Chapter 3

That evening, Jayden was waiting outside my studio.

He was wearing the same suit from yesterday, his tie loosened and faint shadows pooling under his eyes. The moment he saw me walk out, he strode over and reached for my wrist the way he always did.

I stepped back.

His hand froze in midair. "Lydia, are you done throwing a fit?"

I looked at him, and for the first time, those words felt foreign.

Every time I'd fought with him over Sophia, he had asked me the same thing.

He would ask, "Are you done yet?"

As if everything I ever felt was nothing more than noise in his life.

I said, "I'm not throwing a fit. You got the lawyer's letter."

His brow tightened. "Breaking off the engagement? Damages? IP claims? Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"I do."

"Sophia was in the ER yesterday." His voice dropped low. "She's sick, and you're still going after her?"

I nodded. "She's sick, so you left. You left, so the wedding's off. The wedding's off, so the damages fall on you. Every step tracks."

Jayden flinched, as if my calm had cut deeper than anger would have. "Lydia, when did you become like this?"

I looked at him. "Around the ninety-ninth time you made me wait."

He went quiet.

Traffic rolled past on the street, and headlights swept across his face in waves. Something shifted in his expression, as though he'd finally remembered what yesterday was supposed to be, and his tone softened.

"I know you feel wronged. Once Sophia's stable, I'll make it up to you with an even better wedding."

I almost laughed. "Jayden, do you think I begged you for that wedding?"

He frowned. "That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

He had nothing. Because he'd never actually thought about it.

To him, a wedding could be postponed, a ring returned and slipped back on, and invitations trashed and reprinted. As long as he was willing to make it up to me, I was supposed to be grateful.

I pulled a printed agreement from my bag and held it out to him. "This is the disengagement agreement. Take it home and read it over. If I don't hear back in three days, we move to litigation."

Jayden didn't take it. He stared at me, and his eyes went cold by degrees. "You're using Michael against me?"

"I hired a lawyer to protect my legal rights."

"He has feelings for you." Jayden said it out of nowhere. "Three years he's been by your side. You think I didn't know?"

I looked up. So he'd known about Michael all along.

He knew that when I was up late reworking proposals, someone sat beside me reviewing contracts. He knew that when Lilian tore into me at dinner, someone stepped in to cover for me.

He knew that when I was holding my studio together on my own, someone put up the money to keep it alive.

But he never once asked if I was tired.

He only turned all of it into my crime when I tried to leave.

I said, "Whether he likes me or not has nothing to do with you standing me up ninety-nine times."

Jayden's expression darkened. "Lydia, I'm giving you a way out. Don't push this too far."

I placed the agreement on the hood of his car. "Save your outs for someone who plans on coming back. I'm done."

After that night, the Grants made their move.

Lilian called first, and when I didn't answer, she had someone text me.

[Lydia, your father owed a lot of people, and the Grants covered for your family more times than you can count. You're really going to turn on us now? You're not worried about what people will say?]

I didn't reply.

Then she got her socialite friends to post in the group chat, calling me difficult and ungrateful, saying I disregarded Sophia's illness and deliberately humiliated the Grants on the wedding day.

It didn't take long for a different story to spread through their circle.

The narrative they built was simple. I was a bankrupt heiress who latched onto the Grants, built my wedding brand on Jayden's connections, and bit the hand that fed me the moment I outgrew them.

Every project under Lyden had supposedly been propped up by Grant Group resources.

Jayden was looking out for an old friend, and I couldn't even show basic decency to a sick woman.

When the rumors reached the studio, Joey slammed her phone facedown on the desk.

"How can they do this? We built every project from the ground up. Those co-branded deals with Grant Group? They were the ones cashing in on our work."

I didn't look up from the payment records. "Relax."

Joey stared at me. "Lydia, you're not gonna say anything?"

I pulled the ninety-ninth invitation draft from the drawer, its gold-foil edges crumpled from my grip.

"Explaining yourself to people who already believe the rumors only makes them think they have the right to judge you."

I slipped the invitation into a folder. "At the press conference, we let the contracts do the talking."