The night before our engagement party, Adrian Cole personally sent an email titled “Mr. Cole’s Secondhand Goods” to all 327 guests.
The email contained old photos of me with my former fiancé. Someone had labeled me “Returned once. Still in decent condition.” At the bottom of the page, there was even a poll: “Would you marry a woman another man didn’t want? “
His childhood friend, Sloane Pierce, sat beside him, phone in hand, waiting to capture my reaction when I saw it.
On the ballroom’s giant screen, the open count ticked up in real time.
Board members from the bank, company employees, business partners, and two financial reporters were all on the recipient list.
Adrian called it a pre-engagement joke and blamed me for not having a sense of humor.
But you can’t unsend an email. Screenshots had already leaked to the media, and as a result, the Harbor Dock project I was managing was suspended by the investment committee.
I took off my ring, called off the engagement, and exported the backend logs.
Only later did Adrian finally understand that what everyone was laughing at that night was never just my past.
Tit For Tat Chapter 10 That afternoon, as Noah and I walked out of the building, a photographer was waiting across the street. Just then, a car door swung open unexpectedly, and Noah reached out to shield me. The angle of the photo was perfect. It looked like he was pulling me into an embrace.
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Tit For Tat Chapter 09 After the formal meeting ended, Noah stayed behind. I had my assistant close the door. He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, silent for a long moment. “I owed you an explanation three years ago.” I looked at him. “The project is the project. The past is the past.” “I know.”
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Tit For Tat Chapter 08 Three days later, I met Noah in a conference room at Hart Real Estate. He wore a dark gray suit, his features calmer and sharper than they’d been three years ago. The easy polish of inherited privilege had been replaced by the lean efficiency of someone who’d spent years wrestling
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Tit For Tat Chapter 07 “Adrian, do you know why Sloane dared to hand you that page in the first place?” He said nothing. “Because you’ve always made her feel like you could surrender my boundaries on my behalf.” “I said I didn’t want her managing my private album. You gave her administrator access anyway.”
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Tit For Tat Chapter 06 Ten minutes later, Sloane deleted her apology. Cole Capital also announced that her branding consultant access had been suspended pending an internal investigation. When Adrian called, I was in the company conference room. The Harbor Dock project needed new mezzanine financing. Without Cole Capital, we had to rebuild the cash-flow
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Tit For Tat Chapter 05 That afternoon, Sloane posted an apology. It read: “I offer my sincere apology for using inappropriate humor at a private gathering, which caused distress to Evelyn and others involved. The webpage has been deleted, and I hope everyone will stop spreading it. “ No mention of the 327 recipients. No
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Tit For Tat Chapter 04 The next morning, Adrian arrived at my family’s house right on time. The canceled engagement party was already front-page news. “Cole-Hart Engagement Abruptly Canceled “ “Who Sent the ‘Secondhand Fiancée’ Email? “ “Harbor Dock Project at Risk as Family Relations Sour “ Sloane had been busy the night before. First,
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Tit For Tat Chapter 03 My hands were still shaking as the car pulled away from the club. It wasn’t because I couldn’t let go. It was because the moment I stopped forcing myself to hold it together, the physical nausea hit. Messages from Sloane kept popping up on my phone. “Are you really going
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Tit For Tat Chapter 02 Adrian grabbed my wrist as I reached the hallway. His grip was hard. “Evelyn, the club, the media, the guests, both our companies—everything is set for tomorrow. If you cancel now, the Harts and the Coles will be a laughingstock up and down the East Coast.” I shook him off.
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Tit For Tat Chapter 01 The night before our engagement party, Adrian Cole personally sent an email titled “Mr. Cole’s Secondhand Goods” to all 327 guests. The email contained old photos of me with my former fiancé. Someone had labeled me “Returned once. Still in decent condition.” At the bottom of the page, there was
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