At our final wedding planning lunch in Manhattan I made the mistake of telling the waitress my future husband hated olives and could she please take them away, and Ethan turned to me with that cold, polished charm he used on everyone and said in a low, dangerous voice: Don’t ever call me your future husband again—we’re only engaged, don’t make it sound so final.

I stumbled into the stairwell, sliding down the cinder block wall until I was sitting on the cold concrete, phone shaking in my hand.

The photo was blurry, taken from the closet, I thought. I was asleep, face turned to the wall. I didn’t even remember Ethan visiting me that weekend. He’d said he was out of town with his dad.

He’d been planning this for six years.

Not two.

Six.

My whole adult life.

I deleted the email, but it was too late. The image was burned into my brain. I could feel the heat rising up my neck, the same way I’d felt at that lunch, but this wasn’t anger. It was shame. Deep, burning shame that coiled in my stomach and made me want to throw up.

He could destroy me.

Not just the company.

Me.

My reputation. My dignity. Every part of me I’d spent 28 years building.

The stairwell door creaked open.

I jumped, shoving my phone in my purse, ready to fight.

It was Javi.

Javier Mendez. My college boyfriend. The man I’d left for Ethan six years ago, because Ethan was richer, more polished, the kind of man my parents approved of. Javi was now an investigative reporter at the New York Gazette, the only reporter in the city who’d ever had the balls to write negative stories about Voss Global.

He looked the same. Dark curly hair, warm brown eyes, a scar on his left eyebrow from the time we’d crashed his motorcycle in the Hamptons. He was wearing a faded flannel and jeans, a press pass slung around his neck, holding two paper coffee cups.

“Hey,” he said, soft. “Your dad texted me. Said you might need a friend.”

Of course he did. Dad had always loved Javi. Even after I broke up with him.

“I don’t need a reporter,” I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

“Good,” he said, sitting down next to me. “Because I’m off the clock. And these are oat milk lattes. Your favorite. Just how you used to like them.”

He held one out.

I stared at it for a long time. Then I took it.

The warmth seeped into my cold fingers.

“He has photos of me,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Naked ones. Taken without my knowledge. He’s blackmailing me. Says if I don’t give him the money back and marry him, he’ll send them to everyone.”

Javi’s face went hard. The warm brown eyes turned to flint.

“Ethan,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded.

“Show me the email.”

I pulled it up. He took my phone, his fingers brushing mine, and studied it for a full minute. He didn’t stare at the photo. He looked at the header. The metadata. The timestamp.

“Sent from a burner,” he said, handing it back. “Routed through three servers in Eastern Europe. He’s good. But not that good.”

He pulled out his own phone, tapped a few times.

“I’ve been digging into Ethan for three months,” he said. “A source tipped me off that his company was a shell. That the bridge loans were just a way to launder money. I was going to run the story next week. But if he’s blackmailing you? If he has non-consensual photos? That changes everything. That’s not just fraud. That’s a felony. Ten years minimum.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “You could have warned me.”

He looked at me, and for a second I saw the boy I’d loved, the one who’d stayed up with me all night when my grandma died, who’d written me bad poetry on napkins, who’d never once made me feel less than perfect.

“Because you were happy,” he said, quiet. “Or at least you looked happy. And I didn’t want to be the guy who ruined it. The guy who came crawling back just to tell you your fiancé was a monster. I thought… I thought you’d think I was just jealous.”

I stared at him.

“Were you?” I said.

He didn’t look away.

“Every single day,” he said. “I’ve never stopped being jealous of him. Because he got to have you. And I never did.”

The stairwell was quiet. Just the hum of the ventilation system and the distant beep of a heart monitor somewhere down the hall.

I took a sip of my latte. It was perfect. Just how I liked it.

“Help me,” I said.

“Anything,” he said, no hesitation.

“We need to find those photos,” I said. “Where he’s keeping them. All copies. Before he sends them. And we need to take him down so completely he never gets out of prison. But we can’t let the board find out about the embezzlement. And we can’t let my dad get more stressed. He can’t handle it.”

Javi nodded, already typing on his phone.

“I have a friend in the cyber crimes unit at NYPD,” he said. “Ex-military. She owes me a favor. I’ll have her trace the email. See if we can find the server the photos are stored on. In the meantime… do you have any idea what else he has on you? Any other secrets?”

I thought of my mom, screaming that we were a family of liars.

I thought of Brooke, sobbing that she had gambling debts.

I thought of the way Ethan had smiled when he said he had dirt on people I couldn’t even imagine.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But whatever it is? He’s going to use it. And I need to be ready.”

My phone buzzed again.

This time it was a text.

From Ethan.

5 PM, Clara. Tick tock.

Attached was another photo.

This one was of my dad.

Taken through the window of his hospital room, ten minutes ago.