The Empire's Second Chance

The man who once swore to protect me with his entire empire was now trying to buy out the rest of my life with a fat check. Seven years together.

He casually fastened his Rolex and coldly informed me he was getting engaged to a billionaire heiress. He threw the keys to the mansion and the cars on the table.

He told me to call his secretary if I ever ran into trouble. He expected me to break down. He thought I would cry and beg him to stay, just like always.

Instead, I stared at the approved outofstate transfer email on my phone. I was packing up tonight. This time, I was done with him.

Chapter 1 A violent blizzard slammed against the floortoceiling windows of the Manhattan penthouse. After dropping that icecold sentence, Julian didn't hesitate.

He stepped into his private elevator without a single backward glance. I sank deep into the sofa, my eyes locked on that very email glaring from my phone screen.

A dry, humorless laugh pushed past my lips. I tilted my head back and exhaled a long, heavy breath. It was perfect timing. It was better this way.

My beginning with Julian was just as coincidental as our end. I had just turned twenty. A sophomore in college.

Thinking about how we met always brought up Cleo, who was now a massive standup comedy star.

One Saturday night, my roommate's boyfriend threw down his credit card and insisted on treating us all to a comedy club. I opened my mouth to politely pass.

Then I caught my two other roommates leaning over the mirror, touching up their lip gloss. "Just go," one whispered. "He's excited.

Don't be a buzzkill." "Yeah, seriously," the other muttered. "If you stay back, people will think we're jealous of her.

I'm not about to look like a bitter hater." College social dynamics were a weird, unspoken game.

Sometimes, you just had to slap on a smile and play along with someone else's big night, even if you'd rather be anywhere else.

Chapter 2 I didn't realize until we walked in that our seats were dead center in the front row. At a comedy club, sitting in the front row was basically a death sentence.

You were begging to get roasted. I immediately shrank into the furthest aisle seat I could find. Julian was there that night.

I found out later that the comedian on stage was his best friend Spencer's girlfriend. A loud, unapologetic girl named Cleo. Back then, Cleo was a nobody.

She could barely sell out a basement.

Spencer, trying to play the supportive boyfriend, would secretly buy out all the unsold tickets and practically force his entire social circle to fill the seats.

As luck would have it, Julian was seated right behind my left shoulder. The club was cramped, and the chairs were practically stacked on top of each other.

From the stage, it looked exactly like we were sitting shouldertoshoulder in the front row. It got worse. My dress was the exact same shade of charcoal grey as his tailored shirt.

Even the little silver charm on my velvet scrunchie matched the embroidered logo on his baseball cap. Cleo had eyes like a hawk.

She wasn't about to let prime roasting material go to waste. Every time she zeroed in on us, the crowd went feral. Comedy clubs back then didn't care about boundaries.

To keep the energy up, she mercilessly targeted the cute couple in the front row. The mic kept passing between us. Cleo was quick on her feet.

Even after we flatout clarified that we were total strangers, the crowd wasn't having it. "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" The chanting echoed off the brick walls, deafening.

Drowning in the catcalls and whistling, I buried my chin in my chest, the heat rushing to my face as I awkwardly mumbled answers to whatever Cleo asked.

Julian, on the other hand, was completely unfazed. He leaned back in his chair, casually crossing his long legs.

When Cleo threw a punchline his way, he fired back with a dry, effortless quip that sent the room into absolute hysterics.

At the end of the set, Cleo leaned off the stage with a grin, handing over two VIP passes for her next show. His long, elegant fingers took the cards.

He finally shifted his gaze to me. "Here," he said, his voice a low, indifferent drawl. "Bring your boyfriend next time." That was when I finally saw his face.

Under the dim lights of the club, he looked like a vampire lord stepped straight out of the Middle Ages.

His razorsharp jawline radiated a cold arrogance, and his dark, deepset eyes burned with the aggressive, territorial glow of a predator.

Even with a faint smirk playing on his lips, the moment those pitchblack eyes locked onto mine, the heavy air in the room seemed to press directly against my throat.

The blood rushed straight to my cheeks. I frantically waved my hands. "I'm good. One ticket is plenty, thanks." Julian froze.

The smirk on his lips slowly stretched into a devastating, knowing grin. Later on, we went to a lot of comedy shows together.

But none of them ever made my pulse race quite like that first night. Over the years, we watched Cleo climb out of that grimy basement club and blow up into an industry sensation.

Even years later, at swanky afterparties, a drunk Cleo would always stumble over with a champagne flute, insisting on toasting us while slurring the same old story.

She admitted she knew all along that Spencer was secretly buying out her shows. That night was supposed to be her last gig. She had her bags packed, ready to quit comedy for good.

But then, the crowd went wild. Someone posted a clip of her roasting us, and it went viral overnight. After that, her shows sold out in minutes.

She always swore that me and Julian—that crazy, impossible collision of fate—was what gave her the guts to hold on for one more day.

Chapter 3 Back then, she sounded so damn prophetic. She sold it so well that I actually bought into the delusion.

I really thought whatever twisted fate tied me and Julian together could somehow stretch across a lifetime.

I finalized the handover at my firm and immediately started stripping the apartment bare. This transfer was indefinite. A oneway ticket.

So I made damn sure to pack up every single trace of my existence. Cleo crouched in the middle of a cardboard fortress, violently dragging the tape gun across a box.

The brutal screech of the adhesive echoed off the stripped, empty walls of the living room. She finally snapped. "Look, I just don't get it.

You and Julian have been at this for years. Do you really have to nuke the whole thing?

Can't you just… stick it out a little longer?" When it came to sticking it out, Cleo was the undisputed expert.

Fueled by sheer, masochistic stubbornness, she hadn't just clawed her way to the top of the comedy world—she had dragged herself through a decade of toxic Hollywood bullshit, actively wasting her youth on Spencer.

I didn't pause my packing. I just let out a dry, hollow laugh. "Stick it out how, exactly?" It wasn't like I hadn't bled for this.

I survived the brutal longdistance years when the time zones almost broke me. And now?

If I stick around for the sequel, I automatically get demoted to the dirty little secret in a billionaire's marriage.

Am I supposed to wait around until the tabloids catch me doing the walk of shame before I finally call it quits?

Cleo dragged a hand down her face. "Guys like Julian don't exactly grow on trees in this city, Seraphina. He treated you like absolute royalty." She wasn't the only one who noticed.

Just last month, half my old sorority sisters blew up my phone, practically tripping over themselves to send me early birthday gifts.

The year we graduated, every single one of them landed massive Wall Street offers—all thanks to a few casual phone calls from Julian.

He even pulled strings for the two girls who graduated three years late with useless master's degrees.

Years ago, when my mother flew into New York for her surgery, he had a bulletproof Escalade waiting at JFK.

He personally secured her a private VIP suite at Mount Sinai without me even asking. He extended his Midas touch to every corner of my life.

Even now, at the bitter end of our twisted little fairy tale, the entire world was still desperately trying to remind me of one thing. Julian was perfect. Julian was a godsend.

But that was the exact problem.

He had given me so much, thrown so much wealth and privilege my way, that when the Upper East Side elite whispered their filthy, degrading rumors about me, I didn't even have a leg to stand on.

I kept my eyes locked on the cardboard boxes, sealing my lips shut. Cleo took the hint and swallowed the rest of her speech. She was right about one thing, though.

If you stripped away the crushing reality of our completely different social classes, he had handed me an absolute, undisputed monopoly over his attention.

That was an undeniable fact. And I wasn't stupid enough to deny that I owed my entire professional backbone to him.

The naive little college girl who used to turn beetred at a comedy club was dead. I was now a ruthless project lead who could rip apart a boardroom with a smile.

What he probably didn't realize was that I only scored this elite transfer because I had absorbed his exact brand of cutthroat corporate logic.

He built me, piece by piece, from the ground up. I was miles away from the fragile twentyyearold he first met. I was sharper. Colder. I knew exactly where I stood.

I knew colliding with a billionaire like Julian at twenty was a onceinalifetime glitch in the matrix.

But that realization came with the suffocating awareness of the massive, uncrossable chasm between our worlds. I eventually brainwashed myself into playing the part.

I learned to smile and accept the sixfigure jewelry without flinching.

I mastered the art of reading the temperature in the room, catching every microexpression on his face, and delivering the exact, manufactured emotional response he craved.

I dragged the tape dispenser across the final cardboard box. Snap. Chapter 4 On the surface, our relationship looked stable. Bulletproof, even.

But the cracks had been quietly spreading underneath for years. I wasn't stupid. I knew I couldn't be greedy.

Over the years, I fully understood the crushing pressure Julian absorbed just to keep me hidden and safe.

He had even managed to block his mother—a ruthless political shark in Washington—from ever crossing the line to tear me apart. I had thought about toughing it out.

Gritting my teeth for just a few more years. But I knew better. This was the cleanest exit I was ever going to get.

I packed relentlessly until dusk, finally collapsing onto the sofa where I passed out in a heavy, suffocating sleep. When I opened my eyes, the apartment was pitch black.

My phone screen cast a cold, ghostly glow in the dark. Two missed calls from Warren. Before I could dial back, the phone vibrated in my palm. "Ms.

Seraphina," Warren's voice was crisp and professional. "When would you be available to visit the dealership to configure your new cars?" I rubbed my throbbing temples. "Next month.

I'll be back in New York next month." The second the words left my mouth, the remaining fatigue drained from my head. "Back in New York…?" My grip on the phone tightened.

I took a slow breath. "I'm transferring to the San Francisco office. I'll be flying back here next month for a conference." A sharp gasp echoed through the receiver from Warren.

I let out a low laugh, my tone dripping with unfiltered mockery. "It's fine, Warren.

If Julian asks, just tell him I don't give a damn about his little charity handouts anymore." Because the Julian I knew never wasted a single second on things that were already dead and buried.

So half an hour later, seeing Julian's caller ID flash on my screen actually threw me off. I answered. Dead silence on his end.

It took a long time before his voice finally cut through the static. "You're moving to San Francisco?" "Yeah." "Do you need me to send a crew over to pack your things?" "No.

Cleo came by this afternoon. It's done." His breathing hitched for a split second. A low, gravelly, "Right." Then he added, "I'll make some calls to the West Coast.

Make sure your transition—" "Don't," I cut him off, keeping my voice dangerously smooth. "The paperwork is finalized.

I handle my own mess now." "Right." He paused. "Is there… anything else you need me to take care of?" "No." Fast and breathless. The conversation flatlined.

The silence stretched so tight I could hear the rhythmic drag of his breathing through the speaker. "I'll have my team book your flight," he finally said. "Already booked." His voice sounded like it was being dragged over crushed glass. "When are you leaving?" "The day after tomorrow." "Right." Another suffocating silence.

He wasn't speaking, but he wasn't hanging up either. "If that's everything, I'm hanging up." Nothing. Just empty static.

Right as I moved my thumb to kill the call, I caught a barelythere whisper. "Okay." I figured that was his version of a goodbye. Until seven o'clock that night.

The electronic lock chimed with a sharp beep. Julian strode in on his long legs right as I ripped the zipper shut on my suitcase. He stared at the completely gutted walkin closet.

His flawless, arrogant mask finally cracked.

His voice came out tight and strained. "You emptied the whole place?" I dusted off my hands, stood up, and walked straight past him toward the closet to grab my last few coats. "Yeah.

Pretty much." He leaned heavily against the doorframe. "You're not planning on coming back?" he asked suddenly.

Chapter 5 "Nothing's set in stone yet," I said, keeping my tone light. "But I'm going to hustle and make sure I stay out there for good." Julian's broad shoulders went completely rigid.

He lowered his eyes, his Adam's apple bobbing hard as he swallowed. His voice came out hollow. "It's fine.

San Francisco isn't that far from New York." Such pathetic, selfdeluding comfort.

It didn't even sound like him. "Are you absolutely sure you don't need my help?" he asked again, refusing to drop it. "I'm sure." The conversation dragged back into a suffocating silence. "You haven't had time to look for a place out there." When he spoke again, his tone was dangerously stubborn. "I just closed on an estate for you in the city." "An estate?" I froze, turning to look at him.

He dodged my scanning gaze, brushing it off like he was tossing me spare change. "Don't worry. It's right downtown.

The commute will be effortless." I tugged at the corner of my lips, a bitter, selfdeprecating smile slipping out. "If I knew you were handing out real estate, I would've asked for a transfer to London." He froze, his dark eyes turning dangerously bottomless. "You like the properties out there?" "They're worth more," I fired back, letting out a dry laugh.

Julian just stood there, watching me laugh. A dark, unrecognizable fracture broke his usual composure. He stared at me in dead silence.

Right as the fake smile started to crack on my face, he checked his watch, sharply pivoting the conversation. "You haven't eaten." "I had a late lunch.

I'm not hungry." "I'll make you dinner." He casually shrugged off his tailored suit jacket. "Filet mignon or pasta?" "Don't bother." "Right. Filet mignon it is," he said.

Before I could shoot him down again, he walked straight into the kitchen. I had already gutted the fridge. The Wagyu cuts arrived via private courier half an hour later.

He rolled up his crisp shirt sleeves, exposing his strong, vascular forearms. He stood at the marble island, methodically seasoning the meat and prepping the sear.

A billionaire heir like Julian had only ever learned to cook two things in his entire life. A perfect mediumrare steak, and handmade pasta. Both of them, exclusively for me.

Coming back to campus after winter break our junior year, I didn't go see him first.

I dragged my suitcase straight into a greasy diner offcampus and ordered a cheap plate of spaghetti.

When his name flashed on my screen, my face was completely flushed from the steam off the cheap marinara. He sounded utterly baffled through the speaker.

He couldn't wrap his head around why, after dating a guy with a limitless Amex for months, I was still eating in a grimy booth with sticky tables.

I bit my lip, making up a stupid excuse for my cheap cravings. "Cleo told me it's a superstition in her family. Steak before a flight, pasta when you land.

For good luck." He let out a low hum of realization. "So that's why she forced me to take you to that absurdly expensive steakhouse the night you flew home for the holidays." I gave a vague, muffled hum of agreement.

From that day on, he permanently logged that ridiculous, entirely fake ritual into his brain.

He even cornered his family's private Michelin chef, demanding to be taught how to handroll linguine from scratch and reversesear a filet to absolute perfection.

Out of everything he cooked, his filet mignon was always my absolute favorite. Chapter 6 After graduation, the corporate grind completely consumed my life.

I rarely spent much time back in my hometown for the holidays. I usually flew back to New York right after Christmas.

But the entire holiday season was exactly when Julian was the most tied down.

From Christmas Eve straight through to the New Year, he was practically trapped at his family's massive estate, playing the perfect heir for an endless parade of oldmoney relatives and powerful Washington elites.

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since I last tasted his perfectly seared filet mignon. So long that I had almost forgotten. But clearly, he remembered.

The rich scent of searing Wagyu filled the kitchen, the light smoke blurring the sharp, broad lines of his back.

It cast a sick, fragile illusion of domestic warmth over a breakup we both knew was already set in stone. We ate that steak agonizingly slowly.

Afterward, an old classic movie played on the massive flatscreen. The blue light flickered across our faces in the dark.

We sat shouldertoshoulder on the sofa, just like any other boring, lazy Saturday. Until the credits finally rolled.

I shattered the silence, my voice low. "It's getting late." The muscles in his back instantly snapped taut. A heavy second passed.

He let out a low, gravelly, "Yeah," standing up from the couch. "Get some rest." I followed him to the entryway. He slid into his tailored overcoat, stepping into his shoes.

His large hand gripped the doorknob, but he didn't turn it. He just stood there, his broad back facing me. The air in the room completely stopped moving.

Without warning, he spun around. He closed the distance between us in a single, aggressive stride. A massive shadow crashed down over me.

His long arms locked around me, pulling my entire body flush against his hard chest. He buried his jaw into the top of my hair, dragging in a harsh, ragged breath.

His heavy Rolex dug sharply into my arm. I shifted to pull away, but his large hand instantly clamped down on my wrist, trapping me. "Julian…" My voice was muffled against his coat.

He buried his face deep into the crook of my neck.

His voice cracked, rough and desperate. "Seraphina… just let me hold you." "Just for a second." Because I already had a solid track record in New York, the transition to the San Francisco office was seamless.

The brutal, cutthroat pace of the West Coast tech sector completely swallowed up any free time I had left to throw a pity party for myself.

By spring, I locked in the promotion I wanted. That meant my permanent transfer to San Francisco was pretty much a done deal. Dumping Julian didn't mean I planned on dying alone.

When coworkers set me up on blind dates, I went if the guy looked decent. When someone hit on me, I entertained it.

I didn't meet any complete psychos, but I didn't meet anyone who sparked anything real, either.

But after an endless parade of painfully boring dinner dates, I started noticing the subtle, toxic ways I had changed. I honestly thought I was clean.

I thought that by emotionally detaching myself long before the actual breakup, I had successfully scrubbed Julian out of my system. But I had a massive, glaring problem.

I was subconsciously comparing every single new guy to a ghost. If the guy had a good face, my brain instantly fired back: He's nowhere near as tall as Julian.

If he was tall, I'd stare at him and think: Julian's shoulders were broader, his suits fit better.

If I met a guy built like a tank, I'd realize in five minutes that he was painfully hollow, entirely lacking Julian's lethal intelligence.

And on the rare occasion I found a guy who checked all the boxes on paper, I'd realize he didn't possess Julian's terrifying ability to anticipate my every microexpression.

Especially when one of them aggressively chewed his pasta with his mouth wide open.

Chapter 7 I spilled the details to Cleo over the phone, and she immediately hit me with a rapidfire, "Oh, absolutely not!" "If you picked a guy who's all abs and no stamina just because he looks good on paper, I swear to God, I will mock you for the rest of your life!" Her laughter poured through the speaker, exactly the same as it was in college.

Through all the chaos and grinding reality of the past few years, Cleo was the only constant. I smiled, wrapping up the call. The screen went black.

The city lights bled through my office window, catching my reflection on the glass. The face staring back at me was sharper now. Colder.

I honestly thought a new zip code would wash away the past.

I thought if I walked away cleanly enough, the people and the mess I left behind would just fade into static in the rearview mirror.

But reality has a funny way of snapping its fingers right when you let your guard down. It drags you right back into the ring.

That fall, the AI and robotics sectors hit a brutal reality check.

The early hype train had crashed, and only the toptier unicorns with actual, scalable data were vacuuming up the remaining capital.

With offshore funds pulling out and domestic LPs tightening their belts, the venture capital world was freezing over.

Right when our firm was staring down a massive fundraising drought, a walking blank check walked through our doors. At the time, I had no idea who she really was.

When the young heiress showed up backed by a massive family trust, Vernon practically tripped over himself to roll out the red carpet.

The wrinkles around his eyes deepened into a permanent, greedy smile. So, when he dropped this absolute heavyweight of an investor into my lap, it took me a second to process it.

Anastasia mentioned she'd be staying in Manhattan for the next six months. That meant all the upcoming project prep and pitch meetings would put us in the same room. Constantly.

At first, I kept it strictly professional. I treated her like any toptier LP—regular progress reports, curated holiday gifts. But over time, she started reaching out.

Asking for tiny, personal favors. Before I realized what was happening, we were grabbing coffee, hitting up Fifth Avenue, and swapping skincare recommendations.

Honestly, Anastasia didn't act like typical old money. She had this bright, effortless East Coast prep school energy, but her tone was always soft and sweet.

But business is business. Surviving in VC had taught me better than to blur the line between polite networking and actual friendship. As the perfect VP, I played my part.

I matched her energy. I provided the emotional support she expected. But I never let myself forget that this intimacy was bankrolled by her trust fund.

It wasn't a level playing field. I kept one foot out the door, observing our fasttracked dynamic from a safe distance. And that detachment was exactly what saved me.

When the whole situation eventually blew up in my face, that tiny shred of clinical distance was the only thing that kept my mask from cracking in public.

Chapter 8 It was the weekend. Anastasia had dragged me to a mixer, promising to introduce me to a heavyweight investor friend of hers.

When I arrived, a text from Anastasia popped up saying she was running late. Her friends gave me a curt nod before immediately huddling back together to gossip.

The chatter on the terrace died instantly. Two of the girls, shivering in completely impractical backless designer dresses, caught my eye.

Under the string of Edison bulbs, they chattered away in that grating, affected Upper East Side drawl. Still no sign of Anastasia.

I pulled my trench coat tighter and stared out at the Manhattan skyline, perfectly content playing the outsider.

Out of nowhere, someone brought up that sickening thread that blew up the Ivy League anonymous gossip forums a few years back—the one titled Exposing the Sugar Baby Diary of Socialite S. "I heard he kept her for three whole years.

Dropped serious cash on her, too. She basically stopped sleeping in her dorm junior year. Before she even graduated, he had her and all her little friends set up with cushy jobs.

Everyone at Columbia Business School knew about it." "And then the second she graduated and went abroad, she kicked him to the curb!" "Why would she do that?" "Who knows?

Maybe she hooked a wealthier Sugar Daddy on Wall Street?" Someone scoffed. "You can't really blame her. It's not like he was ever going to marry her. Cash out and run.

Honestly, she's smart." "If you ask me, Anastasia is the one getting screwed over.

Her family sets up this massive merger marriage, and she gets stuck with a guy who has that kind of baggage.

Sure, it's not finalized yet, but having your name attached to that kind of trashy reputation? Disgusting." "Yeah, well, there's no ring on her finger yet." "Good.

If I were Anastasia, I'd make him sweat too." The conversation abruptly shifted. One of the girls turned around, locking eyes with me. "Hey.

Anastasia mentioned you went to Columbia, right? You ever hear about this?" I gave a single, stiff nod. "See?

What did I tell you?" I lifted my chin, my voice deadpan. "It wasn't three years." "What?" "It was six years and six months." The chatter on the terrace died instantly.

A dozen calculating, confused stares locked onto me. But the girl in the backless dress was too drunk on the gossip to read the room.

She kept pushing. "Wait, that timeline doesn't add up." She frowned. "They broke up right after she graduated.

The thread said they got together sophomore year." Someone elbowed her hard in the ribs.

She completely ignored it, dragging her chair an inch closer to me, her eyes wide with greedy curiosity. "How do you know all the details? Did you know her?

Wait, what did she look like?" "I knew her." The autumn wind whipped a loose strand of hair across my face. I turned my head slowly, meeting her gaze deadon.

My voice didn't waver. "She looked exactly like this." I grabbed my bag, stood up, and walked out.

Sometimes, a few rough patches are all it takes for a person to start uncontrollably romanticizing the path they didn't take. I was no exception.

After that night, I kept spiraling into the same pointless, hypothetical loop. Chapter 9 If I had just been decisive that night.

If I had turned around, walked straight into the library, and skipped that comedy show entirely. If I hadn't let some twisted impulse drag me back to use that VIP comp ticket.

Even though the loud crowd had scrambled my brain, by the time I walked home, I knew exactly what Julian was doing. I saw right through the cold calculation behind his smirk.

But I still let that restless, buzzing energy in my chest drag me to a show I was never officially invited to. Or later, during my junior year internship.

If I hadn't taken the easy way out and moved into the luxury Manhattan apartment he arranged for me.

If I hadn't taken those mountains of ridiculously expensive skincare he sent and casually tossed them to my roommates as thankyous for sharing class notes.

If I had just kept my head on straight, maybe no one would have had the ammunition to map out our entire timeline.

Maybe my relationship wouldn't have been twisted into some dirty transaction, chewed up and spit out as gossip by the entire business school.

And maybe, right before graduation, I wouldn't have starred in that Sugar Baby Diary thread that went viral across the entire Ivy League. If I could rewind the tape.

Back to the night before that first comedy show.

The Seraphina from back then could still slice through the bullshit of college social politics with cold, clinical precision just from overhearing a roommate's conversation.

If that version of me could see the future, she would have looked at the girl I became with absolute disgust.

How did I let just three years of Julian's suffocating protection turn me into such a careless, arrogant fool? The fragmented memories spun in my head.

Whoever posted that thread must have hated my guts, but they were terrified of crossing the actual money behind me.

That post, Exposing the Sugar Baby Diary of Socialite S, wasn't even that detailed, but it bled a bonechilling, calculated malice.

Honestly, aside from the highend skincare my roommates thought were cheap trinkets, no one actually knew what gifts I was getting.

The thread glossed over the specifics, framing everything as some shady, underthetable transaction. What they did nail was the timeline. It was obsessively detailed.

They tracked every single night I didn't sleep in my dorm room, logging them like they were counting stolen cash.

They mixed facts with complete lies until even the legitimacy of my merit scholarships was dragged through the mud. Socialite S became my permanent code name.

Some internet troll even had the guts to drop my exact initials in the comments. But what those losers didn't know was a twisted, bizarre coincidence.

Julian's ruthless private equity fund happened to operate under those exact same letters.

So, every time an IP address tried to out me using that acronym, his legal team's automated scrubbers instantly nuked the post.

That godlike level of censorship only made the unnamed billionaire in the rumors seem even more untouchable. A terrifying, phantom entity.

Chapter 10 After that Sugar Baby Diary thread dropped, the very air in my circles turned toxic.

Every time a colleague walked past my desk, I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my neck—a suffocating mix of pity and cold calculation.

The Wall Street and venture capital world is a painfully small fishbowl. It's the exact same players recycling the same money, including my old Ivy League professors and alumni.

Pretending I didn't care was a joke.

I'd be staring at my monitors, and if two analysts started whispering and giggling about some unrelated office gossip by the coffee machine, my stomach would violently drop.

My muscles would lock up, instantly triggering my fightorflight response.

Even though Julian's crisis management team had nuked the rumors and scrubbed the internet almost immediately, the damage was done.

I spent nights staring at the ceiling, mentally scrubbing my own skin until it bled. I started auditing our entire relationship.

Every expensive dinner, every designer bag that used to make my heart flutter—in the dead of night, they morphed into radioactive evidence.

I was still desperately addicted to him, but every time his skin brushed mine, my stomach churned. It felt like I was physically proving those disgusting rumors right.

That was the year I started constantly pulling the ripcord, demanding we break up.

At first, he would stay up all night, pacing the floor, using that low, methodical voice to talk me off the ledge.

During the day, my phone would constantly light up with texts and FaceTime calls between his board meetings, just to make sure I hadn't shattered.

Meanwhile, his own life was imploding.

His grandfather was hospitalized, his parents' vicious divorce was tearing his family apart, and his private equity firm was hemorrhaging capital.

Even while his empire was burning, whenever I threw a hysterical, irrational fit about ending things, he never snapped. He would just grip me tighter, burying his face in my neck.

The ringing in my own ears drowned out the chaos he was fighting through.

I didn't even notice the terrifying pallor of his skin or the dark, exhausted shadows under his eyes when he showed up at my door.

I only heard his voice, ragged and wrecked, murmuring into my skin that he couldn't let me go. He wouldn't let me go. That brutal social execution completely drained me.

Finally, Julian backed down. He let me escape to London for grad school. But handing me that distance didn't give him a single second of peace.

Five thousand miles across the Atlantic became my ultimate weapon—a constant threat that I could vanish into thin air at any moment.

So, in the span of just eighteen months, he racked up over two dozen firstclass boarding passes from JFK to Heathrow. He didn't fly all that way for grand, sweeping gestures.

He just wanted to exist in my space. He trailed behind me while I shopped, took me on weekend trips, and spent hours curled up on my cramped sofa watching Friends.

On the screen, frost blurred the windows of Monica's apartment into soft, hazy shapes.

Monica stood next to the tree, her fingers brushing a glowing ornament. "Christmas isn't about the perfect tree.

It's about being with the people you love." I turned my head, staring out at the heavy, leaden London sky. "It looks like it's going to snow," I murmured.

Julian reached out, clicked off the TV, and hauled me up by the hand. It wasn't even Christmas yet, but the massive angel lights were already glowing high above Regent Street.

Everyone was holding their breath for snow. Technically, a white Christmas in London is practically a statistical anomaly.

The odds are so terrible that British bookies literally take bets on it every year. But that night, as we walked down the crowded pavement, a freezing drop hit my cheek.

Then another. Soon, the flurries thickened, slicing through the glow of the streetlamps like pure white static. The city completely transformed.

People spilled out of pubs and flats just to stand in the rare snowfall. The crowds surged, pressing in tight around us.

But through the freezing chaos, Julian's grip on my hand was like a vise. Warm, grounding, and absolutely unrelenting. Chapter 11 The long, silent walk dragged on.

The sweat between our locked palms turned cold and slick. I tried to pull my hand away, dropping my voice. "Let go. You're sweating." He didn't.

Instead, his fingers clamped down, crushing my knuckles. "I'm not letting you disappear on me," he rasped. I looked up at the flickering streetlights.

A sudden, sharp heat pricked the back of my eyes.

After a long second, I dropped my gaze and squeezed his hand back. "I'm not going anywhere." That night, we lost ourselves in the crowd.

We watched the lights, the snow, and sat on the frozen steps as the red doubledecker buses rumbled past. Just like any normal couple.

In the middle of an ordinary day, right when our relationship was teetering on the edge of complete collapse, we silently called another truce. But I knew the truth.

The wounds hadn't healed. They were just buried under a fresh layer of snow. Those memories blurred like the streetlights whipping past my windshield.

Speeding down the slick, wet asphalt. Until the intersection at the end of the road. The traffic lights started to smear. Overlapping. Glitching into chaotic, bleeding red halos.

The light snapped green. A deafening roar exploded from behind.

A massive force slammed into my bumper, violently whipping my body forward— I fell into a fractured, endless nightmare. My legs were dead weight. Numb.

Then, a bizarre, floating weightlessness swallowed me whole. Through the static, I heard voices arguing. One of them was Julian's. He was tearing someone apart. Vicious. Lethal.

How refreshing. In all the years I knew him, Julian never lost his absolute control. The only exception was a winter years ago.

I slipped on some black ice outside the office and fractured my tailbone. He practically locked me down for a month, his face a storm cloud the entire time.

The second I was healed, he forced me behind the wheel. Commanded me to park in the underground garage. Forbade me from ever walking on icy pavement again.

That was the absolute peak of his anger. Thank god we broke up. If he found out I ignored his rules? That I had a panic attack behind the wheel and got into a wreck?

He would have burned the city to the ground. Yeah. Thank god. This was all just a bad dream. Outside the halfopen hospital door. Julian loomed over Anastasia.

The harsh fluorescent lights of the corridor stretched his shadow into something monstrous. "I just thought… distance breeds misunderstanding.

That's why I came to see her," Anastasia's voice trembled. Her fingers twisted the fabric of her designer coat, her eyes glued to the floor. She didn't dare look up at him.

Julian had eyes like black ice. Deep, suffocating, and lethally cold. Right now, a muscle feathered in his rigid jaw.

The sheer, suffocating pressure rolling off his body was enough to crush the air out of the hallway. "See what?" His voice was a deadly, vibrating rasp. "You needed to fly across the country to see what?!" "I wanted to see who she was!

The woman making you stall our engagement!" Anastasia's voice cracked with a pathetic sob. "I was just curious—" "Are you done looking?" Julian cut her off, his voice slicing through her tears like a scalpel. "You saw her get Tboned?

You saw her with a concussion? Are you satisfied?!" His tone was absolute zero. Total, ruthless annihilation. Chapter 12 "Anastasia.

Even factoring in our families' history, I've been perfectly clear." "I am not agreeing to this merger.

And I am certainly not marrying you." "Julian, you've pushed me away for an entire year! I covered for you with the board, with our parents!

And this is what I get?!" "If you don't marry me, do you seriously think you can marry her?" Anastasia finally lost it, a raw sob tearing from her throat. "You just took over the firm!

Do you really think you can play god with the board? Wake up!" Julian went dead silent. For two agonizing seconds, the only sound in the hallway was her muffled crying.

Then, his voice dropped, lethally calm. "If not now, then later. And it will be her. It will never be anyone else." Consciousness trickled back like shattered glass.

I forced my eyes open. The harsh fluorescent ceiling tiles blurred in and out of focus. Every breath I dragged into my lungs felt like swallowing crushed gravel.

A dark shadow of stubble hardened Julian's jawline. Bloodshot veins fractured the whites of his eyes.

The second my eyelashes fluttered, he leaned in, his massive frame blocking out the light. "How do you feel?" His voice was a wrecked, gravelly rasp. "Are you dizzy?

Let me get you some water." I squeezed my eyes shut, my throat bonedry. "So Anastasia is the heiress your family picked out for you." A muscle feathered in his cheek.

His eyes darkened into an abyssal black. "Yes. But—" "Julian, I hid all the way in New York. Was that not far enough?" I sliced through his excuse, leaving zero room for debate.

His hand froze midpour. Water trickled against the glass, the only sound in the suffocating silence.

He slowly set the pitcher down. "I apologize on Anastasia's behalf," he rasped, his tone dangerously low. "She had no right to track you down.

She had no right to infiltrate your life." "She walked into my firm with a massive trust fund right when we were bleeding dry. She brought me gifts.

She handed me toptier LP connections on a silver platter." I paused, my tone deadpan. "What exactly did she do wrong?" Julian's brow pulled into a harsh line.

The temperature in the room plummeted. "She ran a background check on you. She followed you to New York. She dragged you into this crossfire.

That makes her dead wrong." "She was curious about me because she cares about you." I turned my head, locking onto his pitchblack stare. "Julian.

Is caring about someone a crime?" He went completely rigid. "You are the root of this entire mess. You are the one who is wrong." I didn't pull a single punch. "Playing these games?

Sitting by my hospital bed? It's not fair to her. And it's not fair to me." Julian choked on his words. The muscles in his jaw ticked violently.

His chest heaved with a harsh, jagged breath. He parted his lips—ready to rip my logic apart, ready to counter. But then, his gaze snagged.

I followed his eyeline down to my left hand. My pale fingers rested against the stark white hospital blanket.

And there, sitting securely at the base of my ring finger, was a simple, unadorned platinum band. I met his violently trembling gaze headon. My voice didn't waver. "Oh. Right.

I'm engaged." "Keep dragging this out, and it's not fair to my fiancé, either." Julian stared dead at the ring. The sharp lines of his jaw turned the color of crushed chalk.

His lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. He snapped them shut. A suffocating, crushing silence stretched between us. He slowly lifted his eyes to mine.

And then, he let out a low, raspy laugh.

It was the exact same look he used to give me years ago, back when we were still together and I would stubbornly lecture him about some trivial rule. Indulgent.

And completely, ruinously devoted. Chapter 13 "Yeah. My Seraphina…" He dropped his gaze.

The muscles in his throat worked as he forced a brutal swallow. "Whatever you accuse me of… I deserve it." "It was a miscalculation on my part," he added, his voice completely hollowed out. "It won't happen again." [ Julian's POV ] That was Seraphina.

She had this soft, innocent face, but when it came down to a fight, she was more ruthless than anyone I knew. I spiraled into the same thoughts constantly.

If I hadn't crossed the line with her back then.

If I had just played the game like the rest of the trustfund trash in my circle, keeping a rotating roster of vapid socialites to pass the time.

Things wouldn't be this agonizing now. I wouldn't be bleeding out like this. Seraphina wasn't wrong.

I knew damn well that dragging this out—refusing to cut the cord, refusing to let her walk away—was tearing her apart. It wasn't fair to her.

But who the hell gave a damn about what was fair to me? If she were any other girl in my orbit, we could have negotiated terms.

I could have thrown enough money and assets at the problem to buy her compliance. But we were different. Looking at Seraphina, I couldn't spit those transactional words out.

They turned to ash in my mouth. I would rather endure the physical agony of having my bones ripped out than degrade her.

Than trample on her absolute sincerity. [ Seraphina's POV ] For the next few days, I actively dodged him.

The second I heard the heavy, measured strike of his leather shoes echoing down the hospital corridor, I would roll over, face the wall, and force my breathing to slow.

We were a dead end. I refused to let him see me shattered anymore. The night before my discharge, right after the nurse's final rounds, the door clicked open again.

A sliver of harsh fluorescent light sliced across the floor before being completely snuffed out. The faint, freezing scent of tobacco settled right beside my bed.

I kept my back to him. I locked my ribs, faking the slow, even rhythm of deep sleep. Julian didn't hit the lights. He didn't make a sound.

Even his breathing was suffocatingly controlled. A massive, terrifyingly warm hand brushed my shoulder, pulling the thin hospital blanket up.

The mattress shifted slightly as he leaned in. I could feel the raw heat of his fingers hovering right above my hair. Waiting. But the touch never landed.

The phantom heat retreated, leaving the freezing air in its wake. "Seraphina…" His voice was entirely destroyed. "I'm sorry for crowding you." A jagged exhale punched through his chest.

He lowered his voice to a devastating whisper. "I just… I missed you." The heavy footsteps faded. The door clicked shut. The room plunged back into a suffocating dead silence.

I buried my face deeper into the pillow. A single, freezing tear broke free, soaking instantly into the cheap cotton.

In the pitch black, I dragged my left hand out from under the covers. My fingers felt blindly over the edge of the nightstand until I hit the plastic rim of the trash can.

My knuckles went completely slack. The cheap costume ring hit the bottom of the bin with a dull, hollow thud.

Taking the very last shred of my pathetic, delusional fantasy down with it. The engagement was fake. But the boyfriend was very real.

My dating life back then operated exactly like a Wall Street due diligence report. I analyzed the data, audited the liabilities, and aggressively filtered out the highrisk assets.

Tristan was the highestscoring candidate on the board. He ticked every single box.

We grew up in the same zip code, his family had solid uppermiddleclass money, and he launched a tech startup straight out of college with his own dev team.

By all conventional metrics, he was a bluechip stock with a steady upward trajectory. But the most crucial metric?

Barring a total market collapse, I knew he was a guaranteed ring on my finger. Chapter 14 By the time Tristan rushed back from his overseas business trip, I was already discharged.

He was aggressively paranoid.

He insisted on looking me over from head to toe, scrutinizing my medical charts, and dragging me to a private specialist he trusted for a second opinion.

Once he was finally convinced I wasn't going to drop dead, he looked at me, riddled with guilt. "I'm so sorry.

You went through something like this, and I was completely in the dark." He didn't need to apologize. I was the one who deliberately froze him out. When exactly did it happen?

When did I become the kind of person who could walk away from a nearfatal car crash without blinking, hiding it flawlessly from the person closest to me?

Probably the year I flew back to New York after finishing my master's in London. During those eighteen months, I had hit a wall of absolute clarity.

As long as I stayed addicted to Julian's manufactured tenderness—as long as I played the delusional game of asking for an equal partnership and a real future—reality was going to grind my selfworth into dust.

So, the second I landed back in the States, I stopped fighting.

If his entire world insisted on viewing me as a highmaintenance parasite, and since our relationship was a ticking time bomb anyway, I decided to play the part.

I retreated behind the safe, impenetrable walls of a perfect kept woman. I executed a flawless, bloodless lobotomy on my own emotions.

The sixfigure jewelry, the blackcard shopping sprees, the elite networking connections he handed me on a silver platter—I swallowed them all without a flinch.

On paper, I became a flawless, compliant trophy. But internally, I aggressively severed every last emotional cord connecting me to Julian.

I stopped texting him mundane updates about my day. I stopped sending him crying memes when I was buried in pitch decks at 2 AM.

I stopped running to the shelter of his empire the second I hit a wall at work. I forced myself to swallow the panic and digest my own vulnerability in absolute silence.

For the final year we were together, we settled into this sick, artificial harmony. I was accommodating. I was perfectly emotionally stable.

I morphed exactly into the mold his circle expected of me. I did it all just so that when the clock finally ran out, I could walk away with my spine straight.

By now, the instinct to expose my soft underbelly to anyone is completely dead.

I didn't tell Tristan about the wreck because it honestly didn't register as a situation where I needed to be rescued. But Tristan is a startup founder.

He's an aggressively pragmatic problem solver. After the accident, he pointblank refused to let me behind the wheel.

For the next six months, no matter how chaotic his board meetings got, his Tesla was idling outside my office building at the exact same time every night.

We operated like millions of perfectly normal, systematic couples out there. We commuted together. We did Sunday brunch dates. We took scheduled vacations to the Hamptons.

We met the parents. We locked in a venue. Six months later, we were ready to tie the knot.

A month before the wedding, I dropped the digital invitation link into my old Columbia alumni group chat.

The notifications blew up instantly. [ Omg congrats Seraphina! ] [ So happy for you two! ] Someone practically typed on autopilot: [ Huge congrats!

You guys FINALLY made it official. ] But a few minutes later—right around the time they clicked the RSVP link and actually read the groom's name—the chat went dead.

A second later, that message with the heavy "FINALLY" vanished. [ Message unsent. ] I stared at the little gray notification on my screen. I didn't even feel embarrassed.

Tristan and I had coasted down such a frictionless, logical path that a heavy, loaded word like "finally" didn't belong anywhere near us.

Once the awkwardness passed, the chat quickly flooded with a synchronized wave of polite congratulations and wedding stickers.

I figured I wouldn't see any of them until the actual reception. But then, the night before the wedding. Cleo showed up. Chapter 15 By then, Cleo's net worth had skyrocketed.

You couldn't scroll through a streaming platform without her face popping up on some massive latenight comedy special.

Inside the bridal suite, she pulled off her baseball cap and face mask, sliding a thick envelope across the marble coffee table. "Seraphina, I'm so sorry.

I don't think I can actually sit in the audience for the ceremony tomorrow." I poured two glasses of warm water and kept my voice soft. "It's fine. You're a massive celebrity now.

I get that a crowded venue is a PR nightmare." She gripped the glass. Her knuckles went completely white against the glass.

Then, she shook her head. "It's not that." After a long, suffocating silence, she dropped her gaze. "Spencer a