Fake Wedding Engagement:The Billionaire's Ruin

He told me to wear the diamonds.

The Cartier set he'd given me for our fifth anniversary — necklace, earrings, bracelet, all in a leather case that lived in a vault he didn't know I had access to. *"Wear them tonight,"* he'd texted at four. *"Press will be heavy."*

I wore them.

I also wore a black silk gown cut to the navel, my hair down, no lipstick. The diamonds did the talking.

The Carlton Hotel ballroom blazed with chandeliers and the kind of money that doesn't need to introduce itself. Three hundred guests. Old industry families. New tech money. Two senators and an heiress who'd married a Saudi prince.

And in the corner, exactly where I needed him to be — Victor Thorne.

Forty-six. Hedge fund. The kind of man who bought failing companies for sport and resold them in pieces. He stood alone near a pillar, swirling bourbon, his back to a wall that gave him a view of every exit. A predator's posture in a room full of prey.

I walked toward him without looking at Declan.

"Mr. Thorne."

He turned. His eyes swept me once — not the way men usually looked at me, but the way an appraiser looks at a painting. Calculating. Cataloging.

"Mrs. Hastings."

"Nora."

"Victor."

A waiter passed. I took two glasses of champagne and handed him one. He accepted it without comment, which told me everything I needed to know.

"I hear your fund just shorted three of my husband's suppliers," I said.

"Public information."

"I hear you have a position open on your board."

"Also public."

"I have something for you that isn't."

I opened my clutch. Slid out a single black USB drive — encrypted, labeled with nothing — and pressed it into his palm. His fingers closed around it without hesitation.

"What is it?"

"Twelve months of Hastings Corp internal emails. Acquisitions, asset transfers, three offshore shells my husband doesn't list on any filing. There's enough on that drive to move his stock fifteen points by Tuesday."

Victor's bourbon glass paused halfway to his mouth. The first tell. Small. Involuntary. The kind of reaction a man like him had spent decades training out of himself.

"Why are you giving this to me?"

"Because I want the same thing you do."

"And what's that?"

"Hastings Corp on the floor by the end of the quarter."

A muscle moved in his jaw. He set his bourbon down on the tray of a passing waiter without looking. Slid the USB into his inside breast pocket.

"Mrs. Hastings—"

"Nora."

"Nora. If what you say is on this drive—"

"It is."

"—then we should talk somewhere that isn't a charity gala."

"Monday. Your office. Nine a.m."

"I'll have my assistant—"

"No assistants. Just you."

I turned to leave. He caught my elbow. Not hard. The pressure of a man who needed two more seconds.

"One question."

"Yes?"

"Why now?"

I looked at him over my shoulder. Past him, across the room, Declan was laughing with the senator's wife, his hand resting on the small of her back like he had every right to it.

"Because he thinks I'm already dead," I said.

I walked away.

Halfway across the ballroom, Maya Croft stepped into my path.

She was wearing emerald green, hair swept up, a diamond pendant the size of a fingernail resting in the hollow of her throat — a pendant I recognized. I should have. Declan had bought it for our seventh anniversary and told me a week later he'd lost it on a business trip.

I smiled at her. Wide. Genuine.

"Maya. You look stunning."

She blinked. She'd come over to twist a knife. Instead, I'd handed her a mirror.

"Nora. I — wasn't sure you'd be here tonight."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"After the news—"

"What news?"

Her eyes flicked past my shoulder. Looking for Declan. He was still across the room, ignoring both of us.

"Nothing," she said. "Forget it."

"Lovely necklace."

Her hand rose involuntarily to her throat. Touched the pendant. Realized, half a second too late, what she'd just confirmed.

I leaned in. Close enough that the diamonds at my ears brushed her cheek.

"Enjoy the necklace, Maya. It suits you."

I walked past her into the crowd, and behind me I felt her standing very still, holding a glass of champagne she'd suddenly forgotten how to drink.

Across the room, Victor Thorne raised his glass an inch in my direction.

The hunt had started.