I never told my boyfriend’s arrogant parents that I was the one who owned the bank holding all their debt. To them, I was just “some barista with no future.” At their luxury yacht party, his mother sneered and shoved a drink into my hands, spilling it down my dress. “Staff should stay below deck,” she said coldly. His father laughed. “Careful—don’t ruin the furniture.”

to be ironic.”

Ethan laughed, but not enough. “She was joking.”

“No,” Carter said gently. “She wasn’t.”

He looked down at his plate then, the way he always did when truth became inconvenient. That had become their pattern over the last year: Carter naming something clearly, Ethan trying to soften its edges until it could be ignored.

“I just want one afternoon continue reading …