Micah was a nursing student. I met her in the library, of all places. I was looking for a quiet place to sleep off a hangover, she was studying Anatomy.
She had these eyes... expressive doe eyes that seemed to look right through my bullshit. She didn't care about the Spencer name. She didn't care about the car I drove.
We started as friends.
We started dating in our third year. I courted her the old fashioned way. I brought flowers to her dorm. I drove her to her shifts at the hospital during her internship.
I formally introduced myself to her parents… hardworking people who lived in Quezon City. They were intimidated at first, but I charmed them. I wanted them to know I wasn't just some rich playboy toying with their daughter.
I brought her home to meet my parents. My mother loved her. My father, usually skeptical of anyone outside our tax bracket, said she had a "good head on her shoulders."
Five years.
Five fucking years.
We grew up together. We transitioned from students to adults together. I graduated and started working at the firm, she passed her board exams and became a registered nurse.
I was planning the proposal.
I had the ring picked out. A three carat flawless diamond, cut in our own workshops. I was going to do it on her birthday next month. I was ready to build a life with her. I was ready to be a husband. I was twenty five, but I felt ready.
I took a swig of beer, the bottle trembling slightly in my hand.
Then came last Tuesday.
It was such a stupid cliché. She was in the shower. Her phone was on the nightstand. It buzzed.
Once.
Twice.
I wasn't the jealous type. I never checked her phone. We had trust.
But the screen lit up and the preview message caught my eye.
Sender: Mark (Childhood Bestie)
Message: Last night was insane. My legs are still shaking. When is he leaving for his business trip?
I froze.
Mark. Her "childhood friend." The guy she said was like a brother. The guy I had bought beers for. The guy who came to our barbecues.
I unlocked her phone. She used my birthday as her passcode. The irony was like a knife in the gut.
I scrolled. And as I scrolled, my heart turned into ash.
It had been going on for months. Photos. Videos. Texts describing things she did with him.
Micah: He's sweet, but he's just... vanilla. You know how to handle me, Mark.
Mark: Just leave him, babe.
Micah: I can't yet. He pays for the condo. And my dad's surgery is coming up. Just wait a little longer.
I felt the bile rising in my throat just thinking about it.
I confronted her when she came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel I had bought her.
She laughed, said I was being silly. Her acting was... marvelous. Oscar worthy. If I hadn't seen the texts with my own eyes, I would have believed her. I would have apologized for doubting her.
In five years, how many times had she lied to me? How many times had she looked me in the eye and said "I love you" while thinking of others?
When I showed her the phone, the mask dropped.
"It just happened," she said.
It just happened. Like a fucking accident.
I remembered the second year of college. She had failed Pharmacology. She lost her scholarship. She was crying, packing her bags, ready to drop out.
I paid her full tuition for the rest of the degree. I used my trust fund. I told her, "Invest in your future, Micah. I believe in you."
I invested in a lie.
The phone was still gripped in my hand, the screen glowing with the digital rot of her secrets. My thumb was pressed against the glass so hard the tip had turned white, matching the vibrating fury radiating from my chest.
This was an iPhone I'd bought her, the latest model, custom ordered before it even hit the shelves in Manila because she'd mentioned liking the color.
Every piece of tech she owned, every rag on her back, every meal in her stomach for the last three years had been a gift from me.
I felt the muscles in my forearm coil and snap. I slammed the phone edge first into the corner of the marble vanity.
CRACK.
The sound was sickeningly satisfying. The screen spiderwebbed instantly, the liquid crystal bleeding out in a purple bruise.
I did it again and again, hammering the expensive toy into the stone until the frame bent and the glass was nothing but shimmering dust in my palm.
My knuckles were stinging, but I only felt the violent urge to break something that couldn't be fixed… just like she'd broken me.
"Aryan, please!" she gasped, her voice hitching in that perfectly pitched sob.
She took a step toward me, the towel slipping slightly, her eyes wide and swimming with tears. "It's not what it looks like! Mark, he's just... he was going through something, I was trying to help…"
"Help?" I echoed. The word tasted like copper and bile. "You were 'helping' him by letting him inside you? In the bed I bought? While I was at the office making sure your family didn't end up on the street?"
"No! It was a mistake! I love you, Aryan! Only you!" She reached out, her fingers trembling, trying to brush my arm, trying to use that physical pull she knew she had over me.
She was leaning into the 'fragile woman' act, her shoulders shaking, her face a mask of heart wrenching sorrow. It was the same look she'd used when she failed that exam, the same look that had made me open my heart and my wallet without a second thought.
You lying bitch.
The internal snarl was so loud I almost thought I'd said it. I stepped back, my skin crawling as if her very presence was an infection. My hands were shaking, my pulse thundering in my ears like a war drum.
I could feel the ruthless streak my father always warned me about… rising to the surface. If she stayed another minute, if she said one more tear soaked lie, I was going to lose it.
I was going to smash every window, every mirror, every memory of her until there was nothing left but rubble.
"Get out," I said. It was a low rasp, the sound of a man standing on the edge of a precipice.
"Aryan, listen to me, let's just talk…"
"GET. OUT." I moved toward her, to occupy the space, my height looming over her.
The air between us turned frigid. "I am giving you thirty seconds to take your shit and vanish before I do something we're both going to regret. Don't test me, Micah."
She looked into my eyes and finally saw it… the death of the 'gentle' Aryan she'd spent years playing like a violin. There was no more warmth there.
The crying stopped abruptly. The mask of sympathy she was trying to project shattered into a naked fear.
She scrambled to the bed, grabbing her dress and her bag with frantic hands. She didn't even bother to dress properly, just throwing her clothes on as she stumbled toward the door.
She finally left.
The heavy thud of the door closing was followed by a silence so loud it made my ears ring.
I stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the wreckage of a five year lie and the glittering shards of a broken phone, breathing in the scent of her perfume one last time before it turned to poison.
Her father (a decent man) came to my office the next day. He was weeping. He couldn't look me in the eye. He knew what I had done for them. He knew I was paying for his heart medication.
"I am so sorry, Aryan," he had sobbed. "I failed as a father. I didn't raise her like this."
He begged for forgiveness. Not for the relationship, he knew that was dead… but for the shame. He treated me like a son. And now, because of his daughter's whoreish entitlement, he lost that son.
Our families stopped speaking. My mother was furious. She wanted to ruin Micah's reputation, get her fired from the hospital. I stopped her. What was the point?
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
I had given her everything. My time. My money. My heart. My loyalty.
And physically?
I thought about the woman who just left the room. I thought about the way she screamed.
I had a big dick. I knew how to use it. I had the stamina of an athlete. I made sure Micah cum first, every single time.
So why?
Was I not enough? Was Mark better? Did he have something I didn't?
"He's just... vanilla."
The words echoed in my skull.
What is the fucking point of cheating? If you're unhappy, leave. If you want someone else, go. Why string me along? Why let me plan a marriage? Why let me pay for your life while you're fucking someone else in the bed I bought?
It was just cruelty.
She wanted the Spencer lifestyle and the bad boy thrill of her childhood friend. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too.
I finished the beer and threw the bottle across the room. It shattered against the wall, shards of brown glass raining down onto the carpet.
I stood up, swaying slightly.
I grabbed my car keys from the table. The keychain was a silver diamond… a gift from my dad.
I stumbled out of the suite, ignoring the elevator and took the stairs down to the parking garage. My footsteps echoed in the concrete stairwell.
My car was waiting in the VIP slot. A black Lamborghini Aventador. It was a beast of a machine.
I slid into the driver's seat. The leather creaked. The engine roared to life with a predator's growl, vibrating through the chassis and into my bones.
I peeled out of the garage, the tires squealing on the polished concrete.
The rain was coming down harder now. Manila was a wash of gray and black. I hit the highway, the EDSA, usually a parking lot, but at 2:00 AM, it was relatively open.
I pressed the accelerator.
The V12 engine screamed behind my head. The digital speedometer climbed.
100 km/h.
120 km/h.
150 km/h.
The streetlights blurred into streaks of gold. The rain hammered against the windshield, the wipers fighting a losing battle.
I was drunk. My vision was swimming.
I felt the tears finally spilling over.
"Why?" I screamed, the sound trapped within the carbon fiber cabin. "What did I do wrong?!"
I was a good man and a loyal partner.
I saw the headlights in the rearview mirror first. Then, up ahead, a truck swerved to avoid a puddle.
I jerked the wheel. My hands were slippery. The Lamborghini lost traction. The world tilted.
I saw the concrete barrier rushing toward me.
CRUNCH.
The sound of metal tearing was the loudest thing I had ever heard. Then, the world turned white and then, absolute black.