The Girl Who Stole My Boyfriend Is About to Marry a Billionaire, So I Stole the Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: The Gift

Lucian sends her home, Jake moves out and calls her savings a gift, and by morning Bianca's video has Valeria's name and workplace all over the internet.

I thought I'd heard him wrong.

"You know?"

"I know." He turned to the guards. "You can let her go."

"Sir, the guest in 1714 asked us to..."

"The guest in 1714 isn't paying for the room," he said. "I am."

The guards let go of me so fast I almost tipped over.

He took a folded white handkerchief out of his inside pocket and held it out.

I just looked at it.

"You have champagne in your eyelashes," he said.

I took it.

It smelled like cedar and cold air.

I wiped my face while the whole lobby pretended not to watch us.

[He GAVE her his handkerchief. He doesn't even do that for Bianca.]

[Calm down, it's a handkerchief.]

[It's the Devil of Park Avenue's handkerchief. That's a kidney.]

"If you know," I said, "why are you marrying her?"

He turned one silver cufflink with his thumb.

It was an old one, worn smooth, shaped like a knot.

"Because I promised a dead man I would," he said.

He said it.

Then he lifted his hand, and a driver in a gray coat appeared from nowhere.

"the driver will take you home. Where do you live?"

"Astoria. I can take the train."

"You're soaked, and it's after eleven. the driver will take you home."

He was already walking away toward the private elevator.

"Mr. Graves," I called.

He stopped but didn't turn around.

"Your handkerchief."

"Keep it."

The elevator doors closed on him.

In the back of the black car, I held the handkerchief in both hands and watched the gold writing crawl across the window.

[Okay for new readers. Lucian was a street kid. Old Harold Slattery took him in at fifteen.]

[Harold's dying wish was for Lucian to marry Bianca and save the family company. So he's doing it. Loyal to the bone.]

[And she drains him. Her and the boyfriend. Through the Pier 9 money.]

[He goes to prison. He dies in there. He leaves her EVERYTHING. I threw my phone.]

[What happens to the ex?]

[Cannon fodder. She shows up at the wedding screaming, gets arrested. Prison too, I think. Something about the money.]

My fingers went tight on the handkerchief.

"Are you all right, miss?" the driver asked.

"Fine," I said.

I was not fine.

I was reading my own ending off a car window.

At two in the morning, Jake came home.

I heard his key in the lock and sat up on the couch where I'd been not sleeping.

He didn't look at me.

He went straight to the bedroom and started pulling clothes out of my dresser.

"You're moving out," I said.

"Obviously."

He had two duffel bags. He filled them fast.

His shirts. His shoes. The watch I'd never seen before tonight.

Then he came out and unplugged the television.

"That's mine," I said. "I bought that."

"You bought it for us."

"There's no us. You told the whole seventeenth floor."

He wrapped the cord around his hand.

Through the front window I could see a white Range Rover double-parked in the street below, hazards blinking.

Somebody inside it honked twice.

"Jake," I said. "The thirty-one thousand dollars."

He stopped at the door.

"What about it?"

"Your exams. Your car. My savings. You said you'd pay it back by Christmas."

He smiled at me, the same boyish smile I'd fallen for in a bar in Queens four years ago.

"Val, come on. That was a gift. You don't get to take back a gift because you're bitter."

[She begs him now. Chapter two. It's painful.]

I didn't beg him.

I held the door open for him instead.

He looked almost disappointed.

"Bianca and I are real," he said. "She's everything you're not."

"She's engaged."

"To a man she doesn't love. It's business. Two weeks and it's done, and then..." He stopped himself.

"Then what?"

"Then it's none of your business."

He carried my television down four flights of stairs.

The Range Rover honked again when he loaded it in the back.

I watched it pull away.

I did not cry that night either.

I fell asleep on the couch at five with the handkerchief still in my fist.

At seven-fifteen my phone buzzed on the floor and didn't stop.

Forty-one notifications.

My sister in Albany. Three girls from college. My dentist's office, somehow.

The last one was from my friend from the office, just a link and a message.

"Val. Please tell me this isn't you."

I opened it.

It was a video.

The seventeenth floor of the Aurelia, shot from the elevator bank.

Me with my foot in the door. Bianca in Jake's shirt. The champagne hitting my face.

Somebody had cut out the part where I said we lived together.

The caption said, "Psycho ex stalks Slattery heiress to her hotel room."

It had two million views.

Under it, someone had posted my full name.

Under that, someone had posted my work email.

Under that, a man had written, "Harlow & Fitch, 5th floor. I'm emailing her boss."

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