My Billionaire Ex Keeps Me While Loving Someone Else

That night, I sat on the edge of my bed with my laptop balanced on my knees. The apartment was quiet. The fridge hummed. A siren wailed somewhere far away. I typed "bartending jobs Meatpacking District" into the search bar and scrolled through the results.

Three places were hiring. I applied to all of them.

A lounge called Lumen called me back the next morning. The manager, a tired-looking woman named Gina, asked if I had experience. I told her I'd bartended through college. She asked when I could start. I said tomorrow.

"Late shift," she said. "Nine to two. Four nights a week. Cash tips plus hourly."

"Perfect," I said.

I started two days later.

The routine was simple. I left Pinnacle at six, took the subway downtown, changed into a black top in the Lumen bathroom, and poured drinks until two in the morning. Then I took a cab home, slept four hours, showered, and walked back into Adonis's office by eight with his coffee and his schedule.

No one noticed. No one asked why I looked tired. People in New York always look tired.

On Saturday, I went to Memorial Sloan Kettering for my first chemotherapy session. The infusion room was bright and cold. There were six chairs in a row, separated by thin curtains. A nurse named Patty found my vein on the first try and hooked up the IV. The bag hung above me, clear liquid dripping slow and steady into my arm.

I sat there for three hours. My phone buzzed every fifteen minutes. Adonis's emails. Calendar changes. A request for a revised seating chart for some investor dinner.

I answered every one. My fingers moved across the screen while the poison moved through my blood. At one point, Patty glanced at my phone and raised an eyebrow.

"Work," I said.

She shook her head. "Honey, you're allowed to rest."

I smiled at her. The small, automatic smile I had perfected over the years. "I'm fine."

I wasn't fine. The nausea hit me on the cab ride home. I made it to my bathroom just in time. I knelt on the tile floor and threw up until there was nothing left. Then I brushed my teeth, drank a glass of water, and went to bed.

Monday morning, I was back at my desk.

---

On Wednesday, Adonis called me into his office. He was standing by the window with his back to me. Haisley sat on the leather sofa, legs crossed, scrolling through her phone.

"Sit down," he said without turning around.

I sat.

"Haisley and I have an anniversary coming up," he said. He turned to face me. His expression was flat. Controlled. "I want you to coordinate a dinner. Private room at Le Bernardin. Flowers. Candles. The full thing."

"Of course," I said. I opened my notebook.

"And a card," he added. His eyes locked onto mine. "Handwritten. In your handwriting."

I looked up. "My handwriting?"

"Haisley prefers a personal touch." His voice was smooth and deliberate. "Write something warm. Romantic. You can manage that, can't you?"

The room was very quiet. Haisley had stopped scrolling. She was watching me with those sharp, careful eyes.

I held his gaze. "What would you like it to say?"

He tilted his head slightly. "Use your imagination."

I wrote the card that afternoon at my desk. I picked a cream-colored card from the stationery drawer and uncapped a pen. My hand was steady. I made sure of it.

*To Haisley — You make every room brighter. Here's to many more. — Adonis*

I stared at the words. My own handwriting, forming someone else's love. I slid the card into an envelope and sealed it.

That night at Lumen, I poured a double bourbon for a man in a gray suit who didn't look at me once. I set it on the bar and wiped down the counter. The music was loud. The lights were low. I poured myself a glass of water and drank it slowly.

I didn't think about the card. I didn't think about Adonis's voice saying *use your imagination*. I didn't think about how his jaw had tightened when I didn't flinch.

Or I tried not to.

The bourbon man left a twenty-dollar tip. I folded it into my apron and moved on to the next order.

---

Friday afternoon, I walked out of the Pinnacle building at six o'clock. The air was warm. The sidewalk was crowded with people heading home or heading out. I pulled my bag higher on my shoulder and turned toward the subway.

"SI!"

The voice hit me like sunlight. Loud, bright, and completely uncontainable. I spun around.

Kylian Robinson was standing on the sidewalk with his arms wide open and a grin that took up his entire face. He was taller than the last time I'd seen him. Broader in the shoulders. But the grin was the same — the same one he'd had at fourteen when he won his first local tournament and called me from the gaming café, shouting so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

He crossed the distance in three steps and lifted me clean off the ground.

"Kylian!" I gasped. "Put me down, you're going to break my —"

"You weigh nothing," he said, squeezing me tighter. "Have you been eating? You look skinny. Are you eating?"

He set me down and held me at arm's length, studying my face with the earnest concern of someone who had never learned to hide what he felt.

"I'm eating," I said. "What are you doing here? I thought you had qualifiers in Dallas."

"Break week," he said. He threw an arm around my shoulders and started walking, pulling me along. "Three days off before the next bracket. I took the first flight out. I wanted to see you. Also, Si, you will not believe what happened at regionals —"

And he was off. Talking at full speed about his team's draft strategy and a clutch play he made in the semifinal and how his coach said he had the best reaction time in the league. His voice bounced off the buildings. People on the sidewalk turned to look at us.

I laughed. A real laugh. It came up from somewhere deep in my chest, somewhere I had forgotten existed. It felt strange in my throat, like a muscle I hadn't used in weeks. Kylian heard it and grinned wider.

"There she is," he said. "I knew you were in there somewhere."

He pulled me closer and pressed his cheek against the top of my head. It was the easy, unthinking affection of someone who had grown up trusting me completely. I closed my eyes for half a second and let myself feel it.

Two floors above us, behind the tinted glass of his corner office, Adonis Hunter stood at the window.

I didn't know he was there. I didn't see his hand tighten around his phone until the case creaked. I didn't see the way his body went perfectly, dangerously still — no movement, no expression, just that focused quiet his staff had learned to read as the signal to leave the room.

He watched Kylian's arm around my shoulders. He watched the boy lean his head against mine. He heard nothing — the glass was too thick — but he saw my mouth open in laughter, and something behind his eyes shifted.

He didn't recognize Kylian. He didn't see the fourteen-year-old kid we'd once taken to his first esports camp together, pooling our grocery money to cover the registration fee. He saw a young man. Tall. Confident. Touching me like he had every right to.

He saw the nickname on Kylian's lips — *Si* — a name no one else used.

Adonis stood at that window for a long time after we disappeared around the corner. Marcus Vega knocked twice. Adonis didn't answer. Marcus opened the door, saw his boss's face, and quietly closed it again.