I Caught My Boyfriend Cheating With My Enemy, Then I Became His Biggest Regret

I didn't touch the folder.

"Your money," I said.

"Sit down, Ms. Morales."

"I'd rather stand."

"You've been standing all day. It shows." He pulled out a chair for me, then took the one across from it. "Sit."

I sat.

People in this town talked about Adrian Cole the way sailors talk about weather. He produced the films that swept awards season. He quietly bankrolled half the studios that pretended to compete with each other. He had ended careers with a single phone call, and in fifteen years he had never lifted a finger for an actor in trouble.

"Why are you helping me?"

He didn't answer. He nudged the folder another inch toward me.

I opened it.

Texts filled the first page. Ethan and Sienna, going back six months.

*She leaves for Atlanta on the 9th. I'll get into her cloud tonight.*

*Good boy. Brightline wants the Vancouver footage by Friday.*

A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

Adrian's eyes narrowed. "Something funny?"

"She calls him 'good boy.'" I turned the page. "He told me he left me so he could finally be his own man."

Behind the texts came the money. Wire transfers from Brightline to three gossip outlets. A line item for the *Hollywood Tonight* segment. And one entry that made my fingers go still on the paper.

*Crew testimony — $5,000 x 3.*

"The anonymous crew members," I said.

"Two of them never set foot on your sets."

"And the third?"

"Fired from one. For stealing lenses."

Every page was colder than the last. Dates. Amounts. Ethan's email forwarding my shooting schedule. Sienna approving the headline before it ran.

"They want to destroy you," Adrian said.

"I know."

At the bottom of the last invoice sat a funding source. Halcyon Marketing Reserve. And beneath it, in small print, the investor of record.

*Cole Capital.*

"You own Halcyon."

"Thirty percent. Silently." He lifted his glass but didn't drink. "Someone billed your execution to a fund I pay into and assumed I'd never read the receipts."

"Then fire them. You don't need me for that." I pushed the folder flat. "So why give me these?"

"Because I don't like people playing cheap games in my industry."

"Yours?"

"Somebody has to own it."

He said it without a trace of a smile. Then he reached down beside his chair and placed a script on the table. Plain white cover. Two words.

*Salt Year.*

"My next film," he said. "I want you for the lead."

I waited for the rest. He let me wait.

"What's the catch?"

"Several. Four-million-dollar budget. First-time director. Five months in Montana, in winter, at scale pay." He ticked them off like weather conditions. "Three financiers have walked. Two actresses passed. Nobody in this city thinks it will make a dime."

"You're really selling it."

"I don't sell. I'm telling you what it is."

"And what do I get?"

"I release the full Vancouver footage. The slate, the director calling action, the other actor in frame. And the payments to the fake crew." He tapped the folder once. "That clears part of it."

"Part."

"The rest is yours to earn. I won't buy your reputation back, Ms. Morales. If the audience forgives you, it will be because of what you do on screen. Not because of what I leak."

My throat tightened. "And *Crimson Hour*?"

"You walk away from it. Tonight. Along with every studio offer your manager is still praying for."

"That movie took me two years to get."

"I know."

"You're asking me to start over."

"I'm asking whether you can act without a billboard behind you."

It stung because it was the right question.

I pulled the script closer and opened it. He didn't push. He didn't check his watch. He just sat there while I read, the ice in his glass melting down to nothing.

Page one. A woman buries her husband and tells no one. Page ten. She lies to a sheriff with a smile on her face. By page thirty, my hands had stopped trembling, and I hadn't noticed when.

It was the best thing I had read in years. It was also a cliff.

If the film failed, there would be no Lumière. No Sunset Boulevard. Just a disgraced actress in a movie nobody saw.

If I said no, I'd spend a year begging the same people who'd paused my contracts before breakfast.

I shut the script. Opened it again. Read the last page.

Somewhere far below us, a siren wailed and faded.

"Do you have a pen?"

It was already on the table, next to a contract I hadn't seen him set down.

"You were that sure?"

"No," he said. "I was prepared. It's different."

I signed. My name looked small on the line. Smaller than it did on posters.

He countersigned without a word and handed me my copy, along with the black folder.

"Keep it. It's yours."

I tucked both under my arm and stood. I was halfway to the door when his voice stopped me.

"You really don't hate them?"

I laughed. A real one this time.

"Of course I hate them."

His eyebrow lifted. "You're carrying enough to bury them both by morning. So why not take revenge?"

I glanced down at the folder. Eight months of lies, itemized and stamped. One email to the right reporter and Ethan would never sit on a gray couch again.

I closed the cover.

"Because buried people don't have to watch," I said. "I want them to see me stand back up. With their own eyes."

He said nothing.

I walked to the door. The dark window beside it threw the whole room back at me, and in the glass I caught him watching me go. The corner of his mouth turned up.

It was the first time all night.

---

Dana called at 9:03 the next morning.

"Tell me you're sitting down."

"I'm sitting."

"Open Instagram. Sienna's page." Her voice shook with fury. "I'm so sorry, Ava. They didn't even call me first."

I opened it.

Sienna stood in front of the *Crimson Hour* poster in a white dress, one hand pressed to her heart. My face had already been scrubbed off the print behind her.

*Beyond honored to step into the lead role of Crimson Hour. Reshoots begin Monday. Sometimes the universe puts things right.* 🤍

Nine hundred thousand likes in forty minutes.

"Ava? Say something."

I scrolled to the video pinned beneath it. Sienna, glowing, leaned toward a reporter's microphone.

"Do you have a message for Ava Morales?"

She gazed straight into the lens and smiled like we were old friends.

"Just one," she said. "Thanks for keeping my seat warm."