All Chapters of The Billionaire's Biggest Regret : Chapter 11 - Chapter 18

JadeMy mother called at twelve thirty.I was standing on the sidewalk outside the Meridian Tower with my portfolio case in my hand and the Wednesday afternoon crowd moving around me and the Calloway meeting still sitting fresh in my chest. I had been trying to decide between walking back to the showroom or getting a cab when her name lit up my screen.I answered because I always answered my mother.“I saw it,” she said immediately. No preamble. No hello. Just those three words delivered with the particular energy of a woman who had been sitting on information and had finally allowed herself an audience.“Saw what?”“The article. Business Insider published something this morning about emerging luxury labels in partnership talks with major conglomerates,” she paused for effect. “They mentioned Ellis Noir. They mentioned the Calloway Group.”I closed my eyes briefly. Dana must have put something out through the press office. We had talked about generating buzz around the follow-up meeti

JadeDinner was served on the lower deck with the water below us and the sky going dark overhead and the kind of easy conversation that came from good food and people who knew each other well enough to be comfortable.Hayes sat at Leo’s end of the table. Lena was on his left. They were not touching, but the proximity had a quality to it that I had learned to identify and not look at directly. I sat at the opposite end between Brooke and Talia, and I focused on my food and the conversation happening immediately around me, and I did a competent job of it.Leo was a natural storyteller. He moved through subjects the way water moves, finding the path of least resistance and making it look effortless. Somewhere between the main course and dessert, the conversation at the table unified the way it occasionally does when something genuinely interesting enters the room.“I have to tell you all something about this man,” Leo said, nodding toward Hayes with the affectionate authority of someone

JadeI held my wine glass, and I laughed at the right moments, and I answered questions about the spring collection when Talia asked, and I did everything the evening required of me with a composure that I had paid for in a hallway twenty minutes earlier and was not going to waste.When everyone moved inside after the dinner things were cleared, the group fractured naturally into smaller conversations. By ten-thirty it was clear the weekend had shifted into the slower rhythm of the late evening. Leo suggested the outdoor pool at Gurney’s, the boutique hotel a five-minute walk down the bluff, where they had all booked rooms for the night. The house had been dinner-only.The pool at Gurney’s was heated and open to the sky and the kind of thing that looked extraordinary in photographs and felt even better in person. I got in because the alternative was standing at the edge watching everyone else, and I was not willing to spend a weekend being that version of myself.I stayed for forty mi

Jade's POVThe table had gone the way Lena needed it to go.I could feel it happening in real time. The slight shift in how Talia was holding herself pulled back just enough to signal that she was no longer neutral. Leo looking between us with the uncomfortable expression of a host who did not want his weekend to become something that required managing.Even Brooke, who knew me better than anyone at this table, had gone carefully quiet in the way she went quiet when she was waiting to understand something fully before she committed to a position.Lena had not raised her voice once.She had not needed to. She had simply told a story with one detail in it and let the detail do everything. A story that required no evidence because the image it created was its own evidence. Jade Ellis coming out of Hayes Calloway’s suite after midnight. Clean. Simple. Impossible to disprove with words alone.She looked at me now across the breakfast table with the expression of a woman who had been genuin