My Friend, My Wife, and My Greatest Traitor

When I still believed what Evelyn Chase and I had was real love, she had taken three stabbings for me—one that left a scar above her brow, another across her ankle and one buried deep in her back. People used to say Evelyn loved me more than her own life. That was before another man showed up brazen.

“You Adrian Penn?” he asked, flinging a stack of photos into my face. “Evelyn doesn’t love you anymore. Take the hint and get lost.”

In those pictures, Evelyn’s gaze was soft, tender.

I looked out at the rain pounding harder against the windows. I raised my hand—his scream was swallowed by the storm. He only managed to spit out one last line as he staggered off.

“Evelyn will never forgive you!”

I stayed cold, staring at Evelyn who now sat across from me, full of self-righteous fury.

“You’re filthy. Sign it,” I said flatly.

——

“Adrian!”

Evelyn’s voice cut through the air, flanked by the very people she had built her empire with these past two years. Her bodyguards, dozens of them, filled my grand hall. This situation didn’t feel like a negotiation, more like a siege.

I watched her tamp down her anger, fingers tapping once against the table.

“He’s still in the ICU.”

She lifted her brows. The chandelier’s light hit just right, making the scar across her brow stand out sharper.

“He’s only twenty,” Evelyn said, her voice low, heavy, pressing down like a weight. “And you nearly took his life. Do you know what the doctor told me?”

Her voice broke through the steady drumming of the rain against the windows.

“They said he may never walk again. Not like a normal man.”

And in that moment, I remembered the same man, half-dead, still mustering up the strength to shout:

“Evelyn will never forgive you!”

“So,” I said, meeting Evelyn’s furious eyes, passing my untouched tea to the servant at my side, “you gather this whole circus to stand up for him?”

“What then?” I laughed, amused despite it all. “Do you want half my life in trade? Or maybe you’ll take one of my legs to make up for his crippled one?”

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, smiling. The butler quietly adjusted the thermostat. I turned my gaze back to Evelyn.

“Who the hell is he, to make you storm in here and point fingers at me? Did you forget who walked every step of the way with you to get where you are today? Tell me, are you here to make me apologize, or to finish me off?” My voice was steady, deliberate.

Sensing the tension, my butler pulled a pistol and leveled it at Evelyn’s head. Her guards instantly raised their defenses, but Evelyn only smiled.

“Those days of blood and blades are behind us. I didn’t come to start a war.” She shoved aside the divorce papers I had prepared. “I’m not signing it. A divorce would hurt us both. But you’re going to make an apology to Carter, in person. Or don’t blame me when things get ugly.”

Evelyn rose from the sofa and strode right up to my butler. With one swift move, she seized his wrist and pressed the barrel of the gun against her own forehead.

“Think you can shoot me?” she sneered.

With one swift twist, she yanked his arm outward. A sharp crack split the room—the sound of bone snapping. One of her men cried out, just as the fruit knife from my table sank into his thigh. Evelyn’s stunned face turned toward me—while I smiled.

“My people don’t resist you out of respect for me. But that doesn’t mean—” I stepped up to her, pried her fingers off my man’s wrist one by one— “that you get to lay a hand on them.”

And in that moment, I knew—whatever love Evelyn and I once had, it ended here.

Later, while the doctor set my butler’s broken arm, the old man was still fuming.

“Sir, you went through hell for Evelyn back then. And now you’re just going to let her walk all over you?”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I stared at my phone. A new friend request had just popped up on the screen.