MARRYING THE BILLIONAIRE DON TO RUIN MY THREE BETRAYING FIANCÉS

Two weeks earlier.

The mahogany desk had belonged to three generations of Chapmans before me. I ran my thumb along a scratch near the corner — one I'd made at age seven with a letter opener — and waited for my father to look up from his papers.

"Dad."

Howard Chapman turned the page of his ledger without raising his head. "Mm."

"I want to cancel the engagements."

That got his attention. His pen stopped mid-stroke, and he lifted his gaze over the rim of his reading glasses.

"All three of them?"

"All three."

He set the pen down slowly, lining it up parallel to the ledger's spine. A habit he had when he was thinking hard and didn't want anyone to know it.

"Yoel, Liam, and Nelson," he said, as though tasting each name. "You want to break it off with every single one."

"They don't want me, Dad. They never did." I kept my voice even. I'd rehearsed this in the mirror twice. "They've made that clear enough."

He leaned back in his chair. The afternoon light cut through the tall windows behind him, catching the dust motes drifting between us.

"And I suppose you have a replacement in mind."

"Bruce Sullivan."

His eyebrows rose a full inch. "Salvatore Sullivan's boy?"

"He's hardly a boy. He runs Sullivan Capital. Forbes put his net worth at—"

"I know what his net worth is." My father pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "What I don't know is why you think he'd agree."

"Because I already had a preliminary conversation with his people. They're open to it."

Silence. He studied me the way he studied contracts — line by line, looking for the clause that would bite him later.

"You've grown up, Shirley."

"I had to."

He stood, came around the desk, and placed his hand on my shoulder. The weight of it was warm and steady, the same way it had felt when I was small and the world seemed fixable.

"I'll handle it personally," he said. "The Sullivan match — I'll make the call tonight."

"Thank you."

He squeezed once, then let go and walked toward the double doors. His footsteps were unhurried, confident. A man who still believed he could arrange the world to his daughter's advantage.

The doors clicked shut behind him.

I exhaled and pressed my palms flat against the desk. The hardest part was over.

Or so I thought.

Less than two minutes passed before the doors flew open again — not with a click this time, but a crack that rattled the hinges.

Yoel Henderson came through first.

He was the tallest of the three, with a jaw that could have been cut from the same mahogany as the desk. His dark eyes locked onto me before his body had fully cleared the doorframe.

"Who is it?"

His hand found my shoulder — not the way my father's had. His fingers dug in, grinding against bone.

"Yoel, let go of me."

"Who did you pick?" His voice was low, coiled tight. "We heard every word through that door. Every. Word."

Liam Lawrence shouldered past him and slapped something onto the desk between my hands. A glossy brochure. The crest of St. Hartwell University gleamed up at me in navy and gold.

"You see this?" Liam jabbed his finger at the cover. "This is where Amelia got accepted. Full ride. Do you know how long she's worked for that?"

I stared at the brochure, then at him. "What does Amelia Jones's college acceptance have to do with my engagement?"

"Everything." Liam's lip curled. "Because we're going to marry her. Not you. We were always going to marry her."

The words landed like a slap, but I didn't flinch. I'd stopped flinching around these three a long time ago.

Nelson Smith lingered near the doorway, arms crossed, watching. He was always the quiet one — the one who let the other two swing first and then twisted the knife after.

"You've been blocking us for years, Shirley," Nelson said. His tone was almost conversational, which made it worse. "This engagement your father arranged — it's a leash. You know that."

"A leash." I repeated the word flatly.

"On us," Yoel said. He still hadn't released my shoulder. "On our futures. On Amelia's future."

I reached up and peeled his fingers off one by one. He let me, but his hand hovered in the air like he might grab me again.

"You think I wanted this?" I stood, pushing the chair back. It scraped against the hardwood. "You think I enjoyed being engaged to three men who can barely stand to look at me?"

"Then why didn't you end it sooner?" Liam shot back.

"I just did. Five minutes ago. You would know that if you'd listened to the whole conversation instead of just the parts that made you angry."

Liam opened his mouth, then closed it.

Yoel's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, you ended it?"

"I asked my father to cancel all three engagements. He agreed."

The room went quiet. Nelson uncrossed his arms. Liam glanced at Yoel. Something shifted between them — not relief, exactly, but a crack in the wall of hostility they'd walked in with.

"So we're free," Nelson said carefully.

"You were never prisoners."

"Could've fooled me," Yoel muttered.

Before I could respond, the double doors swung open a third time.

Howard Chapman filled the frame. His reading glasses were back on, perched low on his nose, and he held his phone in one hand like a gavel.

"Good. You're all here." His gaze swept over the three men, then settled on me. "I just got off the phone with the Sullivans."

My pulse kicked up. "Already?"

"They've been waiting for this call longer than you think." My father smiled — a rare, full smile that reached his eyes. "Shirley, you'll be married in one month."

The silence that followed was different from the one before. Heavier. Sharper.

Yoel's face went blank. Liam's jaw hung open, the St. Hartwell brochure forgotten under his hand. Nelson took a half-step back as though the words had physically pushed him.

"One month?" Yoel's voice cracked on the second word.

My father ignored him. He looked only at me.

"I'll have the details drawn up by morning. Get some rest tonight."

Then he turned, stepped into the hallway, and pulled both doors shut behind him.

The lock engaged with a heavy, final click.

I was sealed inside with three men who had just learned that the woman they despised was about to become untouchable — and the fury building behind their eyes told me this conversation was far from over.