Chapter 3

Ethan tried to reassure me, of course.

"It's nothing, Sarah, just being polite," he said after a few days of exchanging messages with Chloe.

He'd show me snippets of their conversations, mostly Chloe asking about his business, him giving vague, professional answers.

"See? All business," he'd say, kissing my forehead.

But I knew Chloe, she wasn't interested in "all business" unless it served her purpose.

She was undermining us, slowly, subtly, and Ethan was letting her.

I saw her comments on his less private social media posts, little inside jokes forming, a digital intimacy that excluded me.

She was a shadow, always lurking.

Chloe's strategic offer came sooner than I expected.

She "learned" about Ethan's new venture, expanding his tech startup into European markets, something he'd only recently decided.

Information he hadn't even fully shared with me yet, but somehow, Chloe knew.

"Ethan, darling," she'd apparently DMed him, a screenshot he reluctantly showed me, "I was just talking to an old associate of David's in Berlin, he's looking for exactly your kind of innovative platform."

She offered to make introductions, leverage "David's old network."

Ethan, ambitious to a fault, was visibly tempted.

"This could be huge, Sarah," he said, his eyes gleaming. "These are contacts I could never get on my own."

"But Chloe..." I started, feigning worry.

"I know, I know, but this is purely professional, it could fast-track everything by years."

His ambition was a powerful current, and Chloe was expertly navigating it, pulling him further away from shore, and closer to her.

He accepted her help, of course.

Dinners became "business meetings" with Chloe. Late-night calls were "strategy sessions."

I watched him dress in his best suits, a new cologne, a brighter spark in his eyes.

When I feigned tears one evening, accusing him of spending more time with her than with me, he was quick to dismiss my concerns.

"Sarah, don't be like this, it's for us, for our future," he said, a line so cliché it was almost laughable.

"She's surprisingly helpful, actually, knows a lot of people."

He believed his own lies, or perhaps, he simply didn't care about the truth as long as his goals were met.

My feigned betrayal masked a cold, calculating satisfaction, he was falling for it, beautifully.

Chloe became a fixture in Ethan's professional life.

Her name peppered his conversations, "Chloe suggested this," "Chloe introduced me to that."

They attended industry events together, "networking opportunities" he called them.

He justified it all by pointing to the tangible results, new leads, potential investors, glowing articles in obscure tech blogs that Chloe probably paid for.

"See, Sarah? It's working, my company's valuation is going up," he'd boast, as if that would placate me.

He was so blinded by his ambition, so easily manipulated by the promise of success.

He was exactly the kind of man I knew he was, the kind of man Chloe deserved, and the kind of man who would destroy her.