My thumb hovered over the delete button.Just erase him. Block him. Move on.
Then a new message appeared.
10:47 p.m. Daniel:See what you’re missing?
The attached photo loaded slowly, pixel by agonizing pixel.
Daniel’s red hair caught the light, his face hidden between another woman’s thighs. The woman was blonde. Skinny. Tan.Everything fashion magazines told me I should be, and genetics had decided I wouldn’t.
My phone screen cracked under my grip.
The world narrowed to that single image—betrayal made flesh. Explicit. A weapon designed to hurt me in the most intimate way possible.
I’d spent twenty months planning a wedding—deposits on venues, tastings with caterers who couldn’t accommodate my allergies, arguments with his mother about flower arrangements. Twenty months of playing bride-in-waiting while he apparently auditioned replacements.
And he’d sent me photographic evidence like a taunt. Proof I’d been right to doubt him every time he came home late, every time his phone buzzed and he angled it away from me, and every time he looked at me like I was a burden he couldn’t figure out how to shed.
My hands shook. Not with grief. That would come later, in the quiet hours when I had to face what this moment meant about my judgment, my choices, and my worth.
Right now? Pure, undiluted rage.
He’d wasted years of my life. He’d made me doubt myself. And he thought sending me this photo would—what? Make me jealous? Make me beg him to come back?
My fingers moved before my brain caught up, typing words I knew I’d regret but couldn’t stop:No wonder, because you can’t handle curves like mine.
Not enough. The fury demanded blood. Demanded proof that he’d lost something valuable, that I wasn’t the one crawling back.
I yanked down the neckline of my tank top. Angled my phone. Captured what Daniel had clearly taken for granted—full breasts that didn’t need a push-up bra, curves that filled out clothes in ways that made men’s eyes follow me across rooms,the body he’d started making subtle remarks about six months ago when a wedding dress fitting revealed exactly how different I looked from his blonde, skinny ideal.
My thumb hovered over the send button for half a second.
Would he even care? I cropped the photo perfectly, making sure the nipple stayed in the shot. That should get his attention.
Fuck him. Fuck his judgment. Fuck every man who made me feel like I needed to apologize for taking up space.
I hit send.
Immediate sweet, intoxicating vindication flooded through me. He would see what he’d thrown away, that I wasn’t broken by his betrayal. He’d see?—
Ice-cold horror crashed through the vindication like a bucket of water to the face.
The message hadn’t gone to Daniel.
It had gone to the group chat labeled “Olympus Management”—Ares, Orion, and Leo Kolykos. My three billionaire bosses. The men who’d spent today watching me with an intensity that made my skin burn. The identical triplets who now had a photo of my breasts on their phones.
“No, no, no, no?—”
I lurched backward off the bed, my hip slamming into the kitchenette counter. The microwave I’d started before Daniel’s photo arrived sparked once. Twice.
Then burst into flames.
The smoke alarm shrieked to life, its piercing wail drilling into my skull as flames spread across the kitchenette counter. My prepackaged allergy-safe dinner caught fire. Orange flames licked up the cabinet doors. Black smoke billowed toward the ceiling.
And I’d just sent a nude photo to my bosses.
My brain short-circuited between priorities: Put out the fire. Delete the message. Jump out the window. Die of mortification before the flames got me.
I grabbed a dish towel and swatted uselessly at the flames, succeeding only in fanning them higher. Smoke filled my lungs, and I doubled over coughing, eyes streaming as the kitchenette transformed into an inferno.
