Betrayed, I Chose His Rival

The cake had started to sink by nine o'clock.

I'd baked it myself. Lemon and vanilla, Ethan's favorite. Now one side had slumped like it was tired of waiting too.

I tugged the sleeve of my cream sweater over my wrist and checked my phone again.

No calls. No texts.

Just a notification from Instagram.

Ethan Cole, founder and CEO of Lumen Analytics, had posted a new video.

I tapped it.

Blue water. White yacht. Laughing friends with champagne glasses. Then Ethan, sun-kissed and grinning, reached for a woman in a red bikini and pulled her against his chest.

Scarlett Hayes. The jewelry brand consultant he'd introduced at a gala last spring as "a potential partner."

He kissed her. Long. Slow. In front of everyone.

The caption read: *Finally found someone who can stand beside me.*

I paused the video.

On his wrist was a silver watch with a navy face. I knew that watch. I'd given it to him on the first anniversary of his company, when Lumen was still three guys in a borrowed office.

And behind them, on the hill, sat a hotel with pale pink walls.

I'd helped him compare flights to that exact island. He said he had a client meeting in St. Barts.

I pressed his name.

It rang four times.

"Olivia." Music thumped behind him. "Seriously? I'm in the middle of a celebration."

"It's your birthday," I said. "I made you a cake."

"Okay. Thanks. Can we do this later?"

"I saw the video, Ethan."

A pause. Someone shouted his name. He covered the phone and said something I couldn't hear. When he came back, his voice was flat.

"Then you know."

"Know what? Say it."

He sighed, like I was a junior employee asking for a raise. "Scarlett and I are together. It just happened."

"On a client trip."

"It *was* a client trip. Then it became more."

I stared at the ice bucket on the counter. The bottle of champagne inside was sweating onto the marble. I'd saved for that bottle. Well—I hadn't needed to save. But he thought I had.

"You told me we had to keep us private," I said. "Two years, Ethan. You said founders need a professional image. No photos. No posts."

"That was different."

"How?"

"Because you're—" He stopped.

"Finish it."

He laughed. Actually laughed. "Liv, come on. I run a company now. I'm a CEO. I can't keep dragging around a girl who does freelance projects from her laptop."

The words landed one at a time. *Dragging. Around.*

"Scarlett knows people," he went on. "Real people. She can get me into rooms I need to be in. What can you give me?"

I almost answered him.

I almost told him everything.

Instead, I closed my eyes. "Two months ago. The Plaza. You were in her suite for five hours."

"We were talking about a brand partnership."

"For five hours."

"Partnerships take time." His tone sharpened. "This is exactly the problem. You don't understand business. You don't understand that I need space to grow. You smother me with cakes and questions and—honestly, Olivia, if you'd been more supportive, maybe I wouldn't have needed someone else."

The music behind him swelled. A woman laughed close to the phone. Scarlett, probably.

I looked down at the cake. Somehow, the collapsed corner made me want to laugh.

So I did. Quietly.

"What's funny?" he snapped.

"Nothing." I wiped my thumb along the edge of the plate. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. Starting tonight, we each take care of our own lives."

"Wait, what does that—"

I hung up.

The silence in the apartment was loud. I twisted the thin silver ring off my finger. He'd bought it from a street vendor in SoHo on our third date. I'd worn it every day like it meant something.

I set it beside the cake.

Then I made a second call.

"Olivia?" Maya Ortiz, my assistant, picked up on the first ring. "It's late. Is everything okay?"

"I need you to pull up the Lumen file."

Keys clicked on her end. Maya had worked with me for four years at Bennett Capital, my family's investment firm. She knew where every document lived.

"Got it. What do you need?"

"Where are we on the Series B?"

"Term sheet's agreed. Final agreements haven't been signed. They're waiting on your approval as lead partner through Northgate." She hesitated. "Why?"

Northgate Holdings. The investment vehicle I'd set up so no one would connect the money to me. Ethan knew some fund believed in him. He'd bragged about it at dinner parties.

He never once asked who.

"And the pilot contracts?" I asked.

"Harlow Logistics, Brightwell Health, and Kessler Retail. All three expire within the next six weeks. They're expecting a call from you about renewals."

Harlow's CEO was my godfather. Brightwell's founder had gone to Yale with my brother. Kessler only took the meeting because I asked them over brunch.

Ethan called those clients "proof he'd made it."

"Olivia," Maya said slowly, "what happened?"

"Ethan's in St. Barts with Scarlett Hayes."

Silence.

Then: "That *idiot*."

I smiled despite myself. "Here's what I want. Withdraw any follow-on investment that isn't legally committed. I won't make any calls for the renewals. If Harlow or the others want to renew on their own, that's their choice."

"And the existing agreements?"

"We honor them. Every one. I'm not breaking a contract over a man."

"Understood." Her voice softened. "You sure you don't want to sleep on it?"

"I've been sleeping on it for two years, Maya."

She didn't argue.

"One more thing," I said. "Have legal gather everything. Every email, every term sheet, every introduction I made. I want a clean record."

"I'll have it by morning."

My phone buzzed against my ear. A text.

I pulled it away and read the screen.

**Ethan: Don't go to Scarlett and make a scene. You can't afford that kind of embarrassment.**

I read it twice. Then I opened our chat, scrolled past two years of *goodnight* and *proud of you* and *coffee?*, and pressed delete.

The window vanished.

"Olivia? You still there?"

"I'm here."

I struck a match and lit a single candle on the ruined cake. The flame shook, then steadied.

Happy birthday, Ethan.

I blew it out.

"Maya," I said, watching the thin line of smoke curl toward the ceiling, "first thing tomorrow morning, send back the financing documents waiting for my approval."

"Unsigned?"

"Unsigned."

On the other end, she let out a low breath. "He's going to find out who you are."

I picked up the silver ring and dropped it into the trash.

"Let him try."