The One My Heart Craves

Sophia Martinez POV

Thunder crashed across the Manhattan skyline as I stepped out of my private car onto Fifth Avenue, dismissing my driver's offer of an umbrella. The September storm soaked through my Chanel suit, but I was beyond caring. After twenty-two hours of travel from our Los Angeles headquarters, all I craved was collapsing into my fiancé's arms and sleeping away the jet lag that made my bones ache.

Five years. We'd been inseparable for five years, since I was eighteen and fresh out of Dalton, and he was twenty-one, Harvard-bound and devastatingly charming. I'd relocated to the West Coast three years ago with my father and twin brother to spearhead Martinez Beauty Empire's Silicon Valley expansion, completing my MBA at Stanford while remotely managing our digital transformation. Now, at twenty-three, I was back in New York City, ostensibly to begin my executive training program at our flagship Manhattan headquarters, but truthfully to finally reunite with the man who'd owned my heart since prep school.

At least, that's what I believed.

"Welcome home, Miss Martinez," the doorman greeted me with practiced deference in the marble lobby of our exclusive Central Park West high-rise. "Shall I ring up Mr. Williams?"

My smile appeared instinctively, those trademark dimples that graced magazine covers emerging despite bone-deep exhaustion. "That won't be necessary, Marcus. I want this to be a surprise."

My amber eyes glittered with anticipation as the private elevator whisked me to the penthouse level. I'd orchestrated this homecoming like a military operation, convincing my father to approve my transfer, coordinating with our PR team to keep my early return under wraps, even arranging for the housekeeper to stock his favorite wine. All to surprise the man I'd dreamed about every night for three years.

The elevator opened directly into our foyer, our foyer, decorated with the art we'd selected together at Sotheby's auctions, walls that held the ghosts of our laughter and whispered promises. I keyed in the security code (his birthday: 04-15-1999) and stepped inside, my Saint Laurent heels clicking against Italian marble as I wheeled my Louis Vuitton luggage behind me.

Soft jazz drifted from the bedroom, and champagne-colored light spilled from beneath the door. The scene felt intimate, romantic even, exactly what I'd hoped to find.

"Ethan?" I called out, kicking off my rain-soaked Louboutins. "Baby, I'm home!"

Silence.

I frowned, checking my Cartier watch, 9:47 PM. Too early for sleep, especially for someone who regularly pulled all-nighters trading crypto. Maybe he was taking one of those ridiculously long showers that had become his stress-relief ritual?

Padding barefoot down the hallway, I left a trail of rainwater on floors we'd chosen together during that magical weekend in Italy two summers ago. As I approached our bedroom, a sound froze the blood in my veins, a woman's throaty laugh, followed by a rumbling masculine chuckle that I could identify in my sleep.

My manicured hand shook as I pressed against the mahogany door.

The tableau before me seared itself into my memory with photographic precision: Egyptian cotton sheets twisted in abandon, two empty Dom Pérignon flutes catching lamplight, and my fiancé of five years entwined with another woman in the bed where we'd made love countless times.

"Well," I said, my voice achieving a supernatural calm that belied the nuclear explosion detonating in my chest, "this is certainly a surprise."

Ethan Williams bolted upright like he'd been electrocuted, his face draining to the color of bone china. "Sophia? Jesus Christ, you're not supposed to be back until Thursday!"

The woman beside him, a stunning brunette with the kind of effortless beauty that graced Vogue covers, didn't even flinch. Instead, she appraised me with calculating green eyes, as if I were the interloper in this scenario.

"So you're the legendary Sophia Martinez," she drawled, her cultured accent placing her somewhere between the Hamptons and Swiss finishing schools. "I was starting to wonder if Ethan had invented you entirely."

I ignored her existence, laser-focusing on the twenty-six-year-old Wall Street golden boy I'd surrendered five years of my life to. The same man whose ring, a flawless four-carat Tiffany solitaire, still weighted my left hand like an anchor.

"How long?" The question emerged as two surgical strikes.

Ethan scrambled from the bed, hastily wrapping our Ralph Lauren sheets around his waist like a toga of shame. "Soph, baby, this isn't what you think.."

"HOW. LONG." Each syllable dropped like a guillotine blade.

"Ten months," the woman supplied with feline satisfaction, stretching languidly as she reached for her scattered La Perla lingerie. "Though we didn't become exclusive until after your last visit. That romantic weekend in February, I believe?"

The betrayal struck me like a physical assault. February, when I'd flown cross-country for Valentine's Day, when Ethan had proposed on one knee in Central Park as snow fell around us like a fairy tale, when I'd said yes through tears of joy while tourists applauded our perfect love story.

"You're lying," I whispered, though the guilt radiating from Ethan's face told a different story entirely.

"Sophia, please, just let me explain," Ethan begged, reaching for me with hands that had touched another woman mere moments ago.

I stepped backward, my rain-soaked Hermès dress suddenly feeling like a burial shroud. These walls, these floors, this entire life we'd built, all of it contaminated now.

"Explain what, precisely?" My voice climbed octaves with each word. "Explain how you proposed while she was warming your bed? Explain how you whispered 'I love you' during our FaceTime calls while planning vacations with her? Explain how you made me believe I was your future while treating me like your past?"

The woman, I recognized her now as Victoria Sterling, the pharmaceutical heiress whose engagement to some European prince had dominated gossip columns last year, slid from beneath our defiled sheets without an ounce of shame. Her body was flawless, the kind of perfection that personal trainers and plastic surgeons collaborated to create.

"He told me your relationship was essentially over," Victoria commented conversationally, stepping into her Louboutin heels as if we were discussing the weather. "That you were building a permanent life in California. That your engagement was merely a business arrangement to appease your families' merger discussions."

My carefully constructed composure shattered like crystal hitting concrete. I spun toward Ethan, amber eyes blazing with the fury of a woman scorned. "Is that what you told her? That we were fake? That everything between us was just corporate theater?"

"No! God, no!" Ethan protested, shooting Victoria a look that could have melted steel. "She's twisting everything!"

"Am I?" Victoria arched one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Show her your phone then, darling. Show her our texts from this afternoon. The ones about our weekend in the Hamptons."

The silence that followed could have suffocated angels.

Ethan's expression confirmed every horrible suspicion.

With trembling fingers, I twisted the engagement ring from my finger, five years of love and dreams and promises reduced to expensive carbon. I hurled it at Ethan's chest, where it struck his skin and clattered to the floor like falling stars.

"I turned down Goldman Sachs for you," I said, my voice fracturing along invisible fault lines. "I convinced Daddy to approve my New York transfer permanently, for you. I even declined the McKinsey fellowship in London because you said the distance was destroying us."

Ethan went white as parchment. "You... you turned down McKinsey? Sophia, why would you?"

"BECAUSE I LOVED YOU!" The words exploded from my chest like shrapnel, tears finally spilling down my cheeks in rivers of mascara. "Because I thought we were building forever together! Because I believed every lie you whispered in my ear!"

"We can still have that," Ethan said desperately, lunging toward me. "This was just a mistake, a moment of weakness."

"A mistake?" My laugh could have cut diamonds. "A mistake is missing our anniversary dinner. A mistake is forgetting to pick up my dry cleaning. Conducting a year-long affair while planning our wedding? That's not a mistake, Ethan. That's a choice. That's who you really are."

I turned toward the door, somehow maintaining my dignity despite looking like a drowned socialite with a demolished heart.

"Sophia, wait!" Ethan grabbed my wrist with desperate fingers. "Where will you go? This is your home too! We can work through this!"

I wrenched away from his touch like it burned, my trademark dimples flashing in a smile that held zero warmth.

"My home?" I laughed, the sound sharp enough to draw blood. "Darling, you seem to have forgotten something crucial."

I walked to the foyer in measured steps, grabbing only my Birkin bag and leaving the expensive luggage scattered like abandoned dreams. At the threshold, I turned back for one final moment, drinking in the sight of his panic-stricken face.

"The penthouse deed is in my name, Ethan. A graduation gift from Daddy, remember? Expect Martinez family lawyers to contact you in the morning about... relocation arrangements."

I paused, my hand on the door handle, and delivered the killing blow with surgical precision:

"Oh, and Victoria? You might want to get tested. Since Ethan here might have quite a history with overlapping relationships. you should know, since you are used to being the other woman too."

The door closed behind me with the finality of a coffin lid, sealing away five years of my life and every naive belief I'd ever harbored about love conquering all.

Thunder crashed overhead as I stepped into the storm, but since I saw them tangled together, I felt like I could finally breathe.