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

Maris's POV

My phone had over two thousand notifications by the time I picked it up the next morning.

I sat there scrolling for a minute, not really reading anything, just watching the number climb while new messages stacked on top of the old ones. Names I recognized. Names I didn't. A cousin of Kellan's I'd met once, three years ago, at a wedding. A girl from my college dorm who hadn't spoken to me since graduation. My own hairdresser.

Downstairs, everything looked the same as it always did. Marion was in the kitchen the way she always was, she put a coffee in front of me and asked if I'd slept at all, which I hadn't, and left it there. My father knew who I was yesterday and knew who I was today. Nothing about our house had changed. And that was all that mattered.

The rest of the city, apparently, had a lot of catching up to do.

Kellan's mother had texted twice, asking if we could speak privately. I left both messages unread. My father mentioned over coffee that the Ardent family's lawyers had already reached his office. Yesterday, that family could barely look at me at their own event. Today they wanted an appointment.

Priya texted too, all soft and concerned, saying she'd been meaning to call and hadn't known what to say. I wrote back one line.

*How long did you know about them?*

It took her twenty minutes to answer.

*A few months. I'm sorry. I didn't know how to tell you.*

A few months. I set the phone face-down on the table and thought about the brunch we'd had two Sundays ago, how she'd asked about my weekend and told me about hers and let me sit there believing my relationship was fine. I wasn't angry, exactly. She'd chosen comfort over honesty for months, and I'd had no idea I was the one being managed.

Somewhere in the pile of messages, Saskia had put out a statement. I found it while scrolling, no warning, just her name attached to a paragraph about how she and Kellan had been together for a long time and how, in her words, I'd known things were essentially over between us. She said she felt for me. She hoped I could heal.

Last night, on that stage, she'd told the entire room that everyone knew about her and Kellan except me. Now she was saying I'd known the whole time. Both of those couldn't be true, and she didn't seem to care that they contradicted each other, which told me more about how little she thought I'd actually push back than anything else.

My father asked what I wanted to do about the Ardents.

"Not this," I said. "You're angry on my behalf."

"I wasn't planning to do anything you didn't ask for," he said, which wasn't entirely true, but I let it go.

"If I deal with Kellan," I said, "I want to do it myself."

He looked at me for a second, the way he does when he's deciding whether to argue, and then he didn't.

My phone rang twenty minutes later. The devil himself, Kellan.

I let it ring twice before I answered.

"Maris." He sounded smaller than he had on that stage. "Can we talk?"

"You already said what you wanted to say. In front of three hundred people."

"It's not that simple."

"What isn't simple, Kellan? You cheated on me for a year and announced it on a microphone."

There was a pause long enough that I almost hung up.

"I saw something," he said. "Something that made me believe you were never honest with me."

"What did you see?"

"Not over the phone."

"You had no problem humiliating me in public. Now you want privacy?"

"Please, Maris. Meet me. I'll explain everything."

"Give me a reason to."

Another pause. When he spoke again, his voice had changed.

"If you hear the whole story," he said, "you'll understand why I did what I did."

I almost laughed at that. As if there were a version of last night where his answer made any of it acceptable. I told him I had nothing else to say and ended the call before he could try again.

My phone buzzed again.

I looked down, expecting another message from the unknown number.

It wasn't.

Mr. Ardent: Maris, I would like to speak with you. Would you have lunch with me tomorrow?