbor from almost nothing.

And now they had forged my signature and handed my voting rights to Sabrina.

If I was leaving, I was taking what belonged to me with me.

The next morning, I went to Calloway Harbor Group.

I had barely stepped into the private elevator when the floor dropped beneath my feet.

My stomach lurched.

The lights went out.

I grabbed the rail as the elevator shuddered to a stop between floors.

“Hello?”

No answer.

My phone had no signal. I pressed the emergency button again and again.

Nothing.

Then the ventilation system roared overhead.

A blast of freezing air poured into the elevator.

Within minutes, I was shaking.

I wrapped my arms around myself and pressed every button on the panel. None of them responded.

The cold kept coming.

By the time my whole body was shaking and my vision had started to blur, the elevator doors finally slid open.

Adrian, Luca, and Sabrina were standing outside.