Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
The Thai place three blocks from the office closes at nine, but the owner keeps the kitchen open late when Gideon calls ahead.
We’ve become regulars. Every Tuesday, same corner booth, same order.
He gets the pad see ew. I get the green curry.
We argue about donor strategy over the appetizers and talk about everything else over the main.
Tonight he slides a small box across the table. Not a ring box. Too wide, too flat, and he knows I’m not ready for that anyway. I open it. Inside is a business card. Heavy stock, clean type.
“I already have business cards,” I say with a crooked smile.
“Yes, but those say Executive Director. These say Partner. The board approved it this morning.”
Rayna Booth, Executive Partner, Hayes Holdings. I run my thumb across the raised letters. My name. My title. No one else’s handwriting underneath.
I look at him across the table. A year in, and he still brings me water instead of wine when I’m thinking. He still doesn’t finish my sentences. He still treats every boundary like information instead of an insult.
“Thank you,” I say.
“No need to thank me. You earned it. Every piece of it.”
Looking back at where I was a year ago is bittersweet. My life had imploded but now I’m somewhere better, somewhere I never could have imagined.
And Jason is… Well, I heard through various mutual acquaintances that he’s in Denver now living in a studio apartment.
He took a mid-level position at a nonprofit that does workforce development, which is either ironic or exactly right, depending on how generous you’re feeling.
He’s rebuilding. Slowly, quietly, without a Tom Ford suit or a borrowed reputation.
I don’t know if he’s happy. I don’t need to know.
I just hope he’s building something that’s actually his this time.
Bella and I will never be friends. But she’s not exactly the brat she was before, either.
She lost the penthouse and the Amex and the life that came without a price tag, and what she found on the other side was smaller and harder, but wholly hers.
She picked up a handful of brand partnerships, lifestyle content, the kind of thing she’s good at when she’s not flitting around the globe pending her father’s money.
She’s not living in poverty, but she’s not rich anymore either, at least not the kind of rich she was used to.
She’s somewhere in the middle, figuring out what she’s worth when the answer isn’t her father’s net worth.
She and Gideon have coffee once a month now.
He comes back from those mornings quieter than usual, but it’s a different quiet than it used to be. Less grief. More hope.
Gideon holds my coat while I put it on, and his hand rests on my shoulder for a second longer than it needs to.
“Rayna.”
“Hm?”
“I’m glad you said okay when I offered you the job.”
I think about all the times I’ve said that word.
In a catering lounge, with shaking hands and a marriage ending.
On a porch, accepting a business card from a man I didn’t trust yet.
On a terrace, letting someone sit beside me.
At a desk, taking a job that finally had my name on it.
On another terrace, choosing the man who’d been waiting without asking.
Every okay was a door, and every door led here.
“So am I,” I say.
We walk out into the city. His hand in mine.
The ending I built myself.
Thank you for reading He Rejected Me For A Billionaire’s Daughter! I hope you enjoyed it! More books in the A Wife’s Retribution series coming soon! You can find all the book in the series here.