After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Flight 23
Grounded at JFK, Diana reads her fiancé's cruel breakup texts, throws away his earrings, and finds his name on a deal her own company is about to close on his wedding day.
I was third in line to board Flight 23 to Paris when the airline told me I wasn't going anywhere.
"Due to a mechanical issue, this flight is delayed indefinitely."
The whole gate groaned.
I stepped out of line with my overnight bag on my shoulder.
Inside it was one dress, folded in tissue. Navy blue. Ashton said once it made my eyes look like the sea.
I'd been planning this for a month.
Eight months of video calls from Paris, each one a little shorter than the last. Eight months of "Sorry, babe, dinner with investors."
Tonight I was going to knock on his door instead of calling.
The woman behind me in line patted my arm. "You were smiling so hard. Who's waiting for you?"
"My fiancé."
"Oh, he'll keep. The good ones always do."
I found a plastic chair by the window and opened my laptop.
Out on the tarmac, men in yellow vests stood around our plane, scratching their heads.
My phone buzzed against my hip.
The preview lit up the screen.
"Ashton: Hey babe, I know you're in the air so you won't see this till you land, but I can't hold it in anymore."
Something in my stomach went cold before I even opened it.
I opened it anyway.
The airport wifi had held his messages back. Now they all came at once, one on top of another.
"I'm engaged."
"Her name is Solène Valery. Her family has been in Paris for a hundred and twenty years. They basically own the Faubourg Saint-Honoré."
"I kept thinking there was a way to keep you both. But she's everything you're not."
I scrolled down. My thumb felt numb.
"You're a nobody from nowhere, Diana. Sweet, but limited. She went to the Sorbonne. She speaks four languages. She understands the life I'm building."
"Honestly? When you lost the baby, I was relieved. I didn't say it then. What kind of future would we have had?"
I stopped breathing.
In November I'd sat alone in an emergency room in Manhattan for nine hours.
He'd called me twice. He said the flights home were too expensive.
"You're damaged, babe. I'm not trying to be cruel. It's just true. Solène is whole."
"Don't worry about the gifts. I'll keep them here. And those diamond studs you love? I got Solène the same pair last month. They look better on her."
There were more.
The last one said, "We're getting married June 27. Please don't make this ugly."
I read every one of them without moving.
Nine minutes, he'd spent typing. I could tell from the timestamps.
He'd waited until he was sure I couldn't answer.
The woman from the line was watching me from three seats down. She looked away fast when I looked up.
I closed the laptop.
Ashton Trask thought he was dumping Diana Hay, a hotel events coordinator who lived in a studio in Hell's Kitchen and paid for her own drinks.
That was the woman I'd let him meet.
The bar where we met, twenty months ago, belonged to a hotel that belonged to me.
My name is Diana Hayward. When my father died five years ago, I inherited Crestline Global Industries. Ships, hotels, a luxury division. Eleven thousand employees.
I had never told him.
I wanted one man in my life who loved me without knowing what I could do for him.
I'd thought I'd found him.
I walked to the counter.
The agent smiled. "Ms. Hay? We can rebook you for the morning."
"Cancel it," I said. "I won't be going."
She typed. I handed her the boarding pass.
On the way to the exit there was a steel trash bin by the restrooms.
I reached up and unscrewed the diamond studs from my ears, one and then the other.
He gave them to me the night he proposed. He said they were a promise until he found the right ring in Paris.
I dropped them in the bin.
They didn't even make a sound.
Outside, the March wind came off the runways and went right through my coat.
I called a car.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"Crestline, on Park Avenue."
At eleven at night the lobby was dark except for the security desk. The guard stood up so fast his chair rolled into the wall.
"Ms. Hayward. We weren't expecting you."
"Neither was anyone."
I rode the elevator to the forty-first floor.
My COO was still in her office. She was fifty-eight and had worked for my father for thirty years, and she never went home before midnight.
She looked at my face and set down her pen.
"What happened? You're supposed to be over Greenland."
"The flight broke down," I said. "So did my engagement."
She didn't ask anything else. She'd known me since I was six.
She just got up and poured me a glass of the scotch she kept for board meetings.
I sat down at her desk.
"Pull up the luxury division," I said. "Everything pending in Paris."
She looked at me oddly. Then she turned the screen toward me.
There were four deals in the Paris folder.
The third one was a perfume house. Maison Valery, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Founded 1904. Director, Julien Valery.
Valery.
I opened the file.
"It came in through a broker three months ago," my COO said. "He's been pestering us for a meeting with you. Calls every day. I've been putting him off."
The broker's name was at the top of the first page.
Ashton Trask.
There was a photo clipped to his proposal. Ashton in a navy blazer on the steps of a pretty old shop with gold letters over the door, smiling the smile he used to give me.
He had been calling my office every day for three months.
He'd never once guessed who ran it.
"He wants a meeting with the CEO on Thursday," my COO said. "In Paris. I was going to send someone from the division."
I drank the scotch in one swallow.
"Tell him yes," I said. "Tell him the CEO will be there herself."
She raised an eyebrow. "Herself?"
I didn't answer.
I'd turned to the second page.
There was the price. Forty million euros, for the name and the shop.
And there was the broker's fee. Four percent, payable to Ashton Trask on closing.
The proposed closing date was June 27.
I knew that date.
It was the date in his last text.
His wedding day.
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