All Chapters of The Billionaire Next Door (But He's Also My Ex): Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I was halfway through my third coffee of the morning when the email pinged. The kind of ping that feels like a punch straight to the stomach. “Meeting with the CEO. 9:30 AM. Conference Room B.” No subject line, no context. Just a cold, sterile little command.I stared at it, heart thumping. A design review, I told myself. Just another review. But my gut said something else. Something heavy. Something that made my hands tremble just thinking about it.By 9:28, I was pacing outside Conference Room B like a caged animal. My mind refused to settle. Don’t panic. It’s probably nothing. Just a review. My boss? Nah, he wouldn’t schedule a random meeting like this.I stepped into the room, and the air hit me first. That weird, sanitized corporate smell, like someone scrubbed the walls with bleach and ambition. Then I saw the papers on the table. Big, official-looking documents with logos and signatures. My heart skipped. And then it stopped.“Skye,” a voice said. Smooth, sharp, unmistakable. T

The email doesn’t even give me time to breathe.I’m still leaning against my front door, still replaying Leo’s stupid smirk in my head, when my phone buzzes again. HR. Mandatory meeting. Immediate. No greeting. No mercy.I laugh. It comes out wrong. A little hysterical. Like my body doesn’t know what else to do.“Of course,” I mutter to the empty room. “Why not.”I don’t sleep. Not really. I lie on my bed fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks like they might rearrange themselves into a sign. My mind keeps jumping. Leo in the hallway. Leo in the boardroom. Leo holding my future like it’s a casual thing.By morning, I feel wrung out. Hollow. Angry in a quiet, buzzing way.The office looks the same when I walk in, which feels illegal. Glass walls. Polished floors. People laughing like yesterday didn’t happen. Like I didn’t get erased and resurrected in the same breath.Heads turn.Not all at once. That would be too obvious. It’s subtle. Whispers that stop when I pass

The deadline hits me in the face before I even sit down.Pinned to the board. Circled in red. Three days.Three days to fix something people with bigger teams take weeks to polish.My chest tightens. Coffee tastes bitter. The office already feels louder than yesterday, like everyone woke up knowing something was about to snap.I open my laptop. Slack pings don’t stop. Emails stack. Someone taps a pen too hard behind me.Pressure. Real pressure. The kind that makes your hands shake but you still have to type like everything’s fine.“Skye.”I don’t look up. I already know it’s him.“The spacing on your last mockup is off,” Leo says, loud enough for the people nearby to hear. “Margins don’t align with the user flow.”A couple heads turn.My jaw tightens. I hate this part of him. The public correction. The CEO voice. Clean. Sharp.“I’ll fix it,” I say, still staring at my screen.“Do,” he replies. “It matters.”Then he walks off.Just like that.No softness. No private check-in. Just a no

My phone buzzes before I even sit down.Not a cute buzz either. The sharp kind that slices through your chest because your body knows something’s wrong before your brain catches up.Unknown sender. Clean subject line. Too clean.We’ve been watching your work. Coffee?I stare at it, thumb hovering, heart already racing. I’m still outside the coffee shop. Leo’s words are still crawling under my skin. You can’t hide from me. I hate how true that feels.I lock my phone and shove it into my bag like it might explode.Work doesn’t give me time to breathe anyway.By the time I get to my desk, the office is already buzzing. People whisper when I pass. Not subtle. Never subtle. Someone laughs too loudly behind me. Someone else stops talking the second I turn.Pressure cooker. That’s what this place has become.I open my laptop and my inbox floods.Revisions. Deadlines. A meeting moved up. Another one added. My calendar looks like a bad joke.Then another email slides in.Same sender.We think

The paper slips from my fingers.Not slowly. Not dramatically. It just drops, like my body knows before my brain does that I can’t hold it anymore.The sound is soft. Barely there. A whisper of paper against carpet.But inside me, something cracks so loud it’s almost painful.“No,” I breathe, even though no one’s around. My chest feels tight, like I’ve been sprinting. My hands shake as I bend down and grab it again, smoothing the page like I can erase what it says if I touch it enough.Confidential. I read it again. Then again. Then a third time, slower, like maybe I read it wrong the first few times. Like maybe my eyes lied.They didn’t.My name is there. His name is there. A date stamped right in the middle of our senior year. The year everything fell apart. The year I stopped trusting him. The year I walked away thinking I was protecting my heart.I swallow hard.A note about “miscommunication encouraged.” Encouraged. Like it was a strategy.Like someone wanted us to implode.My s