Chapter 3

Then something seemed to occur to her. Her anger vanished, replaced by a strange little smile.

In a much better mood, she clicked back to Ethan’s office in her heels.

Ethan was still in his regular meeting, though it should have been nearly over.

I knocked on his office door and carried the tea inside.

Natalie and several of Ethan’s friends were engrossed in a phone.

“Damn, Ethan. He took this many…?”

But the moment I walked in, every gaze shifted to me.

Their eyes traveled up and down my body, full of mockery.

I swallowed my discomfort and lowered myself onto one knee beside the coffee table to pour their tea.

One of the rich boys picked up the cup I’d placed before him and took a leisurely sip.

Then, before I could react, he flung the tea onto my blouse.

The scalding liquid burned my chest. My bra showed clearly through the soaked fabric.

They whistled at me.

I quickly raised the tray to cover my chest.

The man who’d thrown the tea snatched the lit-up phone from Natalie and tossed it onto the coffee table.

“Why act so innocent? You weren’t this shy when you were fucking Ethan.”

The others chimed in. “Exactly.”

For a few seconds, I couldn’t process what was happening. Then I mechanically looked down at the familiar phone.

On the screen were intimate photos Ethan had taken of me.

His promises echoed in my ears.

“You’re my girlfriend. Why would I ever show these to anyone?”

“Even if I lost my phone, it’s passcode-protected. Nobody could see them.”

I felt as though they’d stripped me naked and put me on display in the middle of the street.

Their stares were dull blades scraping every inch of my skin.

Natalie lounged on the couch, admiring her fresh manicure.

She sneered. “Didn’t your parents teach you to have some self-respect—”

A pot of scalding tea splashed over her. She leaped off the couch.

“Ah! Are you insane?”

Shaking with rage, I hurled the glass teapot onto the coffee table.

It shattered, spraying glass everywhere. The men scrambled out of the way.

I picked Ethan’s phone out of the sharp fragments and opened its settings.

Just then, the office door opened.

Ethan froze when he saw the phone in my hand. Then he took in the wrecked coffee table and Natalie’s loud sobbing.

He seemed to understand what had happened. He stood motionless in the doorway, as if his mind had shut down.

The eight years I’d fought so hard to hold on to became nothing but a joke.