Chapter 2

The hotel' s entrance was blocked by velvet ropes and imposing security guards who looked straight through him. Ethan' s simple hoodie and jeans made him invisible, another face in the city's night. He couldn' t get in. He just stood across the street, the cold seeping into his bones, and waited.

Hours passed. Finally, the gilded doors swung open and a wave of guests spilled out. And then he saw them. Chloe and Harrison, laughing, her arm linked tightly through his. Harrison' s hand was resting on the small of her back. They weren' t hiding. They were basking in it.

Ethan watched them get into Harrison' s sleek black car and drive off. A part of him wanted to just go home, to crawl into bed and pretend none of this happened. But a colder, harder part of him took over. He got in his own beat-up sedan and followed them.

He followed them all the way back to the apartment building he shared with Chloe. His apartment.

He was waiting in the living room when she walked in, humming softly to herself. She stopped when she saw him standing in the shadows.

"Ethan? What are you doing up? You scared me."

"Where were you, Chloe?" His voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

She didn't even have the decency to look guilty. She tossed her purse onto the sofa. "I told you, a networking event."

"Was Julian Harrison there?"

Her composure finally cracked. A flicker of panic in her eyes. "How did you...?"

"I saw the livestream. I saw the bracelet."

She sighed, a sound of annoyance, not remorse. "Okay, fine. Yes. I was with him." She looked at him, her expression hardening. "And I' m in love with him, Ethan."

The words hit him harder than a physical blow.

"He can give me a life you can' t even dream of," she continued, her voice dripping with contempt. "I' m tired of this. Tired of this tiny apartment, tired of watching you play with your little games, pretending to be some kind of artist. You' re a broke game developer, Ethan. You' re a nobody."

He just stared at her, his mind flashing back to the day they met in a coffee shop. She' d peeked at his laptop, at the early designs for his game. "I love your passion," she had said. "It' s so much more real than all the money-obsessed people out there."

It was all a lie.

As if to prove her point, her phone rang. She answered it without hesitation, her voice instantly shifting, becoming sweet and breathless.

"Julian? Yes, I just got home... No, of course he doesn' t matter... I miss you too."

She was talking to him, right in front of Ethan. She walked into the bedroom and started pulling her designer clothes from the closet, piling them into a suitcase.

"His yacht is incredible, Ethan. You should see the penthouse. We' re going to Monaco next month."

She moved through the apartment, grabbing her things. As she passed his desk, she made a clumsy, exaggerated gesture, and her elbow connected with the top of his main monitor. It teetered for a second before crashing face-down onto the hardwood floor with a sickening crunch.

"Oops," she said, not even looking back.

She dragged her suitcase to the door. She paused, her hand on the knob, and looked at him one last time. There was no sadness in her eyes, only a cold, triumphant pity.

"Goodbye, Ethan. Have fun in your little pixel world."

The door clicked shut behind her. The sound echoed in the sudden, crushing silence.

For a long moment, Ethan didn' t move. He just looked at the shattered screen of his monitor, the broken pieces of his game, of his life. The humiliation, the betrayal-it all swirled inside him, not into sadness, but into something solid and sharp.

He was done being the victim. He was done being a nobody.

He slowly walked to the window and watched Harrison' s car pull away from the curb. Then he took out his phone. He scrolled past Chloe' s name, past his friends, all the way to a contact he hadn' t used in three years.

He pressed the call button.

"Dad," he said, his voice steady and clear. "I' m coming home."