Chapter 2

I drove to the only place I could think of where Lily and Marcus would not find me, an upscale bar in the financial district that I had never visited before.

I sat at the polished mahogany counter while the bartender poured me whiskey without asking questions and my phone continued to explode with notifications from people who had seen Lily's Instagram post.

The messages ranged from genuinely concerned friends asking if I was okay to barely disguised schadenfreude from acquaintances who wanted gossip more than they wanted to offer support, and I ignored all of them because I could not find words to explain that my entire life had collapsed in the span of twenty minutes and I had no idea how to put the pieces back together.

"You look like someone just destroyed your life," a deep voice said from beside me, and I turned to find a man settling onto the barstool next to mine with the kind of controlled grace that suggested both wealth and power.

For a moment I could not place why his face looked familiar, and then recognition hit me

I was looking at Adrian Hartwell, Lily's older brother, who I had met exactly three times in eight years of friendship with his sister, always briefly at family events before he made his excuses and disappeared back into whatever empire he was building.

"How did you know where to find me?" I asked, my voice rough from crying.

Adrian signaled the bartender for his own drink before answering.

"I saw Lily's Instagram post about an hour ago, and I know my sister well enough to recognize when she is staging a public humiliation," he said, taking a measured sip of whiskey. "I also know that when people are devastated, they tend to go somewhere unfamiliar where they think no one will find them, and this bar happens to be owned by someone who owes me several favors and was happy to let me know when a woman matching your description walked in looking like her world had just ended."

The casual way he admitted to tracking me down should have been alarming, but I was too emotionally exhausted to care about normal boundaries, and besides, there was something oddly comforting about the fact that someone had bothered to find me.

"So you know what happened," I said, not bothering to make it a question.

"I know that you walked in on Lily and Maxwell together, that they have apparently been having an affair for months, and that my sister has now publicly claimed your fiancé as her own while painting you as the pathetic loser who was too blind to see what was happening," Adrian recited with the precision of someone who had analyzed every detail. "I also know that you are probably planning to cancel your wedding, hide from your friends for several months, and generally let Lily and Marcus win this particular battle."

"What else am I supposed to do?" I asked bitterly. "My fiancé has been sleeping with my best friend, everyone I know has seen her Instagram post, and in two weeks I was supposed to be getting married in a ceremony that is now completely pointless."

Adrian set down his glass and turned to face me fully, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were a striking shade of gray that seemed to see right through whatever facade I was trying to maintain.

"You are supposed to make them regret every moment of what they did to you," he said with quiet intensity. "You are supposed to show Lily that she did not win anything except a cheating fiancé and a reputation as someone who destroys friendships for sport, and you are supposed to demonstrate to Maxwell that he threw away someone valuable in favor of my manipulative sister."

"And how exactly am I supposed to accomplish that when I can barely function right now?" I asked.

Adrian smiled then, a slow dangerous expression that suggested he had been waiting for exactly this question.

"You accomplish it," he said, "by marrying me instead."

My eyes widened in shock.

“You can’t be serious.”