He Skipped Our Wedding, So I Married His Rival

Chapter 4

At 8 p.m., Ethan published a long post.

More than 2,000 words.

The title was 4 Years of Love, Lost to Her Ambition.

He portrayed himself as a man who'd spent years being neglected, controlled, and distrusted by his career-driven fiancée.

He said Sophia was just a girl he'd grown up with, someone he thought of as a younger sister.

That she'd always had poor health, and he only looked after her out of a sense of responsibility.

That I wouldn't let him have any female friends and had demanded that my team take over his personal social media accounts once we were married.

Finally, he even suggested that Alex and I had been involved in business dealings for a long time.

The wedding was merely the chance I'd been waiting for to make a "legitimate switch."

I read it from beginning to end.

I wasn't angry.

I just thought it was absurd.

Ethan had done the same thing during our first argument about Sophia, 4 years ago.

Instead of explaining why he'd broken a promise, he'd asked why I couldn't trust him.

Every time after that, he used the same reasoning.

If something came up and he couldn't leave, I was being unreasonable.

If he spent my birthday with Sophia, I was being petty.

If he flew away on our wedding day and I refused to sit and wait, I was the one who'd fallen out of love first.

He'd used that logic for 4 years. It never changed.

My phone suddenly rang.

Ethan.

I answered.

He launched straight into an accusation. "Why haven't you explained yourself?"

I nearly laughed.

"What would you like me to explain?"

"When exactly did you and Alex get together?"

"At 10:27 this morning."

He faltered.

"That's the time on the marriage license," I added.

Silence fell on the other end.

A few seconds later, his voice rose. "Elena, do you really have to humiliate me like this? All I did was take care of someone who was sick!"

"What was Sophia's temperature?" I asked.

"102.2°F."

"And the asthma was serious?"

"She almost had to go to the ER!"

I opened my computer and clicked the page Megan had just sent me.

The production Sophia was working on had posted a wrap video to its public promotional account at 11:47 p.m. the night before.

There she was in heels and her costume, holding a cake as she posed with the crew.

At 1 a.m., another actor had photographed her drinking champagne at the hotel bar.

I put the call on speaker.

"Ethan, if she had a 102.2°F fever and asthma so bad she almost needed the ER, why was she still on set at 11 last night and drinking at 1 a.m.?"

He went quiet for 2 seconds.

His first reaction wasn't to explain.

It was to ask, "You've been checking up on me?"

This time, I really did laugh.

"Trust is built on honesty. You've never given me that foundation."

I hung up.

Alex was sitting at the other end of the conference table.

He looked up at me. "Finally figured it out."

"It took 4 years."

"Expensive lesson."

"It was."

But I knew this wasn't some revelation worth celebrating.

It was someone who'd taken 4 years to wake up finally learning to stop lying to herself.

Megan put another piece of evidence on the screen.

"It gets better."

Sophia hadn't gone to the hospital at all that day.

At 10 a.m., she'd appeared in the official group photo from a brand's breakfast event in Westhaven. Shortly after noon, she appeared again in a behind-the-scenes video the brand posted.

The photo of Ethan supposedly keeping vigil at her bedside was an old one, taken when Sophia had been hospitalized during a shoot 2 years ago.

He hadn't even changed the background.

I sat in silence for a few seconds.

Alex wasn't laughing, either.

He pushed a folder toward me.

"Elena, I was going to wait until the wedding mess was over before giving you this.

"Looks like there's no reason to wait."

I opened the folder.

The first document mapped the flow of funds from the financing round 3 years ago.

The second contained registration details for several consulting companies.

The third was a record of transactions between Lane Group and one of those shell companies.

My fingertips went still.

Alex said, "3 years ago, someone deliberately submitted a fabricated due diligence report to the investment committee. It got your funding rejected at the final review.

"I always assumed it was a competitor's move.

"Until 6 months ago, when I traced that company's last consulting payment back to Lane Group."

I looked up at him.

"Richard?"

"Yes."

He paused.

"But that's not even the worst part."

Alex turned the tablet toward me.

An email from 3 years ago filled the screen.

He said it had come from the consulting firm's former head of compliance, who'd voluntarily handed over the old project files after leaving the company 6 months earlier.

From: Ethan Lane

To: Richard Lane

The body was only two lines long.

If she gets this funding, she won't need us anymore.

Let her fall once, and she'll be willing to fold her company into Lane Group.

I stared at those two sentences and almost forgot to breathe.

Abandoning the wedding was only the humiliation Ethan had chosen for me today.

He'd been sabotaging my career as far back as 3 years ago.

And back then, I'd thought he was the man who'd stood by me through the hardest time of my life.