Chapter 1

The moment I heard the truth, my heart gave a violent jolt.

For the past month, Adrian had been “bullied” at Alder and Finch in every way imaginable.

He was excluded from meetings. His biggest accounts were reassigned without warning. Coworkers blamed him for mistakes he hadn’t made, and one of the senior partners humiliated him in front of the entire department.

I did everything I could to protect him.

I defended him in meetings, challenged the people targeting him, and damaged my own relationship with senior management in the process.

But even then, I sometimes caught a strange look on his face when a client thanked me for saving one of his accounts.

I mistook it for embarrassment over needing my help. Now I understood that praise meant for me had always sounded like another judgment against him.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I suggested that we leave Alder and Finch together.

That afternoon, Adrian had just been publicly blamed for a failed project. His face was pale when he took my hand.

“Evie, I don’t want to start over somewhere unfamiliar by myself.”

Adrian and I had grown up on the same street. From our first day of school to our first jobs, we had spent twenty years side by side.

And for most of those years, I had secretly loved him.

So when he looked at me as if I were the only person he could depend on, I made him a promise without thinking.

“Don’t worry. Wherever you go, I’ll go with you.”

I called in every favor I had and secured a joint offer for us from Sterling Consulting.

Only now did I realize that every humiliation, every accusation, and every wounded look had been staged to make me leave.

Did Adrian really want me gone that badly?

The voices inside the executive lounge continued.

“Evelyn really would do anything for you,” one of his colleagues said. “You’re sending her to Sterling alone. Aren’t you worried she’ll meet someone else and never come back?”

“Evelyn?”

Adrian gave a short laugh, as if the idea were ridiculous.

“She challenged two senior partners for me. She nearly destroyed her own partnership prospects trying to protect me. Do you honestly think she’s going to stop caring about me because we work in different buildings?”

Someone lowered his voice. “You sound awfully confident. Evelyn Bennett isn’t exactly a woman you want to underestimate.”

“There’s nothing to underestimate.” Adrian sounded almost bored. “We’ve known each other for twenty years. She’s turned down better jobs because of me. She barely notices any man who isn’t standing in front of her with a problem to solve.”

Then contempt slipped into his voice.

“She’s always following me around, trying to protect me. A damn dog gives its owner more space.”

Laughter erupted inside the lounge.

The sound struck me like a slap.

I wanted to leave, but my feet refused to move. I stood outside the closed door, listening as the man I had loved for years turned my devotion into a joke.

One of his colleagues whistled.

“You’re the first man I’ve ever met who worked this hard to get rid of a woman who loves him.”

Another man added, “If Evelyn’s attention bothers you that much, why not just tell her? She doesn’t seem like the type to beg a man to stay.”

Adrian clicked his tongue impatiently.

“You don’t understand. Evelyn attracts attention wherever she goes. If I told her directly, she’d stay at Alder and Finch, keep winning every major account, and act as if nothing had happened.”

“So instead, you pretended the firm was driving you out and convinced her to leave with you.”

“She’ll hand in her resignation tomorrow and go to Sterling. I’ll stay here. By the time she realizes I’m not coming, it’ll be too late for her to take it back.”

Someone laughed. “All this just to get Evelyn out of the way?”

Adrian was silent for a moment.

Then his voice softened.

“Mia has been miserable ever since she joined the firm. Every time Evelyn walks into a room, Mia feels like she doesn’t belong there. She gets so anxious she can barely breathe.”

“So this is about your new intern.”

“Mia needs someone beside her right now,” Adrian said. “She listens when I explain something. She trusts my judgment instead of questioning every decision I make. Around Evelyn, every room turns into another competition, even when she pretends it doesn’t.”

No one pointed out that I had never treated him like a competitor. Adrian had created that competition entirely on his own.

The timing suddenly became painfully clear.

Adrian’s supposed bullying had begun one week after Mia Foster joined Alder and Finch.

One of the men laughed. “You’ve only known the girl for a month, and you’re already staging an entire workplace conspiracy for her?”

“Can you blame him?” someone else said. “Mia is sweet, vulnerable, and completely devoted to him. Men naturally want to protect women like that.”

“Unlike Evelyn,” another voice added. “She’s cold, intimidating, and impossible to please. A beautiful woman is still exhausting when she makes everyone around her feel inadequate.”

They discussed me as if I were a problem Adrian had finally found a clever way to remove.

Adrian never stopped them.

Once or twice, he even agreed.

“She does have a way of making people feel small.”

Their laughter rose again.

I stood outside the door with the marked-up Sterling contract in my hands. I had spent half the night reviewing every clause because I wanted to make sure Adrian received the same salary, title, and protection I did.

For one reckless moment, I wanted to walk inside and demand an explanation.

I wanted to ask why he had lied to me.

I wanted to ask whether he had ever felt guilty while I risked my own career to defend him.

Most of all, I wanted to know whether our twenty years together had crossed his mind even once while he planned to send me away for a woman he had known for a month.

But then I remembered something my mother had taught me years ago.

Don’t waste words on someone whose actions have already given you the answer.

People didn’t become cruel overnight. The signs had always been there. I had simply loved him too much to see them.

I slipped the Sterling contract into my portfolio.

Then I turned around and walked away.