The Girl He Threw Away Ended Up With His Best Friend

The heavy cardstock bit into the pads of my fingers.

Gold foil gleamed under the recessed ceiling lights of the penthouse, spelling out two names that didn't belong to me: *Kai Mercer and Seraphina Laurent request the honor of your presence.*

Two years.

Two years of entering this building through the freight elevator. Two years of ducking my head in parking garages, erasing text threads before dawn, and scrubbing my scent from his sheets before his driver arrived at six.

*Just until the board confirms the takeover,* Kai had whispered against my neck so many nights in this very room. *Seraphina is a business arrangement. She knows it, my father knows it. Once I control the voting shares, I walk away. I choose you. Just trust me.*

I had trusted him.

A sharp slam echoed down the corridor, rattling the glass in my hand.

Voices leaked through the mahogany double doors of the private study across the hall. Loud. Unfiltered.

I stepped away from the window, drawn toward the sound. My socks made no noise against the hardwood.

"You think I'm blind, Kai?"

The voice belonged to Marcus Mercer. It carried the weight of an empire that owned half the city's skyline.

"Lower your voice, Father," Kai answered. His tone was tight, strained to the breaking point. "The staff—"

"There is no staff here tonight, only your reckless stupidity," the older man snapped. "Do you think the Laurent family doesn't run background checks? Do you think Seraphina's father is going to sign over the logistics network while you keep an art restorer tucked away in an off-market high-rise?"

"Elowen has nothing to do with the merger," Kai said. "Leave her out of your mouth."

"She has everything to do with whether you inherit Mercer Global or rot in a satellite office in Melbourne."

A paper slapped against wood.

"Look at those files," Marcus ordered. "Her gallery lease. Her restoration contracts with the state museum. Her brother's clinic funding. One phone call from my office, and the museum cancels every acquisition she has brokered. Her landlord terminates the commercial lease tomorrow morning. Her brother loses his research grant by noon."

"Father, don't."

"I don't make idle threats, boy. If you are seen within a hundred yards of that girl again, I will grind her life into fine powder. I will bury her under so many non-disclosure suits and tax audits she won't be able to afford a bus ticket out of this state. She will leave this city with nothing, ruined because you wanted a pet on the side."

Silence stretched. It hung in the hallway, thick and suffocating.

My heart hammered against my ribs, each strike violent enough to ache. I stood frozen outside the threshold, gripping the wedding invitation so hard the gilded edges bent.

*Tell him no,* I screamed silently at the wood grain. *Tell him you have the shares. Tell him we're done hiding.*

"She is just a diversion," Kai finally said.

His voice didn't shake. It was flat. Drained of every ounce of warmth he had ever poured into my skin.

"Say it clearly," Marcus demanded.

"The merger goes forward as planned," Kai said quietly. "The announcement runs Friday. I won't see her again."

"Good. The Laurent car is downstairs. Get dressed. You're taking your fiancée to dinner."

Footsteps approached the study door.

I scrambled back, slipping across the runner and retreating to the floor-to-ceiling window of the living room. I turned my back to the door, staring out at the grid of city lights forty floors below.

A heavy latch clicked open. Marcus walked out, his stride brisk, his presence fading down the private elevator bank without a glance in my direction.

Then came the second set of footsteps.

Kai paused in the entryway of the living room. I didn't turn around. I watched his reflection in the dark glass.

His suit jacket was off, his tie loosened at the throat. The man who had held me until three in the morning, promising me an open life under the sun, looked like a stranger sculpted from ice.

"How much did you hear, Elowen?" he asked.

I turned around slowly, holding the gold invitation between two fingers.

"Did you order these yesterday?" I asked, my voice surprisingly steady. "Or last week, while you were telling me about the farmhouse in Vermont we were going to buy?"

Kai didn't look at the card. His gray eyes stayed locked on my face, devoid of color, devoid of the heat that usually burned there.

"Put it down."

"It's custom embossing," I said, tracing the raised lettering of Seraphina's name. "Heavy vellum. Takes at least three weeks to print. You ordered these while I was nursing you through your pneumonia last month."

"Elowen."

"Answer me, Kai."

"It doesn't matter when they were printed," he said coldly. He closed the distance between us, stopping three feet away—farther than he had ever stood from me in this room. "What matters is what happens now."

"What happens now is you tell me his threats were empty," I said, stepping forward. "Tell me you have the board votes. You told me last Tuesday that you had sixty percent of the proxies locked down. You said—"

"I lied."

The two words hit like a physical shove.

A laugh slipped out of my throat—sharp, sudden, and completely unhinged.

Kai flinched, his jaw hardening. "What's funny?"

"You," I said, shaking my head. "Two years of secret codes. Two years of parking four blocks away in the rain so nobody saw my car near your lobby. Two years of believing you were a lion fighting for his freedom. And your father walked in here and bought your surrender in thirty seconds."

"You don't understand the scope of what he can do to you," Kai hissed, his voice dropping into a harsh register.

"I don't care about the gallery!"

"I do!" he snapped, the mask cracking for half a second before snapping shut again. "I will not let you be collateral damage for an affair that went on too long."

*An affair that went on too long.*

The air vanished from the room.

"Is that what this was?" I whispered. "An affair?"

"What else would you call it?" He pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket, opened it, and snapped it shut without taking one out. "You knew who I was when you met me. You knew what family I came from. We had an arrangement. It was good while it lasted."

"You looked me in the eye in this bed," I pointed toward the master suite, "and told me you loved me."

"Men say things in bed, Elowen."

The cruelty was so calculated, so surgically placed, that the sting didn't even register right away. It just left behind a vast, hollow numbness.

I looked down at the invitation in my hands, then ripped it in half.

The gold foil tore with a crisp, final sound. I tore it again, letting the four quarters flutter down onto his Italian marble floor.

"You're a coward," I said softly.

Kai didn't blink. He reached into his trouser pocket, produced a small brass key—the key to the private service entrance of the penthouse—and held his hand out flat.

"Leave the key," he said.

I stared at his open palm. The faint scar across his knuckles was from a broken wine glass he had caught to keep it from cutting my arm six months ago.

I pulled my copy from my pocket and dropped it into his hand. It clinked against his signet ring.

"Elowen, to this point, it ends here," Kai said, his voice flat, brutal, and final. "Don't call my private line. Don't send mail to the firm. Don't come looking for me again."

He turned his back on me and walked toward the master closet to change for dinner with his bride.

Two years of devotion, erased in thirty seconds.

I picked up my coat, stepped past the torn pieces of his wedding invitation, and walked out the door.

As the private elevator doors began to slide shut, my phone buzzed in my coat pocket.

It was an unknown number. A single message glowed on the screen:

*He gave you up to save your life. If you want revenge against the Mercer family, stay on the lobby level. Car waiting.*