22 Twenty minutes before my wedding, my fiancé Ethan Cole let his best friend wear my wedding dress and my grandmother’s ring while his mother took pictures. He thought I would stay quiet—until I opened the folder that showed exactly how long his company could survive without my money.

Six months after taking over the company, my executive assistant placed a thick, cream-colored envelope on my desk among the morning briefing packets.

It wasn't a corporate prospectus or a legal subpoena. It was a heavy, embossed invitation card with gold foil lettering—the kind of stationery people buy when they want to pretend they still belong to high society.

I picked it up and opened it.

Mr. Ethan Cole and Ms. Savannah Blake request the honor of your presence at the celebration of their union...

I stared at the names printed in elegant script, a tiny, amused smile pulling at the corners of my lips. Apparently, after Ethan lost his company, his condo, and his social standing, he and Savannah had decided to double down on their shared misery. Misery, it turns out, really does love company—especially when neither of them has any money left.

At the bottom of the card, handwritten in messy, hurried ink, was a brief personal note from Ethan: Claire, I know you probably hate me. But I thought... maybe you’d want to see that we finally made it. Please come.

I shook my head, walked over to the shredder beside my desk, and fed the invitation into the narrow slot. The machine hummed quietly, grinding the heavy cardstock, the gold foil, and Ethan’s desperate handwriting into a pile of gray confetti.

I didn't hate him. Hate requires an investment of emotional energy, and Ethan Cole simply wasn't worth the bandwidth anymore. He was a footnote in a quarterly report, a completed transaction that had yielded a high return on resilience.

My phone chimed on the desk, displaying a notification from Harrison Vance regarding the final asset liquidation of Cole Innovations' former subsidiary accounts.