As the future CEO and a stunning beauty, Phoebe had always been adored by her employees. Now that this scandal had surfaced, everyone naturally took her side.
The same colleagues who had been flattering me just minutes ago—only because I was her fiancé—were now staring at me with open contempt.
“Miss Wright, I bet he was pretending to be noble by not spending your money, just so you'd beg him to. That way, when things blew up, he’d have an excuse to turn around and play the victim.”
“Exactly! Classic manipulation!”
“I haven’t even spent five hundred thousand in the past three years. He burns through that in three days? And this is before marrying into wealth? If they’d really tied the knot, he’d have drained the entire family fortune!”
“Poor Miss Wright. What a gold-digging fiancé!”
“If you ask me, just call off the engagement already. These old-school arranged marriages are just outdated relics of feudal times.”
Phoebe’s assistant, Blake, gave me a disdainful glance before turning to her and shaking her arm as he tried to comfort her.
“Miss Wright, today’s young people really can’t handle any kind of test. Just consider five hundred thousand the price you paid to see his true colors. If you had married him, the company would probably be gone by now—and the rest of us will be out of jobs!”
Well, they certainly knew how to twist the knife. Every snide comment cut like a snakebite, slithering right into my ears.
I clenched the pen in my hand so tightly that my knuckles turned white.
Phoebe looked pleased by the crowd’s support. Right in front of me, she wrapped an arm around Blake’s shoulder and said coldly, “Gabriel, if you were short on money, you could’ve just told me. Why sneak around and max out my card? Now, you have two choices...”
She paused, eyes gleaming with disdain. “Either pay me back immediately, or we call off the engagement, and you pack up and get the hell out of my company.”
The entire office fell silent. Everyone was waiting for my reaction.
I stared straight into her eyes and let out a cold laugh.
“Don’t worry, the engagement is over—but I’m not paying you back a single cent.”
Gasps echoed around the room.
Blake, gleeful at the chaos, added fuel to the fire.
“Unbelievable! I've never met a man as shameless as you. Thank god Miss Wright caught your true face early. If she had married you, you would’ve sucked her dry like a bloodsucker!”
I ignored him.