My Boyfriend Cheated in Front of My Brother's Rival

"You gave him the password, Riley."

Marcus Thorne, head of Seattle’s legal department, tapped his pen against the printed timestamps I had just submitted.

"Evan had authorized access to your shared workspace," Marcus continued, his voice void of sympathy. "He saw the drafts. That does not prove theft. More importantly, it does not explain how Sloane acquired the secondary tagline. That file never even touched the team server."

I gripped the edge of the conference table. "She took it from my personal backup drive."

"Which you left unattended at a public charity mixer," Marcus countered.

My supervisor, David, sighed from the corner of the room. "We are pulling you off the Cold Front winter campaign. The team cannot afford a public intellectual property war with a popular creator."

"That is my concept," I argued, keeping my voice steady.

"You keep shooting the Vancouver documentary," David instructed, ignoring my protest. "But if this investigation concludes that internal team assets leaked through your private cloud authorization, we will be reviewing your professional judgment."

The door clicked shut behind me a minute later. Evan was not in the meeting, but his ghost sat right next to me, turning my own trust into a weapon. I was paying the price for mixing my career and my relationship in the same cloud account.

Two hours later, the smell of cheap floor wax and frozen water hit me inside the community rink.

"I am not signing sticks for a B-roll montage," Declan told the foundation director, adjusting his helmet strap. "Get the cameras off me. Film the kids."

I kept my lens focused on the ice. I expected the league to force a standard bad-boy-plays-nice narrative for his image rehab. Instead, Declan directed the production crew to focus entirely on the volunteer coaches and the first-time skaters wobbling on the blue line.

A small boy in oversized shoulder pads hovered near the bench, refusing to step onto the ice.

Declan skated over and crouched, his skates carving a sharp edge into the surface.

"Are you scared of hitting the ice, or scared of them watching you hit it?" Declan asked.

The boy gripped the boards. "Both."

Declan nodded. He stood up, took two strides, and threw his weight backward. He hit the ice hard, his massive frame sliding comically into the corner boards.

The entire group of kids erupted into laughter.

Declan sat up, brushing snow off his jersey. He looked at the boy and held out his massive gloved hand. The kid smiled, grabbed it, and stepped onto the ice.

I recorded the raw footage. I did not adjust the lighting to make him look softer. I did not plan to cut it with emotional acoustic music.

During the water break, Declan skated over to my position by the glass.

"Will the engagement metrics look good?" he asked, leaning on his stick.

"Doesn't matter if they look good," I told him, checking my audio levels. "At least it isn't fake."

Declan stared at me through the scuffed plexiglass. "You should save that line for yourself."

My thumb paused on the dial. He already knew about the internal investigation from Jenna. He knew my job was on the line, but he did not use the moment to ask about Evan.

Ten minutes later, Declan’s phone rang on the bench. He answered it, his posture instantly stiffening. When he returned to the ice for the shooting demonstration, his focus was completely gone. He snapped a wrist shot too high, sending the heavy rubber puck crashing into the safety netting above the glass.

I found him in the locker room corridor after the session. He sat on a metal bench, staring at his phone screen.

I stepped closer to hand him the microphone pack. My eyes caught the bright white email display on his screen.

Vale Family Grill - secured account review.

Below the subject line, I saw the name Sarah Vale and the words residence collateral.

I shifted my gaze immediately to the floor.

Declan slammed the phone face-down on the bench. The sharp crack of the plastic case echoed in the narrow hall.

"How much did you read?" he demanded, his voice turning dangerously cold.

I dropped the microphone pack onto his gym bag. "I wasn't trying to read your email."

"You were standing right over my shoulder."

I squared my stance, refusing to back up. "I cut the camera feed twice for you yesterday when you asked. I do not steal private information to get ahead."

Declan stood up. He towered over me, his chest rising and falling heavily. The hostility radiated off him, thick and suffocating. But as he searched my face, the rigid tension in his jaw slowly cracked.

"I'm used to people taking a detail and turning it into a story," he muttered. It was a terrible, jagged apology.

"Then get used to me asking to film first," I fired back.

We stood there in the concrete hallway. Neither of us walked away. For the first time, we let the conflict burn out in the space between us instead of retreating.

At eight o'clock that night, Sloane went live on her channel to officially launch the Cold Front project.

I sat at my kitchen island, watching the stream on my laptop. The details were worse than the charity mixer. The duo glove-tap challenge I had specifically designed for Mason and Grant Keller was now playing out on screen between Sloane and a random minor-league player.

My phone vibrated on the marble counter.

Grant: This isn't just overlapping ideas. She ripped the entire sequence.

A second message popped up. Declan. No text, just a link.

I clicked it. It opened an archived database of Sloane’s content from the past two years. The search parameters were already set. It proved she had never used a winter-survival concept before this week. Declan offered no comforting words, just hard evidence.

I compiled the link, the stream screenshots, and my original storyboard into a new folder. I was going to send it straight to Marcus Thorne in legal.

My phone rang.

Evan’s name flashed on the screen.

I answered it, putting him on speaker.

"You really outdid yourself with the stream, Evan," I said.

"You need to drop the IP claim, Riley," Evan replied. His tone was perfectly calm. It sounded exactly like the voice he used when asking what I wanted for dinner last week.

"She stole my work. You handed it to her."

"If you keep chasing the Cold Front campaign," Evan said, his voice dropping to a smooth, threatening pitch, "I will call Jenna Ortiz and tell her you brought Seattle’s internal media assets to Vancouver just to secure your filming access with Vale."