Page 2 of Strictly Business

This picture used to make me smile. Now it just makes me want to throw my coffee at the wall.

Was he already sleeping with her when this was taken? How long had he been lying to me? How did I not see it?

My throat tightens. I haven’t told anyone what happened. No one knows, not even my grandma, who’s been blowing up my phone all weekend.

But Jade’s waiting. Patient. Expectant.

And finally, it spills out.

“We broke up,” I whisper, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

Sophie, from the desk next to mine, gasps so loudly I’m pretty sure the whole office heard her. “What? You broke up?”

The room goes still, freezing around me as they wait for me to speak.

“Yes,” I say, the word heavy in my chest. I wipe a tear away, but it’s no use. It falls anyway.

“Oh, honey, no.” Sophie lifts out of her chair, her arms wrapping around me in an instant. “Don’t you dare cry over that bastard. He doesn’t deserve a single one of your tears.”

But I can’t help it. I lost everything. My home, my happiness, the future I thought I was building. He made me believe I was the only one. That I was special. And I trusted him. Completely. Now, here I am, alone, feeling like a complete idiot.

Jade’s still quiet, and it’s starting to freak me out. Her face is too calm, too still.

“I can key his car,” she adds, her voice serious, no trace of a joke. “I have a disguise, no one would ever know it was me.”

I blink at her, unsure if she’s being serious or if she’s just trying to make me laugh.

“Why do you have a disguise?” Sophie asks, looking confused. “What would you even need it for?”

Jade shrugs, her lips tipping up into a smirk. “For things I can’t discuss, seeing as your boyfriend’s a lawyer.”

Sophie rolls her eyes. “You don’t even know if Liam did anything. Amara could’ve been the one to break up with Liam.”

“I hope so,” Jade replies, letting out a low whistle. “We both know she could do so much better than him.”

“That, we can definitely agree on,” Sophie adds, a laugh escaping her lips.

I brush off their teasing and turn my monitor on, desperate for anything to distract me. “Can we please not talk about it?” I mutter, picking up one of the sticky notes hanging from my screen and fiddling with it. “I barely slept all weekend, and I still need to get through all these applications for tonight.”

I scroll through hundreds of them, each one from a woman vying for a spot beside Nicholas Blackwood—the city’s most eligible billionaire, or as I like to call him,my boss.

I can’t help myself. I glance at each photo, comparing them to me. Tall, blonde, thin… The kind of woman I’ll never be. A sharp ache hits my chest, and I can’t stop the thought that pops into my head.

Is this the type of woman Liam cheated on me with?

I push the thought away, refusing to let it linger, and focus on the screen. I swipe past polished headshot after polished headshot, wondering which one might actually catch Nicholas’s attention.

“She’s beautiful,” Sophie points out, tapping the screen on a blonde with bright blue eyes who recently graced the cover ofNew York’s Finest. She practically glows, the kind of beauty that’s made for the Blackwood arm-candy role.

I follow her gaze, and then I spot it. The rock on the woman’s finger. Huge, sparkling, and definitely a dealbreaker.

“And engaged,” I say, quickly clicking her profile off the list.

It’s not the first time I’ve had to toss a taken woman’s name. I guess loyalty isn’t a priority when Nicholas Blackwood’s in the picture.

“You think Nicholas would care?” Jade asks, raising a brow.

A nasty twist of doubt churns in my stomach. Jade’s right. Nicholas probably wouldn’t care. Hell, he probably doesn’t even bother learning their names.

---