Chapter 3

I was just the replacement who happened to be there when Adrian was at his lowest, someone who would never truly matter to him.

I stood up to head back to the bedroom, but he stopped me.

"Iris."

I paused without turning around.

"That project you've been running for the past six months. Hand it over to Sloane." His tone was flat, almost casual.

"Take it easy for a while. You shouldn't be pushing yourself so hard."

I stood frozen. That project had been mine from the very beginning, from the initial pitch to the negotiations, from the proposal drafts to the execution plan. Every single step had gone through my hands.

He knew how many late nights I'd pulled, how many revisions I'd pushed through. Handing the project to Sloane meant handing her everything I'd built.

He knew exactly what he was asking, and he'd rather hurt me than tell her no.

I turned to look at him. After a long pause, I managed a dry laugh. "Fine."

I turned and went upstairs without saying another word. I was leaving anyway. There was no point fighting about it anymore.

The next morning, I went to a law firm. Adrian and I had co-founded the company, and I held a 30% stake. Back then, he'd told me, "Iris, you've earned this."

There had been light in his eyes when he said it, and I thought that was love. Looking back, that was just what I wanted to believe.

The equity transfer agreement wasn't complicated, and I left it in my lawyer's hands. 30% of the company was enough to start over in a new city.

After that, all I had left to do was go to the office and resign.

I'd barely walked through the door when Adrian called me into his office, his expression dark. A document landed at my feet.

"Iris, how could you make a mistake this big? It's a 20-million-dollar contract, but you wrote 200 million. Because of you, the company just took a 180-million-dollar loss."

I froze for a second, then pushed past his anger and crouched down to pick up the contract, flipping straight to the last page. The number was right there in black and white.

"That's impossible."

The company had put serious weight behind this project, and I'd checked that contract more times than I could count. There was no way I'd made that mistake. The version I prepared was correct.

I looked up at Sloane, who was standing off to the side. She met my gaze, and the satisfaction in her eyes was impossible to miss.

"You did this, didn't you?"

"Iris!" Adrian's voice cracked through the room and I went rigid.

He stared at me, his brows furrowed. "You made the mistake and now you're blaming someone else?"

I closed my eyes and forced myself to stay calm. "This document was already finalized when I handed it off during the transition. There was nothing wrong with it.

"And I sent a copy to legal ahead of time. If you don't believe me, ask them to pull up the original version I submitted."

Something flickered across Sloane's face, but she recovered almost instantly. Her voice wavered, turning tearful.

"Iris, I'm just a secretary. You sent me the contract and I used it as-is. I couldn't have changed it."

She let her eyes drift toward Adrian. "Or maybe you just don't want me anywhere near Adrian, so you set me up to take the fall. But you could've just said that. You shouldn't have hurt the company to get at me."

The moment the words left her mouth, Adrian turned to me with suspicion already hardening in his eyes. He'd practically convicted me on the spot.

"Is that true?"

I should have expected this, but my chest still ached. Adrian wasn't the type to jump to conclusions with most people, and he didn't let just anyone's word override his judgment. But Sloane was the exception.

He'd believe whatever she said.

I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and steadied my breathing before pointing at the computer. "Then call the police. Have the tech department pull the activity log from my computer. It'll show exactly when that document was modified and by whom."

The room went silent. Sloane's fingers tightened around her sleeve, guilt written all over her. I scoffed.