Chapter 1 - The Hawthorne Lounge
After My Fiancé’s Crew Started Hitting On Me Behind His Back, I Found Out He Paid Them To Expose Me—So I Turned His Own Engagement Banquet Into His Public Execution...
The first time I saw the comments floating above my fiancé’s head, he was laughing with five of his closest friends about which one of them would ruin me first.
Not embarrass me. Not flirt with me. Ruin me.
I stood outside the glass-walled cigar lounge at the Hawthorne estate with a silver tray of untouched champagne in my hands, still wearing the ivory dress Lucas’s mother had chosen for me because, as she put it, “a future Hawthorne bride should look expensive but not hungry.” Inside, Lucas leaned back in a leather chair, his charcoal jacket open, his blue eyes soft with amusement as his friends passed around a phone.
Then the words appeared.
Not on the phone.
In the air.
Bright, translucent comments slid across my vision like subtitles from some cruel audience watching my life.
The villain girl thinks she is loved. How adorable.
Wait until she finds out Lucas only got engaged to her to make Emma jealous.
His friends are going to seduce her, film her, and post the photos. Then Lucas can break the engagement without looking like the bad guy.
I stopped breathing.
The champagne glasses trembled on the tray, tiny gold bubbles rising as if nothing in the world had changed. But my world had cracked straight down the middle.
Lucas Hawthorne, heir to Hawthorne Capital, the man who had kissed me in rainstorms, bought me a brownstone “because my commute annoyed him,” and once threatened to fire a waiter for looking at me too long, was smiling while his best friend Derek Calloway made a toast.
“To whoever gets Sophia into bed first,” Derek said, lifting his whiskey. “Fifty-million-dollar car. Winner’s choice.”
The room exploded with laughter.
Lucas didn’t laugh loudly. That would have been too honest. He only smiled, slow and careless, the smile that had made half of Manhattan believe he was charming instead of dangerous.
“Make it clean,” Lucas said. “I don’t need a scandal that stains the company. I need enough proof to end the engagement.”
My fingers went numb.
A second wave of comments drifted past.
He wants Emma back, obviously.
Emma won’t be a homewrecker, so Sophia has to become the cheater.
The poor scholarship girl became the disposable fiancée. Classic.
I swallowed so hard it hurt.
Five years earlier, I had been washing cafeteria dishes at Whitmore University with my roommate Emma Sinclair when Lucas had stormed in like a prince who had never been told no. Emma had red hands from the freezing water and pride sharp enough to cut glass. Lucas offered her a black card and five million dollars so she would never work another part-time job again. Emma slapped the card back into his chest and said, “You don’t know how to love anyone. You only know how to buy them.”
Then she broke up with him.
Lucas, humiliated and furious, turned to me.
“You,” he said. “Would you take the money?”
I had looked at the card, then at his beautiful angry face, and said, “Absolutely.”
Everyone thought I was shameless.
They were right.
But they never understood why.
I was tired of being poor. Tired of counting grocery dollars, tired of pretending dignity kept you warm when your heat got shut off, tired of watching people praise Emma’s pride while I knew pride could not pay rent. Lucas wanted a girlfriend to punish Emma. I wanted a life where I didn’t have to choose between textbooks and dinner.
For five years, I played the part. I smiled at charity galas. I let society women call me “surprisingly polished.” I wore Lucas’s diamonds and pretended not to hear them whisper that I was lucky.
And somewhere along the way, I made one fatal mistake.
I believed Lucas might actually love me.
Inside the lounge, Ryan Whitaker whistled. “What if she actually refuses? Sophia acts obsessed with you.”
Lucas’s smile turned sharper. “Sophia loves me like her life depends on it.”
The comments shrieked across my vision.
It does not.
She only loves his money and his body.
Okay, villain girl, time to wake up.
A strange calm opened inside me.
Not heartbreak. Not rage. Something cleaner.
Understanding.
They had written me as the cheap girl, the greedy girl, the temporary obstacle in Lucas and Emma’s grand love story. I was supposed to kneel when the photos came out. Beg Lucas to believe me. Cry in front of his mother. Watch Emma return from Europe, spotless and tragic, while everyone applauded the reunion.
I looked through the glass at Derek Calloway, the prettiest of Lucas’s friends, with soft brown hair, angelic eyes, and a reputation for destroying women while looking like he needed saving. He was typing something into the group chat, grinning.
Derek: I’ll go first. She already blushes when I talk to her.
Lucas replied without picking up his head.
Lucas: Need tutorials, virgin boy?
They laughed again.
I set the champagne tray down on a marble console, reached into my purse, and took out my phone.
My hands were steady now.
I called Derek.
Inside the lounge, his phone lit up. His eyebrows lifted when he saw my name. Lucas noticed and smirked.
I made my voice small, breathless, frightened.
“Derek?” I whispered when he answered. “I’m sorry. I think someone put something in my drink. I feel terrible. Lucas isn’t answering. Can you come to my place?”
Through the glass, I watched Derek’s face change.
Triumph.
Hunger.
Disgust hidden under excitement.
He muted the call and raised his glass toward Lucas.
Then another comment floated across my eyes.
She is walking into the trap.
No.
May you like
I smiled into the dark reflection of the glass.
They were...
