Chapter 5 - HE DIDN’T ONLY WANT MY HEART
By six o’clock, there was no reception.
There was a crime scene with centerpieces.
That was how Serena described it when she arrived at Hawthorne House carrying two laptops and the expression of a woman prepared to personally strangle somebody with an Ethernet cable.
Guests were politely told dinner would still be served.
Most stayed.
New England society had many flaws, but abandoning free lobster during a wealthy-family scandal was apparently not among them.
My mother handled questions.
Ryan handled Harper security.
I handled the fact that the man I almost married may have stolen from my company.
Lucy had stopped talking.
Grant’s attorney arrived and advised everyone to say nothing until counsel was present.
Noah embraced that recommendation with sudden enthusiasm.
I sat with Serena in a small library off the ballroom.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
I did.
When I finished, Serena took off her glasses.
“I hated him.”
I blinked.
“You never told me.”
“You were marrying him.”
“You could have said something.”
“So you could spend six months defending him?”
That hurt because it was true.
She softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t be.”
She opened one laptop.
“We have logs.”
“From when?”
“The last two years.”
“Can we see whether he accessed files?”
“If he used your credentials, maybe.”
I told her the nights I remembered.
The apartment.
My home office.
A weekend in Vermont when Noah claimed his own laptop charger had broken.
Serena searched.
Ryan knocked before entering.
He had put his tuxedo jacket back on.
Somehow, it made the entire situation look more surreal.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Potentially catastrophic,” Serena said.
He nodded as if she had told him the weather.
“Harper’s general counsel is coming.”
“I’m not discussing this with Harper attorneys,” I said.
“You shouldn’t.”
Ryan pulled out a chair.
“Hire your own.”
“I have counsel.”
“Good.”
He put a business card on the table.
“This is a digital forensics firm Harper has used for internal investigations. Don’t hire them if you think it creates a conflict. But they’re excellent.”
I looked at the card.
“Are you trying to fix this?”
“No.”
“Ryan.”
“I’m giving you information.”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make helping look like you happened to leave useful things nearby.”
Serena looked between us.
Ryan almost smiled.
“This would be a terrible time to discuss my personality.”
Fair.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Noah.
Please talk to me without Ryan in the room.
I showed it to Ryan.
He stood immediately.
“I’ll leave.”
That surprised me.
“You don’t think I should speak to him?”
“I think you should decide.”
He walked toward the door.
I stopped him.
“Stay nearby.”
He nodded once.
After Ryan left, I texted Noah.
Library. Five minutes.
Serena closed her laptop.
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
Five minutes later, Noah appeared.
He looked exhausted.
For the first time in years, he did not look expensive.
He looked small.
His tie was gone.
His collar was open.
The engagement ring I had returned was no longer in his hand.
“Kate.”
I pointed toward the chair.
“Sit.”
His mouth tightened.
“You’re treating me like a criminal.”
Serena said, “Interesting choice of word.”
Noah looked at her.
“I want to speak to my fiancée.”
“Former fiancée,” I said.
Pain crossed his face.
Real pain.
That was almost worse.
Because I had once believed real pain meant real love.
Now I knew people could grieve losing something they had never respected.
He sat.
“I didn’t steal your work.”
“Lucy says you did.”
“Lucy is panicking.”
“She said she gave you my drawings.”
“She misunderstood what I asked for.”
“What did you ask for?”
Noah hesitated.
“Market intelligence.”
Serena laughed once.
“No.”
He glared at her.
I leaned forward.
“What did you ask Lucy to do?”
“She had access to the vendor portal.”
My stomach dropped.
Lucy worked in strategic partnerships for Vale Meridian Capital.
Her firm consulted on hospitality and development projects.
She had once helped my company connect with a specialized lighting supplier.
Which meant she had legitimate vendor access.
“Continue.”
“I asked whether she could confirm what materials your team was using.”
“That isn’t market intelligence.”
“I was trying to help Harper Urban compete.”
“With me?”
“It wasn’t against you.”
“How can competing for the same contract not be against me?”
Noah stood.
“Because once we were married, it wouldn’t have mattered!”
The room went silent.
Serena slowly sat back.
I felt something cold travel down my spine.
“What?”
Noah realized what he had said.
“Kate—”
“Explain.”
He ran both hands through his hair.
“Harper Urban and Ellis Design could have worked together.”
“We never discussed a merger.”
“I’m not talking about a merger.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He looked irritated now.
As though I were forcing him to explain something obvious.
“You would have had access to Harper resources. We would have had access to your design platform. It was logical.”
My voice became very quiet.
“My company was supposed to become part of your marriage portfolio?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
“You own a forty-person design firm.”
“Forty-seven.”
He waved one hand.
“Fine. Forty-seven. Harper has fourteen thousand employees.”
Serena went rigid.
Noah continued.
“I’m not insulting what you built.”
“You just did.”
“I’m putting it in perspective.”
There it was again.
Translation.
Reduction.
He had been doing it from the beginning.
I own the firm.
That’s what I meant.
I looked at Serena.
“Can you give us one minute?”
She didn’t want to.
I could see it.
But she stood.
“I’ll be outside.”
When the door closed, I looked at Noah.
“Did you ever respect my company?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Kate.”
“Did you?”
He paced once toward the fireplace.
“I respected what it could become.”
My chest tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“With proper capital.”
“I have capital.”
“Not Harper capital.”
“I didn’t want Harper capital.”
“That’s because you think small-business independence is some moral virtue.”
I stared at him.
“Is that what you told your father?”
His face changed.
I knew.
“About what?”
“About me.”
“Kate.”
“What did you tell him?”
He sat again.
“We discussed the future.”
“My future?”
“Ours.”
“Tell me.”
He looked toward the windows.
“Dad was concerned that after marriage you would prioritize your company over family responsibilities.”
I actually laughed.
“What family responsibilities?”
“Children. Travel. Hosting. Foundation events.”
“We don’t have children.”
“We planned to.”
“And you assumed my career would become negotiable?”
“That’s not unreasonable.”
“For whom?”
He stared at me.
For him.
Always for him.
I suddenly remembered every compromise.
The client dinner I canceled because Noah wanted me at a charity gala.
The Boston design award ceremony he missed because he had a sailing weekend.
The weekend I worked through our anniversary because a hotel opening went wrong—and apologized for months.
Noah never apologized for missing my award.
I looked at him.
“You didn’t want a partner.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You wanted an acquisition.”
He stood.
“You are making everything sound ugly because you’re angry.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I’m finally hearing it without translating it into something nicer.”
He looked toward the door.
“Ryan has been poisoning you against me.”
I almost smiled.
“You still think this is about Ryan.”
“He’s been waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you.”
The certainty in his voice made me pause.
Noah stepped closer.
“You think he came to that room today because he’s noble?”
“I called him.”
“And he answered in two seconds, didn’t he?”
“That’s what people do when someone they care about calls.”
He flinched.
I continued.
“Ryan didn’t make you hold Lucy.”
“He encouraged this.”
“He didn’t make you steal my files.”
“We don’t know that I stole anything.”
“Then why are you afraid of the logs?”
His silence answered.
A knock came.
Ryan opened the door.
Not because he was interrupting.
Because his face had changed.
“Kate.”
I stood.
“What?”
“Serena found something.”
Noah moved toward the door.
Ryan blocked him.
“No.”
“I have a right to know.”
Ryan’s expression was ice.
“You have a right to legal counsel.”
Then he looked at me.
“There were thirty-eight successful logins to Ellis Design’s cloud server from a device registered to Harper Freight.”
I stopped breathing.
Noah’s face emptied.
Ryan continued.
“The device is assigned to Noah.”
I stared at the man I had almost promised my entire life to.
“When?”
Ryan looked at his phone.
“Over fourteen months.”
Noah shook his head.
“Other people use my laptop.”
Ryan ignored him.
“The most recent access was last night.”
The night before my wedding.
I remembered Noah kissing my forehead at eleven forty and telling me he was going downstairs to have a drink with the groomsmen.
Instead, he had logged into my company.
“What did he open?”
Ryan’s eyes met mine.
“Payroll.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“And debt schedules.”
A strange silence filled the room.
Serena stepped into the doorway.
Her face was pale.
“There’s more.”
I turned.
She held up her laptop.
“Someone has been contacting three of our largest lenders using internal financial information.”
My skin went cold.
“Why?”
She swallowed.
“To convince them we’re riskier than we are.”
I looked at Noah.
He said nothing.
Serena continued.
“If they believed it, they could tighten our credit lines.”
My brain began assembling the pieces.
A weakened company.
A massive contract under investigation.
Restricted financing.
And then?
Noah had already told me.
Proper capital.
Harper capital.
I stared at him.
“You were trying to make me need you.”
His face cracked.
“Kate, listen—”
“You were going to damage my company.”
“No.”
“Then offer to save it.”
“I was protecting our future.”
I stepped back as though he had struck me.
Noah reached for me.
I moved away.
Ryan took one step forward.
But he didn’t need to.
I was done needing someone to stand between us.
“You didn’t only want my heart,” I whispered.
Noah’s eyes filled with panic.
“You wanted everything I built attached to your name.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I opened the door.
“Leave.”
“Kate.”
“Leave.”
“This can still be fixed.”
I looked at the man I had loved for three years.
Then at the wedding dress I was still wearing.
“Noah, the only thing you are going to fix now is your defense.”
His face hardened.
For one second, I saw the version of him Ryan had known all along.
Then he walked past me.
Ryan stepped aside.
Noah stopped beside his brother.
“This is what you wanted.”
Ryan looked at him.
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“This is what you did.”
Noah walked away.
Ten minutes later, Harper Freight’s general counsel arrived.
Twenty minutes after that, my own attorney joined us.
And before midnight, we discovered that Noah Harper had not merely betrayed his fiancée.
He had spent more than a year designing a trap around her company.
The wedding had been canceled.
May you like
The war had just begun.
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