Chapter 3

Mark recoiled as if he'd been struck. His voice was a raw, incredulous rasp.

"So, watching Chloe being humiliated in those videos, seeing your mentors' reputations destroyed, that makes you feel at ease?!"

He gestured wildly, his face contorted with disgust.

"Yesterday, I was at a cafe, and people were still gossiping about Chloe's mother, calling her a fraud, and Chloe a gold-digger, with such venom. You can't tell me you haven't heard it. Does that make you feel at ease?!"

Mark stepped closer, his voice dropping to a furious whisper.

"And it's been three years, Ethan! Chloe still flinches whenever she sees a male tech professional. And those online scars she carries, does that make you feel at ease?!"

He suddenly straightened up, his resolve hardening.

"I can't control it anymore. I'm going to have those videos taken down right now!"

Mark turned to walk away, but Ethan grabbed his arm. The two men started shoving each other, their argument escalating into a physical confrontation right there on the sidewalk.

"If you dare touch those videos," Ethan shouted, his voice cracking with rage, "our twenty-year friendship is over!"

Mark froze, his hand dropping to his side. The threat hung in the air between them, heavy and final.

Ethan wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his lip where Mark's elbow had connected. He let out a long, heavy sigh, the anger seeming to drain out of him, replaced by a weary resignation.

"Just a little longer," he pleaded, his voice now soft and persuasive. "Once Tiffany has our child, the videos will come down, and I'll make things right with Chloe. I owe her and her parents, and I'm willing to spend the rest of my life atoning. Please, Mark, just a little longer..."

Mark stared at Ethan for a long, silent moment, his expression a mixture of pity and contempt.

"You're unbelievable," he cursed, before turning his back and walking away into the darkness, leaving Ethan alone under the streetlight.

I watched it all from the driver's seat of my car.

When I finally came back to myself, my knuckles were bone-white from gripping the steering wheel so hard my palm was raw. My entire body was trembling, a violent, uncontrollable shudder that started deep in my bones.

It was all Ethan.

It was all his scheme.

To get Tiffany, the woman he truly loved, into the Vance family, he had to destroy mine.

My parents. They had mentored him for eighteen years. They had taken a promising young programmer and molded him into a Silicon Valley star. They had treated him like a son.

Without them, there would be no Ethan Vance.

And he had repaid them by orchestrating their ruin. He showed no remorse for my mother, still a public laughingstock. He showed no remorse for my father, who had died right in front of him.

The man I had loved for three years, the man I believed had saved me, was a monster.

A monster in human disguise.

Watching his retreating figure as he finally walked towards the parking garage, I collapsed over the steering wheel, and the sobs I had been holding back tore through me, raw and hysterical, echoing in the sterile confines of the car.