After I Left, My Ex Learned I Was a Billionaire's Daughter

The night before my wedding, I accidentally called Rick Graves—the 38-year-old Rick Graves.

I asked him, breathless, “So we've been married for years already? Do we have kids? Are we happy?”

Because tomorrow, we were getting married.

But the line went quiet for a moment, and then he told me.

“Don't go through with the wedding.”

“On our wedding night, I cheated on you with your best friend. I never cut things off with her. Not for the next five years.”

“Eventually she and I had a child together. You developed depression, but you refused to divorce me no matter what, and you ended up in a psychiatric facility.”

“Agatha Henson, I don't want to watch you end up like that. So don't marry me.”

“Is that so?”

I stood frozen in place for a long time, the pain in my chest beyond anything I could name.

“Then I'll break up with him……”

The words had barely left my mouth when howling laughter exploded from the other end of the line.

“Oh my god, she actually believed you were 38-year-old Rick Graves! She was really going to break up with you! This is priceless!”

“What a stupid, gullible little puppy. It was that obvious, and she still didn't figure out this was just a bet between us!”

I went numb. Rick laughed again from the other end—that doting, indulgent laugh—

but it was directed at my best friend.

“So I win. Lois Sullivan—marry me?”

……

Twist after twist, blow after blow. I stood there like I'd been struck by lightning.

I couldn't move. I couldn't think.

“You're not the 38-year-old Rick Graves?”

I sounded like an idiot asking it, and the laughter on the other end only got louder.

Rick's voice dripped with mockery.

“What, you think you're in a novel?”

“A phone call to the future? There's no '38-year-old me.' That was just an excuse I made up to trick you.”

“And only someone as dumb as you would actually fall for it.”

So even this phone call had been a scheme they'd planned together.

A bet they'd cooked up for fun.

I gripped my phone so hard my knuckles ached, and looked down at the wedding ring on my left hand. All I felt was the bitter absurdity of it.

The mocking laughter kept going, and my first instinct was to hang up.

But then Lois's voice cut through.

“Fine. I'll give you one chance to put a ring on my finger. Tomorrow, in front of everyone. I want the whole world to see you propose to me.”

Rick agreed without a second's hesitation.

“If Miss Sullivan wants it, Miss Sullivan gets it.”

I was left on the line like an afterthought, blood cooling inch by inch.

The call still hadn't ended. I was starting to wonder if even that was deliberate—another piece of Rick's game.

I drew a slow breath. “Rick. Where are you right now?”

“The apartment.”

I grabbed my bag and rushed downstairs, hailing a car to the wedding apartment.

It was in an upscale complex, a place Rick and I had spent half a year choosing together. Perfect location, perfect layout.

I'd paid half the down payment. I'd managed every detail of the renovation myself.

Rick had gone along with me every time I filmed the progress, both of us counting down to the day we'd finally move in as husband and wife.

We had already put so much into this.

I refused to believe he really treated all of it as nothing more than a game.

I pushed open the apartment door and went rigid where I stood.

The place was trashed. Beer bottles and sunflower-seed shells everywhere, like a bomb had gone off.

On the table sat a bottle of red wine and a few small dishes, as though someone had been celebrating.

And Rick—he had a grape between his lips, leaning in to press it into Lois's mouth.