Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Engagement Party

Colt held the phone up so we could see the screen.

On it was a photograph of two people tangled on a wool coat in the dark.

The flash had caught my bare shoulder and Ansel's hand on my hip.

"Cute," Colt said. "Dad's going to love it."

Ansel had put his coat around me and stepped forward.

"Put it away."

"Or what? You'll set me on fire?"

One of the big men laughed.

"I have a better idea," Colt said.

"My engagement dinner is tomorrow at the Toledo Club. Eighty people, and my fiancee's father is giving a toast."

"You are both going to stay away."

"Then I'll take this picture off every account I posted it to."

"You posted it?" I said.

"Forty seconds ago."

My stomach dropped.

Ansel took out his own phone, looked at it, and put it away.

"It's already got nine hundred shares," he said.

Colt lowered the phone slowly.

"That's not what..."

"You told me to stay away from your dinner," Ansel said. "I'll be there at eight."

He took my hand.

He walked me to the car with my boots in my other hand.

Neither of us looked back.

The Toledo Club has oak paneling, a ballroom with a chandelier, and a doorman in a long coat.

I wore a black dress I'd had in the back of my closet for three years.

Ansel wore the same charcoal suit and a white shirt, no tie, his hair brushed back from his forehead.

The scar showed.

He didn't hide it.

Before we got out of the car he had hooked my half of the card back on my chain with his own hands.

It lay against my collarbone where everyone could see it.

When we walked into the ballroom, the music stopped.

I could not tell if it had stopped on purpose.

Eighty guests turned their heads in unison.

At the head table sat Colt, flushed already, in a tuxedo, with his fiancee in a pale green dress beside him.

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