My Ex-husband wants me back, but three billionaires want me

Varena’s POV 

The Aurelian’s ballroom buzzed with life, all sharp light and the heavy sweetness of lilies. Photographers flitted around, dragging their heat with them, while a ridiculous ice sculpture of the Valeth Group logo slowly bled all over a silver tray, its sharp V tip drooping like it’d just given up.

I clung to a champagne flute, untasted, and let my eyes drift over that melting V. Honestly, I was just trying to disappear into the glitter and the noise.

“Smile,” Rykar murmured at my back, his hand gentle but fixed, just a little pressure at my waist. “Photographers, two o’clock.” I smiled. Eight years turn that into muscle memory.

Table One. Place card: Mr. Rykar Valeth & Guest. All gold and elegance. Someone’s hand could’ve won an award for that calligraphy. I hovered so long, reading it, Rykar had to repeat my name, twice.

“You look beautiful,” he said, but he was watching the cameras, not me. Tonight, the dress was midnight blue, my choice, from before stylists took over. When I first came in, Octavia looked me up and down, lips pressed tight. “Bold,” she told me, like an allergic reaction.

Crazy, how you can look back and measure life in small things. Eight years ago, Rykar owned two suits, and I pressed them on a towel on the kitchen floor because an ironing board was a luxury. That Halloran Street apartment, radiator thumping like someone begging to get in. I’d sit against it with his slides in my lap, editing pitch decks: Cut slide two. Lead with the numbers. He’d crash next to me, still in his shoes, and we’d both hope. He did lead with the numbers, and when he got the $400,000, the impossible break, from a guy getting up to leave, Rykar came running, spinning me in a parking garage. “You did that,” he said into my neck. “Varena, that was you.”

And now? His hand at my back. Some nights, I can’t tell if he’s steadying me or guiding me toward a finish line I never agreed to run.

“Varena.”

Octavia Valeth just seemed to glide toward us, people parting like she was wind and they were grass. One whiff of her gardenia perfume, and she leaned in for a perfect air-kiss, her cheek close but untouched.

“You found something to wear.”

“I have a good tailor,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

“Clearly,” she replied, eyes scanning me like she was sizing up a painting she wasn’t buying. Then she turned, already over it.

She hooked Rykar with a “Come. I’ve been saving someone for you.” Saving. Like you do a prize or an afterthought.

She led him a few steps off. My hand was still in his and then, suddenly, it was not. I didn’t even feel him let go.

By the pillar stood a woman in shimmering pale gold with hair falling in a single, too-perfect sheet. That kind of posture that makes you want to stand straighter, even when you’re sure you can’t measure up.

“Margot Whitlock,” Octavia said, voice sharp as a pin. “Her father’s on the Meridian board. Margot, my son.”

“Rykar Valeth.” Margot took his hand, and she didn’t let go. “I read the Forbes piece. They did your jaw dirty.” He actually laughed, a real, full laugh I hadn’t heard in months.

“Octavia tells me you’re looking at the Meridian corridor,” Margot purred.

“Looking,” Rykar replied, careful.

“That’s always what the clever ones say.”

The conversation kept spinning without me, and I stood just close enough to memorize every hair on Rykar’s wrist, see my gift, those engraved R + V cufflinks he never takes off, catch the chandelier’s light, though he’d turned the plain side outward for tonight.

I cleared my throat. “I’m Varena,” I volunteered, but nobody paused. Waiters swept past, dishes clinked, and nobody noticed.

So I went louder, “I’m Rykar’s wife.”

Now Octavia angled her head, birdlike, detached. Her version of interest.

“Yes. Varena’s been very supportive,” she said, dismissive as a punctuation mark.

Supportive. Not a person, not a partner. Just a bracket.

Finally, Margot’s gaze brushed me, soft, almost apologetic, before she slipped right back to Rykar. The lack of cruelty almost choked me, it was indifference, as if I’d left my coat on a chair and she meant to sit there.

“We should get dinner. Just us. Meridian.”

“His calendar’s full,” I shot back, maybe too fast.

“I’ll move things,” Rykar countered, not even looking at me.

I could feel my heel sink into the thick carpet. The urge to run. Cold fingers. A fizzy numbness at the edges of my skin. Behind me, the ice sculpture had finally given in, a puddle now, just silver and slush. The party surged brighter. A man at the bar bellowed, glasses chimed, and a line of artificial chill from the AC feathered across my back.

“Excuse us,” Rykar said, voice clipped.

He gripped my elbow, not gently, and moved us past everyone. Past power-players who used to ignore him, now dying to be near him. Right through a STAFF ONLY door, into a corridor that smelled like bleach and steam from some unseen dishwasher. Tile floor, curling signs, and a kid with a bus tub who shrank away when Rykar told him to clear out.

When he let go, I just waited, reading the way his jaw tightened, the set of his shoulders, the familiar signs before he’d drop bad news. This time, he didn’t even sigh.

He just fixed his cufflinks, staring at a spot on the wall. “We need to talk tonight.”

“About Margot?”

“Not here.”

“Rykar.”

“Tonight, Varena.” And then he was gone, back through that door, back to the lights and the noise and his new kingdom.

The kitchen machines kept humming. Someone broke a plate down the hall and nobody cared. I pressed my palm over my chest, counting every beat.

Funny, years ago, on that kitchen floor, I rewrote his whole future with a few strokes of a pen. Now, I could hear the truth in the silence. Some decisions, people already make before they open their mouths. And I already knew what came next.