Chapter 2

The pain came later, quiet and relentless, after I returned to my apartment.

If Adrian had only betrayed our friendship, perhaps I could have endured it. We had known each other for twenty years, but friendships ended every day.

The problem was that Adrian had been the one to cross that line first.

The night we decided to leave Alder and Finch together, he took me to a private jazz bar in Brooklyn to celebrate our escape. The lights were low, the music soft, and I found myself staring at the man I had secretly loved for years.

So when Adrian leaned down and kissed me, I didn’t pull away.

All the feelings I had kept buried for so long broke free at once. My fingers tightened around his sleeve as I forced myself to ask the question I had been afraid to ask for years.

“Adrian, what are we now?”

He smiled and pressed another kiss to my forehead.

“Do you really need me to spell it out, Evie?”

Our friends cheered from the other end of the table. Their laughter filled the room, warm and bright, and I truly believed Adrian had finally given me the answer I had always wanted.

Only two days later, I heard him destroy that illusion with his own mouth.

A broken laugh escaped me as tears slid down my face.

Had that kiss also been part of his plan? Had he deliberately given me just enough hope to make sure I followed him to Sterling without hesitation?

The small brass chimes beside my bedroom window stirred in the night breeze. I sat on the edge of my bed until my tears finally dried and the broken pieces inside me slowly began to settle into something harder.

Adrian had miscalculated.

He was the Cross family’s unwanted son, carrying a fading name that no longer opened the doors it once had. I was the only daughter of the Bennett family and the future head of a global company.

Perhaps we really had never belonged together.

Not because I wasn’t good enough for him.

Because he had never been good enough for me.

A tear had fallen onto the Sterling contract in my hands, blurring the ink across the signature page.

It didn’t matter.

If one opportunity became stained beyond repair, I could choose another. The Bennett family had never lacked choices.

I tore the damaged contract in half, opened my laptop, and called my mother.

“Is the position at Bennett Global’s London headquarters still available?”

Six months earlier, I had completed the full board review for Head of European Strategy. The position had been mine, but I had refused the final offer because accepting it meant leaving New York—and leaving Adrian.

My mother was silent for a moment.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Does Adrian know?”

“He doesn’t need to. I’m going alone.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll have the board resend the offer.”

The wind chimes rang again, light and clear, almost as if they were celebrating for me.

I closed my eyes, but the face that appeared in my mind wasn’t Adrian’s.

It belonged to a man whose eyes looked a little like his, though everything else about him was sharper, steadier, and far more difficult to forget.

Two years earlier, Julian Vale had looked at me with complete certainty and said, “Sooner or later, Evelyn, you’ll stop choosing Adrian. When you do, I’ll still be here.”

At the time, I had laughed and assumed he was teasing me.

Now I repeated the words I had been too weak to say before.

Adrian, I don’t want you anymore.

I opened the new offer and signed my name. By the time I printed my resignation letter, the ache inside my chest had finally gone still.

Then someone knocked on my door.

I froze.

I lived alone, and only one person had ever been given permanent access to my building.

When I opened the door, Adrian was standing in the hallway with takeout from my favorite Italian restaurant.

His voice was as gentle as ever. “You left the lounge without saying goodbye, and you haven’t answered any of my calls. I heard your migraine was back, so I came to check on you.”

An hour earlier, that tenderness might have fooled me.

Now it only made me wonder how many times he had used it deliberately.

“I’m tired,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “We can talk tomorrow.”

I was about to close the door when I noticed a second figure standing behind him.

Mia Foster hovered close to Adrian’s side, clutching a file box against her chest. The instant our eyes met, she flinched and lowered her head as if I had threatened her.

Adrian noticed immediately. He shifted in front of her, shielding her from me.

“Evie, stop looking at her like that. You’re frightening her.”

I had barely looked at her at all.

“I said I’m not having visitors tonight.”

Adrian frowned. “Mia isn’t a visitor. She heard you were sick and insisted on bringing the files we’ll need tomorrow.”

“I don’t need them. Leave.”

Before he could answer, Mia’s eyes turned red.

“I’m sorry, Evelyn. I know you don’t like people from my background coming into buildings like this.” Her voice trembled. “I wiped my shoes downstairs, and I promise I won’t touch anything. I don’t want to make your home dirty.”

I stared at her.

I had never said a single word about her background, her clothes, or whether she belonged in my building. Yet with a few carefully chosen sentences, she had already cast herself as the humiliated outsider and me as the wealthy woman looking down on her.

Adrian’s expression hardened.

“Mia may not have grown up with money, but that doesn’t make her dirty. You don’t have to humiliate her just because she came here to help.”

Again, I had done nothing.

Still, I was somehow the one on trial.

“I didn’t say she was dirty.”

“You didn’t have to.” His voice turned cold. “The way you look at people says enough.”

Mia gently pulled on his sleeve.

“Please don’t fight with her because of me. Evelyn already dislikes me, and I understand why.” She gave him a wounded but forgiving smile. “She told everyone you two grew up together. How could someone like me ever compare to that?”

“Don’t say that.”

Adrian turned toward her and touched her cheek. Mia looked up at him as if he were the only person in the world capable of protecting her.

I had never looked at him that way. I had loved him, defended him, and stood beside him, but I had also questioned him when he was wrong and surpassed him when I was better.

Mia offered him something I never could—the comfort of always being the stronger person in the room.

“You’re not replaceable, Mia. Not to me.”

Only then did he look back at me.

He seemed to be waiting for anger, jealousy, or a demand that he explain what he meant. Perhaps he expected me to fight for the place beside him because I always had before.

But I was suddenly too tired to give him anything else.

“Take her home.”

His eyes narrowed. “Mia’s already upset, so I’ll leave before you make this worse. You should use the time to think about the way you treated her.”

He guided Mia toward the elevator, one arm still wrapped protectively around her shoulders.

Just before the doors closed, he added, “Don’t forget to bring your resignation letter tomorrow. We still need to submit them together.”

The elevator doors slid shut.

I stood there for a moment, thinking carefully about how badly I had misjudged him.

Then I called the building manager and permanently revoked Adrian’s access.

At 1:07 a.m., a message from Bennett Global appeared on my screen.

[Offer accepted. Welcome to London.]