LA CHASSEUSE

My name was never on the building, but my fingerprints were everywhere.

Oscar and I met in college, when ambition tasted like cheap coffee and borrowed textbooks. We were twenty—dreaming recklessly, believing love and hard work could carry us anywhere. He had vision. Big, dazzling ideas. I had precision. I knew how to turn those ideas into something banks, investors, and city councils would trust.

We grew together.

Or so I believed.

Seven years later, we were twenty-seven, billionaires in the headlines, engaged in theory—and still waiting on a wedding Oscar kept postponing.

There was always a reason.

After the next funding round.

After the next acquisition.

After the market stabilizes.

I told myself patience was love. That timing mattered. That my future wasn’t being delayed—it was being protected.

While Oscar sold dreams, I built foundations.

When the company was young and desperate for cash, banks wouldn’t lend and investors laughed us out of rooms. That was when I stepped in. I used my own savings. My inheritances. Every dollar I had. I bought distressed properties when the market was low, quietly, strategically.

The contracts went under my name.

Not the company’s.

Not Oscar’s.

Mine.

I told myself it didn’t matter. We were building a life together. What was mine was his. What was his was ours.

Those properties became the backbone of the real estate empire. Entire developments grew from assets I personally financed. Oscar knew this. He signed off on it. He thanked me—privately.

Publicly, the credit was always his.

I didn’t fight it.

I loved him.

That belief cracked the day he congratulated Amelie for my work.

She stood beside him in the boardroom, polished and perfectly composed, accepting praise for an acquisition model I had finished at three in the morning—one tied to properties legally owned by me. I waited for Oscar to correct it.

He didn’t.

“I built that model,” I said calmly when the room fell silent. “The expansion strategy too.”

Oscar smiled, but something behind his eyes shut down.

“Let’s talk later,” he said.

Later never meant resolution. It meant avoidance.

That afternoon, he summoned me to his office.

Amelie was already there, seated comfortably—too comfortably.

“She’s been doing your work,” Oscar said, folding his arms. “While you’ve been… distracted.”

My chest tightened.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

Amelie tilted her head, wearing concern like perfume. “I didn’t want to say anything,” she said softly. “But I’ve been covering for Amber for weeks. She’s been leaving early. Taking calls. Meeting someone.”

I looked at Oscar.

“You know that’s not true,” I said. “You know who built this company. You know whose money kept it alive when it couldn’t afford its own properties.”

His jaw clenched. “I know what I’ve been told.”

Seven years.

Seven years, and he chose the easiest lie.

“I want you to apologize,” he said. “Publicly. Tomorrow. Admit you lied and thank Amelie for stepping up.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked quietly.

His eyes hardened. “Then you’re fired.”

Fired.

From a company standing on properties legally owned by me.

By the man who had delayed marrying me while standing on my investments.

I waited for panic. For the urge to fix things—like I always did.

Instead, clarity settled in.

“No,” I said.

Oscar frowned. “No?”

“I won’t apologize for work I did. I won’t give credit for assets I paid for. And I won’t stay engaged to a man who spent seven years postponing a future while taking credit for my sacrifices.”

Slowly, deliberately, I removed the ring from my finger.

I placed it on his desk.

“It’s over,” I said. “The job. The engagement. All of it.”

“Amber,” he warned. “You’re making a mistake.”

I turned at the door, calm and certain.

“No,” I said softly. “You already did.”

And I walked out—twenty-seven years old, my name on the contracts, my money in the foundations, and my future finally my own.