My Billionaire Boyfriend Watched My Ex Beg

Someone had moved my name card.

It was supposed to sit at the head of the table, beside Kieran's. Instead, I found it on a folding chair in the back corner, wedged between the coffee cart and a dying ficus.

"Oh, is that you back there?" Tessa Lane glanced up from her laptop and smiled. Her lipstick was the same shade I'd once seen on Grant's collar. "Sorry. Facilities must've gotten confused. Seating's so tight today."

Twelve chairs sat around the table. Two of them were empty.

"Clearly," I said.

I sat in the corner. The gray folder from the elevator pressed against my hip inside my bag. I had read only the first page. That was enough to make my hands cold.

Kieran wasn't here yet. Grant sat at Tessa's right, spinning a pen and refusing to look at me.

"Before we start," Tessa said, tapping her keyboard, "I pulled some archive shots for the culture slide. Throwback energy. Clients love that."

The screen filled with a photo from the holiday party three years ago. Paper crowns. Cheap champagne. And me, front and center, in a black dress that pulled across my stomach. My cheeks were swollen with the medication. I was squinting because I was laughing.

Somebody near the window snorted.

"Look how far we've all come," Tessa said sweetly.

A few people chuckled. Then the room seemed to remember who was sitting in the corner, and the laughter thinned out.

Tessa reached to click forward.

"Leave it up," I said.

Her finger stopped.

"Sorry?"

"Leave it. I like that photo." I stood and walked toward the screen. "That was the night I finished the Halden color story. I didn't sleep for two days after it. Grant, you remember. You told me it was perfect."

Grant's pen stopped spinning.

I pointed to the second screen, where her quarterly plan was already loaded. "Slide fourteen, Tessa. Your new direction. Ink, Bone, and Ember."

"It's a seasonal palette," she said. "Very on trend."

"It's my palette. Word for word. I named those colors in my kitchen while icing my wrist." I turned to face her. "So walk us through it. Why Ember and not Rust? Why Bone and not Ivory? The board will want to hear your reasoning."

Tessa opened her mouth. Closed it. Her cheeks went pink, then blotchy.

"I mean, it was a team process—"

"Which team?"

"Okay." Grant slapped his palm flat on the table and smiled at the room. "We're getting into the weeds here. Paris is the fire we need to put out. Moreau's people land in two hours, and they're coming to cancel."

"Then let's talk about Paris."

Kieran stood in the doorway. Nobody had heard him come in. He looked at the photo on the screen, then at the empty chair beside his own, then at my name card in the corner.

He crossed the room, picked up the card, and set it back at the head of the table.

"Ms. Kemp will lead the Moreau meeting," he said.

The room went still.

Grant laughed once, like he thought it was a joke. "Sir, with respect. That account has been mine for a year."

"And in a year, you've nearly lost it."

"She's been gone for three years. She doesn't know the client. She doesn't know the market." Grant's voice tightened. "A new suit and a good haircut don't make someone qualified. Everyone in this room can see why she's really here."

Tessa dropped her eyes to her laptop. Someone coughed.

I didn't argue. I sat down in my chair at the head of the table and crossed my legs.

"Two hours," I said to Kieran. "I'll need the floor plans and their last three sales reports."

"You'll have them in five minutes."

---

Hélène Moreau walked in at two o'clock with a lawyer on each side and her coat still on.

"I'll be brief," she said. Her accent was soft. Her eyes were not. "Your Paris store looks like an airport shop. Westbridge sells beautiful clothes in a box made of glass. My investors want out. I came to say that in person."

"You're right," I said.

Her lawyer looked up from his phone.

"The store is wrong," I went on. "It was designed for tourists who buy once. Paris doesn't buy once. Paris comes back if you let it sit down."

I clicked to my first slide. Twelve minutes of work. A hand sketch, scanned and cleaned.

"We cut the floor space by forty percent. We kill the front display wall. In its place, a salon. Fitting rooms with daylight, tailors on site, a reading room in the back. Appointments only after six. We stop selling clothes. We start selling the hour a woman spends in them."

Hélène took her coat off.

"And the name?" she asked.

"Westbridge Atelier, Rue Saint-Honoré. Nothing else. The people who matter will know where it is."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she turned to her lawyers.

"Tear up the letter."

Across the table, Grant's jaw clenched so hard I watched a muscle jump.

Hélène stood and shook my hand. Her grip was dry and firm. "I like you," she said. "You don't decorate your words."

"I never had the time to."

---

Grant caught me in the hallway outside the conference room. He waited until the client was gone and the glass doors had closed.

"Audra. Thirty seconds."

"You've had three years."

"I know. I know I have." He stepped closer and lowered his voice, the way he used to in our kitchen when he wanted to sound reasonable. "Back then, I was drowning. The board was on me every day. I made a mistake under pressure. That's all it was. That's not who I am."

"Which part was the mistake? The slides or the supply room?"

"Both. Either. Does it matter?" His fingers slid over the back of my hand. "You and I built something. Don't throw it away to make a point."

I yanked my hand back like I'd touched a stove.

"Your explanation stopped being worth anything the night you told me I was hard to want," I said. "You don't get to cash it in now that I'm easier to look at."

His face went red under the collar.

"That's not fair."

"Neither was fourteen slides of my work with your name on them."

"Mr. Mercer."

Kieran stood at the end of the hall with his hands in his pockets. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

"You're off the Paris team," he said. "Effective now. You'll have no role on any of Ms. Kemp's projects."

Grant turned. "Sir, this was a private conversation."

"In my hallway. With my director." Kieran walked past him and held the next door open for me. "Ms. Kemp. We have floor plans to approve."

I went through. Grant stayed where he was.

Through the glass, I saw his phone light up in his hand. He read the screen once. Then again, slower.

I didn't need to see it. I had signed the memo myself an hour ago.

*Effective immediately, all major proposals from the Brand Department require final review and approval by the Executive Director of Brand Strategy, A. Kemp.*

Grant lifted his head and stared at me through the glass. For the first time since I'd walked into the lobby, he didn't look hungry.

He looked scared.

Behind him, Tessa came out of the conference room with her phone already pressed to her ear. She turned her back to both of us and whispered fast.

I caught only three words before the door swung shut.

"She's found out."