Part 3
My father reached across the table, took my phone out of my hand, and dropped it face down next to the cold toast.
“Let him talk to the manager,” Dad said quietly. “Let him explain why a man trying to buy a six-hundred-thousand-dollar necklace on someone else’s blocked corporate account can’t cover his own appetizers.”
Across town, in the high-gloss intimacy of the Sapphire Suite, the reality of the situation was crashing down.
Landon tried his personal cards, of course. But during our marriage, his “personal” lifestyle had been entirely subsidized by my credit lines while he funneled his own modest income into private accounts he thought I didn’t know about. Accounts that wouldn’t even cover a fraction of a Wagyu dinner for two, let alone a six-figure piece of jewelry.
When the manager informed him that the bill must be settled immediately—either by an approved method or via local authorities—Tessa didn’t wait to see how he would handle it.
Security cameras in the lobby of The Meridian Room later captured the exact moment Tessa Blake realized the billionaire lifestyle she had stepped into was rented. She didn’t offer to help with the bill. She didn’t even say goodbye. She slipped out a side entrance, calling an Uber from her own phone while hiding behind a pillar, desperately trying to delete the video she had posted an hour earlier.
Too late. The internet had already screenshotted it.
