My Ex Humiliated Me, Then I Became the Heiress He Lost to His Dad

Maris's POV

I'd barely gotten my shoes off when I heard the front door.

I hadn't expected him this fast. My father lived twenty minutes away on a good night, and it hadn't been twenty minutes. He must have left before I even finished typing the text, which meant someone at the gala had already called him before I did.

He came into the living room still in his coat, and the first thing he did was look me over, head to foot, the way he used to when I was twelve and came home late from somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Not physically."

He checked anyway. He sat down across from me instead of hovering over me, which I appreciated more than I could have explained, and waited.

"Tell me what happened," he said.

So I did. Kellan onstage, the microphone, the way the whole room had leaned in expecting a proposal. Saskia walking out in that dress. The kiss. The part where she told everyone Kellan had been hers for almost a year, like she'd been waiting months to say it out loud in front of an audience. I told him people had their phones out before Kellan even finished his sentence, that it had all been livestreamed, that by the time I left the ballroom the number of people watching had already climbed past anything I wanted to look at.

He listened without interrupting. That was worse, somehow, than if he'd started asking questions right away. My father gets quieter the angrier he is. By the time I got to the part where Saskia said everyone already knew, he hadn't moved at all.

"He told me I was never really part of his world," I said. "Not really. He said some part of me always knew that."

My father's jaw shifted, just slightly. "He said that to you?"

"In front of three hundred people."

He didn't say anything for a second. Then, quietly: "He's wrong."

I appreciated that he didn't waste time defending Kellan's phrasing or asking if I'd misunderstood him. He just accepted it as fact and moved past it, which was somehow more comforting than a long speech would have been.

"I thought he was going to propose," I admitted. It came out smaller than I meant it to. "He'd been acting strange for two weeks. Hiding his phone. Taking calls in the hallway. I caught him looking at rings online and he panicked and closed the tab. I convinced myself it meant something."

I braced for him to tell me that was foolish, that I should have known better, that I'd built an entire evening out of nothing. He didn't.

"You believed someone you loved was about to make you a promise," he said. "That's not foolishness, Maris. That's what loving someone is supposed to feel like. He's the one who turned it into something else."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding onto. It didn't fix anything. But it was nice to hear it said like a fact instead of something meant to make me feel better.

"I'm having the worst night of my life," I said, "in the living room of one of the richest men on the planet. There's something almost funny about that."

"There is nothing funny about tonight," he said, though the corner of his mouth moved anyway.

I'd grown up around what that meant, Veyne Technologies, the shipping lines, the real estate that sat under half the skylines people photographed for fun, a media company he barely paid attention to because it bored him. Kellan's family had spent years trying to get invitations to rooms my father didn't bother walking into. I'd never hidden any of it. I'd never told anyone I was anything other than exactly who I was. I just hadn't made his net worth the first thing I said when I met someone. There's a difference between not lying about who your father is and walking into a room announcing it like a job title. I'd always chosen the first one. Kellan's family had simply never asked the right questions to find out how much they didn't already know.

"Where was it held?" my father asked. "Tonight."

"The Aldric," I said.

"The Aldric?"

"It's the Ardent family's property. Kellan's grandfather built it."

He was quiet for a moment. "Who owns it now?"

"The Ardents. Obviously."

He took out his phone.

"Buy it," he said, to whoever picked up on the other end after telling them exactly what he wanted them to buy as if he were simply ordering dinner.

I stared at him. "Dad."

"What?"

"You cannot just buy a hotel because I had a bad night."

"You had a bad night at their hotel," he said, like that settled the matter entirely.

"It's not our hotel."

"It will be," he said, and hung up.

I didn't know whether to laugh or put my head in my hands, so I did a little of both.

"That's insane," I told him.

"What do you want me to do about Kellan?" he asked.

I thought about it honestly. Some furious, wounded part of me wanted to say *ruin him,* but I didn't trust that part of me tonight. I was too raw, and I didn't want the first decision I made after tonight to come from anger instead of clarity.

"I don't know yet," I said.

"That's fine," he said. "You don't have to know tonight." Then, almost to himself: "But nobody humiliates my daughter on a livestream and simply moves on with his evening."

I didn't ask what that meant. I had the feeling I was about to find out anyway.

My phone buzzed on the table between us. Then it buzzed again. I picked it up, the notifications were not just messages anymore. News alerts. A business account I followed for no real reason had posted something with my name in it.

I opened one.

*WHO IS MARIS VEYNE? THE HEIRESS AT THE CENTER OF TONIGHT'S ARDENT GALA SCANDAL*

There was a photo of me from a charity dinner two years ago, and under it, in smaller text, my father's name and a number I didn't want to think about too closely.

I scrolled through the comments that were already climbing.

*Wait. THAT Maris?*

*Kellan Ardent dumped ALARIC VEYNE'S daughter on a livestream? Is he out of his mind?*

*She was with him for THREE YEARS and nobody put this together??*

My phone rang and I let it go to voicemail. It rang again almost immediately. Then a third time. Then a text from someone I hadn't spoken to since college, asking if I was okay, which felt less like concern and more like a way of getting my number back into her phone.

My father glanced at the screen, then back at me. "You don't owe any of them a conversation tonight."

"I know," I said, and set the phone face-down.

He looked at his own phone, read something, and made a small sound that might have been amusement. "Well," he said. "That was quick."

"What was?"

"The Aldric. Already sold."

I put my head in my hands properly this time. "You bought a hotel in the time it took me to read one article about myself."

"I have a very efficient assistant."

Kellan hadn't just humiliated his girlfriend on a stage in front of three hundred people.

He'd humiliated Maris Veyne, in a hotel my father now owned, and by morning the entire city was going to know exactly whose daughter he'd chosen to embarrass on a livestream.