Page 6 of King of Pride

Rose stumbled only slightly as she picked up another glass of martini and downed it.

She had liked Ivan for so long that it had started to feel like love. She hadn’t realized how much she was giving in to him while ignoring all the things she knew were wrong.

She looked at Zoe and admitted, “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him right after his ex-girlfriend left. I knew it was wrong, but I still gave him a chance because he proposed to me. And I had never thought that a guy I liked would come forward and propose to me himself.”

Zoe immediately put both of her hands on her waist and said, “It’s not your fault. Why are you blaming yourself? You were sincere with him from the very start. You put in all the effort in the relationship because you thought that he had already forgotten about Jessica. But it turns out that the man is still drowning in his ex-girlfriend’s love.”

Rose frowned as she answered, “I didn’t realize that. It turned out that he still loves Jessica, and he just wanted her to see that he was living a perfect life even after she left him. And that’s why he proposed to me,” she murmured.

“I’m the one who fell in love—the one who liked him first. So it’s true that the one who falls first always loses. I really didn’t mean as much to Ivan as he meant to me. He cherished everything that Jessica had left behind for him.”

Rose said it as she looked at Zoe before continuing, her voice shaking only slightly as she reached over and grabbed another glass from the counter. She took a sip before continuing.

“He wouldn’t throw anything away. He wouldn’t even let me bring up the fact that he was still attached to Jessica’s things. He said they were memories from his life that he didn’t want to lose, even though all of those items were things only Jessica had given him. A couple’s coffee cup. Old photographs. Framed pictures of the two of them from the past. I had overlooked everything.”

Her voice shook slightly as she continued, her anger rising while the ache in her chest grew even more intense because she really had given everything she could to the man she liked.

Ivan wasn’t just some random man she had simply accepted into her life. She had already had a crush on him when he proposed to her. She had truly believed that the man she was going to marry loved her.

Zoe’s voice rose as she said, “Thank God you didn’t marry him. Imagine if this had happened after you married that bastard. What a headache it would have been to realize that he was such an asshole. I would have hated finding out later that he was still in love with his fucking ex.”

Rose continued drinking her third martini, her hands trembling only slightly. The betrayal felt so raw and painful that her body ached slightly as she stood there, trying to process everything.

Suddenly, there were noises around them, and the one word that came through very clearly was the name Jessica.

Zoe and Rose immediately looked at each other as they overheard the voices mentioning Jessica’s name. Then they shifted toward the noise in the back, where a bunch of girls were talking.

“No, why would she even come back to Manhattan? I thought it was already perfect that she had a life with Brandon in France. I mean, Paris is the city of love, after all. Why would she come back here?” one of the girls said.

“I heard that it’s because Brandon caught her cheating on him,” another girl answered.

Zoe and Rose looked at each other, their eyes widening as they heard the information. They immediately moved closer to the voices, as quietly as they could, listening to the girls as they continued to chat.

Then the third girl flipped her hair back and said, “I know something that you don’t know. My sister told me. She’s best friends with Jessica.”

Immediately, all the girls shifted closer to her.

“Don’t hide it from us. Tell us! What’s going on? What are you talking about?” the girls demanded.

The third girl smirked, clearly enjoying the feeling of superiority, before saying, “Jessica was sleeping around. But it’s not like Brandon wasn’t sleeping around either. He was sleeping with other girls as well. So, both of them were seeing other people. But Brandon, of course, didn’t know that Jessica was sleeping around too. And when he caught her with his dad in his bed, he broke up with her and literally threw her out of his house without a penny. That’s why Jessica is back in Manhattan now.”

“What the hell? Are you serious? She slept with his dad?”

The girls looked horrified.

At the same time, Zoe and Rose looked at each other, their eyes widening as their mouths fell slightly open in shock.

The girl continued.

“Yeah, and that’s why he terminated her employment with his company. My sister was talking to her about it over a video call, and when she realized I was listening, my sister moved to another room to talk to her. That bitch even slammed the door in my face. But that’s all I heard when Jessica was talking to my sister, and it was so juicy!”

The girl stopped, disappointment appearing on her face.

“I couldn’t get the whole gossip.”

The other girls looked equally disappointed, some of them giggling as they began talking among themselves.

Zoe and Rose looked at each other in complete shock.