One Night With My Ex’s Billionaire Uncle

Ariana POVTwenty-five candles. That's what I kept thinking, standing in a dress I'd altered by hand at one in the morning three nights running, in a club where the cheapest bottle probably cost more than my rent. Twenty-five candles, and somewhere behind that gold curtain, Ethan was setting up my birthday like a man who actually loved me.I should've known better. I did know better, if I'm honest some small stubborn animal part of me had known for weeks that something was off. The way he'd go quiet mid-sentence when his friends texted. The way his eyes did this quick, calculating flick whenever he caught me watching him instead of the other way around. I ignored it. Typical me. Ignore the smoke till the fire's already eaten the roof.The private room at Lumen was bathed in that particular gold light expensive places love, buckets of champagne sweating untouched on ice, laughter drifting from behind the curtain that didn't sound like a surprise.It sounded like an inside joke. I jus

Ariana POVMonday came whether I was ready or not.The Ashford Group headquarters was all eleven floors of glass and ambition right in the middle of Manhattan, it was the kind of building that made you straighten your spine by just walking under its shadow. I'd been here twice before, dropping off files, in and out in under ten minutes. Today I had a badge with my own name on it and a stomach doing slow, unhappy loops.You can do this. You survived the bet. You survived the walk of shame. You had even had sex with a stranger who happened to be an Ashford also. This is just a job.Chin up Ari.Just a job. Sure. Except the man signing off on my transfer paperwork was also the man whose bed I'd woken up in two days ago after a night of screaming obscene words while digging my nails in his back. Pretending otherwise would be like trying to hold a beach ball underwater.The thirty-second floor receptionist, a brunette woman who I'd later learned missed absolutely nothing, looked me over

Ariana POVThe morning after the gala felt like the hangover from a nightmare I hadn’t actually slept through.Friday night’s string quartets and diamond collars were replaced by the harsh fluorescent glow of the thirty-second floor at seven-fifteen on a Saturday morning. The office was dead quiet, the kind of silence that makes every footstep sound like an accusation. I sat at my desk, staring at three separate spreadsheets for the Whitmore deal, but all I could see was Victoria Sinclair’s red-lipped smile and hear Damien’s quiet, rough voice out on that terrace.Novelty.The word was stuck in my brain like a splinter. I kept rubbing my thumb against the edge of my desk, trying to smooth away the phantom feeling of his eyes on me. I’d told myself a hundred times since Thursday that he was just my boss. That Saturday night in his penthouse was an accident born of tequila, heartache, and foolish pride.But bosses don't look at you like you're the only warm thing in a frozen room. And u