Page 7 of Billion Dollar Revenge

“Where’s Harvey tonight, Lukas?” Oliver asks, winking at me when my eyes flick to his. He’s got my back. Even though I never shared anything about the breakup, they stick up for me. I love my family. They are everything to me.

“He’s in a meeting. With that businesswoman he’s obsessed with.” Lukas laughs.

Harvey is adamant he doesn’t care about this woman at all, but he sure has given her a lot of his spare time.

“I fold,” Richard calls out. Throwing in his hand, he lets the cards drop onto the table as he grabs a handful of peanuts to eat.

“Come on.” Oliver tosses his cards too, losing his hand.

After today, I need to win. I’m confident I’m the best player at this table tonight. I stick to basics; they try fancy and high-stakes plays. Whereas I go for the obvious, and that is, not the trickiest play. And after an hour, I walk away with a win.

Chapter 3

Chelsea

I step into myapartment, tossing my purse onto the counter without a second thought, and head straight for the freezer. The stress of another painfully long day at the recruiting agency makes me crave comfort food. I open the freezer and grab a frozen pretzel, shoving it into the microwave. The work at the agency is mind-numbing, and although everyone is nice enough, the monotony drains me. Bobby never supported my dream of owning a Pilates studio, which is what I’m really passionate about, and why I work casually as a Pilates instructor too. He used to beg me to resign but, for some reason, I couldn’t. When he’d ask me how the talk with Colette?my boss?went, I lied and said, “She wasn’t in today, or she begged me to help out a little longer.” But he kept pushing because being a Pilates instructor isn’t the right job for a woman in a relationship. It’s just a silly “hobby” to him. He never viewed it as a real job. If I had my way, I would work in my own studio full-time. I’ve often wondered if I could manage without this second job, butthe risk feels too big. If Nova was still our roommate, I might have considered it, but with her moving into her fiancé Jeremy’s place, Summer and I have to split the bills now, so it doesn’t seem wise.

As I wait for the pretzel to heat up, my phone rings. I rummage through my bag and notice a stack of letters. On top is a note from Summer, saying Nova is coming over and we’re having Chinese for dinner. The girls have been checking in on me daily, worried I might go back to Bobby. I keep assuring them that’s not happening.

The phone rings again, and I see a missed call and a text from Bobby. I ignore it, grabbing my food, letters, and phone before settling on the sofa. There’s no way I’m answering Bobby. He hasn’t given up since I ended things, calling and texting constantly, thinking we can fix our relationship. But how can we fix something broken by his cheating? Even Summer overheard it. All those late nights at work now seem like lies, and I can’t get past that. He never made me feel like a priority. Now he can sweat over what to do without me, because there’s no way I’m letting him back into my life.

I take a bite of the pretzel and glance at the letters. The first is a bill, but the second is a birthday card, and I open it. I gasp at the sight of a large check sitting inside of it. What’s this for? Grabbing my phone, I immediately call my mom.

“Hello?” my younger sister Anna answers. She lives with our parents in Connecticut while she’s in college studying psychology.

“Hey, Anna. It’s me.”

She laughs. “I know your voice, Chelse.”

I lean back, sinking into the sofa. “Yeah, habit, I guess. How's college?”

“Six more months, but who's counting?”

Her cheery voice lifts my spirits despite the heaviness of the day.

“It will be worth it.” I sigh. She will get the job of her dreams while I come home every day miserable. It reminds me why I left Connecticut. I knew a Pilates studio would thrive in New York, so I headed off two years ago and never looked back. My parents gave me a loan to purchase my own studio, but after only a month in New York, I met Bobby. I haven’t used the money yet. And now, they’ve given me more?

I didn’t open the studio because Bobby didn’t see it as a viable career for his future wife. I held out hope he’d understand how happy being an instructor makes me. But now, what was all that for? My stomach knots thinking about it, and I put the pretzel down, no longer hungry.

“Are you okay?” Anna asks. She’s always had reservations about Bobby, psychoanalyzing him through her career lens.

I sigh heavily. “As much as I can be.”

“This is a good thing, you’ll see.” Her optimism is refreshing. I hope time will help me feel the same.

“Is Mom there?” I ask.

“Yeah, she’s just coming in from helping Dad in the garden. Hang on, I’ll get her.” She puts the phone down, and I hear her yell, “Mom, Chelsea is on the phone for you.”

I smile for the first time today, ignoring the sharp twinge in my chest, imagining her calling out to Mom from the porch, making me miss home even more. Nothing compares to the peace I feel there. But Connecticut isn’t my forever place. The last time I went home, I was six months into dating Bobby. Alone, as usual. There were so many red flags in our relationship, yet I ignored them, blinded by the idea of love.

“Hi, darling,” Mom says, slightly out of breath as she answers the phone.

“Hey, Mom.”

“I was going to call you soon.” She’s been calling every night to see how I’m doing, offering to fly out, but I insisted she didn’t since I’d be working every day.

“I beat you to it.”

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