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They trusted me to do better than the generation before me. And I did.
Now, I have to figure out what happens next.
I stand in the doorway, drinking her in. Sprawled across the bed, tangled in the sheets, the morning light slipping like gold over her bare skin.
How could someone be so beautiful?
The pull in my chest is sharp and painful, a raw need I can’t name.
The jet’s waiting. The world’s waiting.
But I’m not ready to leave.
Not yet.
I step into the bedroom. I know I have to leave. But before I do—
I need to taste her one more time. Feel her. Burn her into my memory.
Slowly, I approach the bed. I can’t help but run my finger across her mesmerizing face. She softly responds to the touch.
Her laptop sits too close to the edge of the bed, half hanging off like it could crash to the floor any second. She must’ve fallen asleep working.
I reach over to move it, just to set it somewhere safe, and the damn thing flips open in my hand.
The screen wakes up. And there it is.
I stare at it, the letters punching through me harder than any hit I’ve ever taken.
Three words. Three words that gut me straight through the heart. Big. Bold. Undeniable.
Volcor Holdings Scandal
The Billion-Dollar Betrayal: Volcor Holdings Profited While Families Lost Everything.
I freeze. The breath rips from my lungs like a gut punch.
A headline designed to bleed. To humiliate. To destroy.
And right there under the headline, in clean, professional black-and-white:
By Ivy Monroe
The laptop slides from my hand onto the bed. I stagger back a step, the blood roaring in my ears.
Three words. One name. One betrayal I’ll never be able to unsee.
The woman tangled in my sheets, the woman I just whispered forever to… was holding the knife the whole time.
I finish packing my shit in record time, throwing the last of it into my suitcase like it’s going to change anything.
Like moving fast will stop the way everything inside me is ripping the fuck apart.
It doesn’t.
I should leave. Just walk out the door and never look back. Get on the damn jet and forget this ever happened.
But I don’t.