Chapter 3Her Fake Death Made Me Run Away With the Fortune

"Well, well. If it isn't Miss Winters."

A man aggressively dropped into the empty chair across from me, forcing me to rip my eyes away from Matthew's table.

...It was one of Matthew's obnoxious rich friends.

"We were literally taking bets yesterday on how fast Matthew was going to dump you. And look at you, already eating all by yourself."

He smiled with pure malice, his eyes raking over me like I was an object on display.

Then he pulled out his phone, blatantly snapped a picture of me, and sent it to a group chat. He held down the voice memo button. "Guess who I just ran into, boys? Matthew really tossed her to the curb."

Sitting there, an absolutely insane thought crossed my mind.

If Matthew's garbage friends were harassing me, could I invoice Timmy for emotional damage?

"Without him paying the bills, how are you going to keep up this luxury lifestyle?" He sneered, leaning closer with a sleazy look. "Why don't you spend a few nights with me? Twenty grand a night. Sound good?"

As much as I genuinely wanted to throw my wine directly into his face and tell him my actual boss paid me ten times that...

I couldn't. I still had a deeply devoted, heartbroken persona to maintain.

I kept my voice soft and gentle. "That's not true. Matthew just said he had something important to handle tonight. We're coming here together next time."

The man actually laughed out loud. He jerked his chin toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. "Do you see who is sitting over there?"

I only glanced over for a second before saying firmly, "That's just his friend. I would never interfere with his social life."

The man stood up and started walking straight toward their table. He was determined to rip away my last shred of dignity and force me to see exactly how ruthless Matthew really was.

Are you kidding me?!

I violently suppressed the thrill rising in my chest and quickly hurried after him.

This was absolutely perfect. I was desperately looking for a flawless, dramatic exit that wouldn't make anyone suspicious.

Matthew would definitely draw a hard line with me in front of his true love.

And I would act completely devastated, but maintain my dignity and leave with a broken heart.

That way, I could secure my massive severance check at lightning speed.

And if I was lucky, Matthew might even throw a fat breakup check at my face out of guilt.

Then we would officially go our separate ways, never to cross paths again.

After all, Timmy had explicitly told me that any jewelry, gifts, or allowances Matthew had given me were mine to keep with zero strings attached.

While my mind was calculating my net worth, I followed the obnoxious rich kid right up to Matthew's table.

Two pairs of eyes instantly snapped toward me.

As expected, the moment Matthew saw me, the color drained from his face.

He stared dead at me.

The atmosphere instantly turned incredibly bizarre.

The woman looked at me and asked, "Your girlfriend?"