Chapter 35 #3
I step toward him, my fists clenching so hard my knuckles crack.
For a second, I genuinely consider punching him, right here in his corner office with the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, consequences be damned.
I want to feel his nose break under my fist, want to see blood, want to hurt him the way he's hurt Julie, the way he's hurt me, the way he's apparently been planning to hurt both of us for years.
But I don’t. Because everything I thought I knew about him was a lie.
Every memory, every moment of friendship, every time I defended him or made excuses for him or believed he was better than his worst impulses, it was all built on this.
He's a calculating, vindictive fuck who engineered meeting the woman he married because I had a crush on her. He’s been systematically destroying that woman's trust in me for years with lies about me being some kind of manwhore.
And now that he’s caught, he’s casually standing here telling me he never loved her while he plans to discard her like trash.
So, yeah. He’s goading me for a reason. I know it.
Violence is easy and often predictable. I wouldn’t put it fucking past him to have me arrested for assault.
And if I’m in jail, I can’t protect Julie from this piece of shit.
I shove him backward, hard. He stumbles, catching himself on his desk, and for a moment we stare at each other, two men who thought they knew each other, realizing they were never really friends at all.
"You're not even worth it." My voice is cold now, colder than I've ever heard it, stripped of everything except disgust. "You're not worth the jail time. You're not worth the satisfaction. You're nothing."
"None of this is your business, Ryan." He straightens his jacket, smoothing away the wrinkles like he's erasing the moment.
"Stand down. I don't hate her. I'm not going to destroy her.
She'll have the house, her engagement ring, all the jewelry I bought her.
She'll be fine. Better than fine. She'll be free to find someone who actually wants her. Maybe that someone is you."
I look at the stranger I believed was my best friend for most of my life, searching his face for any trace of the person I thought I knew. There's nothing there. Just emptiness and calculation and that cold, satisfied gleam of a man who thinks he's won.
I turn away because I can't look at him anymore without wanting to break something. "I'm going to tell her."
He laughs. "I'd think about that if I were you. If you run and tattle to her, she'll never see you as anything other than the guy who ruined her marriage. She'll hate me, yes, but she'll also associate you with the end. The moment when everything fell apart and you were the one holding the knife."
He pauses, letting the words sink in. "That will ruin your friendship forever. She'll never be able to let you in or trust you. She’ll never see you as anything except the messenger of her destruction. And that's a win for me all day long."
I freeze with my hand on the doorknob, his words worming into my brain because he's right. If I tell her, I become exactly what he says. The destroyer, the one who shattered her world. There will always be that association. That moment when everything fell apart and I was the one who told her.
But if I don't tell her, I'm complicit. I'm letting her stay with a man who never loved her, who engineered their entire relationship as a business transaction, who is actively working to destroy her self-worth so she'll be too broken to fight when he finally leaves.
I turn back and look at him one more time, memorizing this version of him, the real version, stripped of all pretense.
"One day, you're going to wake up and realize that none of this was worth it.
That you threw away something real and good and irreplaceable for money and control and some twisted need to win against people who were never your enemies.
" My voice drops. "And by then, it'll be too late.
You'll be alone, and you'll deserve it."
He doesn't respond. He just turns away as if I've already ceased to exist, like I'm furniture, like I'm nothing. So I leave. He makes his father look like the world’s most enlightened and affectionate man. Asher is a fucking monster.
I don't breathe until the elevator doors close and I'm alone, and then I lean against the wall and let the shaking take over.
Asher doesn't love Julie. He never did. He married her to please his father, to check a box, to take something he thought I wanted. He engineered their entire relationship and now he's destroying her because he doesn't need her anymore.In his mind, she's served her purpose. And now he's bored.
By the time I get to my car, I'm full on freaking out. I sit in the driver's seat and grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white, staring at the building where my best friend just told me everything I ever knew about him was a lie.
I pull out my phone and stare at her name in my contacts. Julie. My thumb hovers over the call button, trembling. But I don't press it.
I don't know how to help her without destroying her. I don't know how to fix this when the man I thought was my brother is actually a monster wearing a human face.
And I don’t know how to process the fact that Asher was right about one thing, though. I do have feelings for Julie. I have for years.