Betrayed During My Engagement Party Chapter 02

Betrayed During My Engagement Party Chapter 02

My sister Mia went to pour me some water.
I unlocked my phone and opened the engagement party group chat.
Luna had dropped a bunch of photos.
They were all lovey-dovey shots with Silco.
One picture was when they were at the beach. Then, at a restaurant. The next one was in a hotel room.
The earliest one was dated six months ago.
Six months ago.
I thought about it.
That was my birthday.
Silco said he had to travel for work. He didn’t call all day.
I waited past midnight, texted him, and he replied, “Busy.”
So that was what he was busy with.
I kept scrolling.
The next picture was Silco had his arm around Luna. The background was my favorite French place.
He always said it was too pricey. We dated for ten years and never went once.
Then, there was another picture—it was Luna wearing a diamond ring.
It was as big as a damn pigeon egg.
There was a caption.
He got me this. So happy.
I scrolled back up and checked the timestamp.
Three months ago.
At that time, Silco was borrowing money from me.
He said his company was short on cash. So he begged me to help.
I emptied my savings and borrowed from my sister.
I scraped together a hundred grand for him.
He took my money and bought Luna that ring.
I set my phone down.
And closed my eyes.
Memories flashed, one after another.
Elementary school summer camp. Luna and I were in a bunk bed.
She said, “Mel, let’s be best friends forever.”
College. She fought with her boyfriend and called me crying at midnight.
I grabbed a cab and crossed half the city to hold her hand.
After we started working, every time she changed jobs, I rewrote her resume.
She said, “Mel, you’re my bestie.”
My bestie.
I opened my eyes.
The rain outside was coming down harder. Mia came over with a mug of hot coffee and sat beside me.
“Mel, if you want to cry, just cry.”
I stared at the cup.
“Not crying.”
“Why?”
I shook my head.
It was not that I was not hurting.
I just didn’t know who to feel bad for.
Silco? Luna? Or the idiot version of me who wasted more than a decade?
Mia sighed and shoved the coffee into my hands.
I gripped the cup.
The heat bit into my palm.
It hurt.
But I could take it.
For the next two days, I called off work and stayed home with Mia, packing.
Boxes piled up all over the living room, big and small. I tossed in everything that was tied to Silco and Luna, one thing at a time.
The couple pillows, our photos, the watch he gave me, the scarf Luna knitted…
All of them were packed up. It was time to dump this trash.
When I cracked open the old wooden box in the attic, a brown envelope slipped out.
Inside was an IOU.
It was the note Silco wrote when he first started his business and borrowed money from me.
That was when it finally hit me: over these ten years—startups, cash crunches, plugging holes—he’d borrowed from me more times than I could count.
I never said no. I always thought people in love shouldn’t keep score.
There was also a stack of photos, the ones I took for him every year.
Graduation, promotion, grand opening—I paid good money to throw him celebrations, booked photographers, and made his life feel more important than mine.
In the little box next to it were all the gifts he ever gave me.
I took them out one by one.
The cheapest was a keychain. The priciest was a necklace—twenty-nine bucks.
Ten years. Add it all up, and it didn’t even break five hundred.
My phone pinged. Luna’s latest post.
She flashed a diamond ring. The stone blazed. Caption:
My boy spoils me.
The tag said the ring was $10,002.
I stared at the screen and suddenly laughed.
Bitter. Absurd.
When he was broke, I bled myself dry to help him.
When he had money, all the sweetness and generosity went to the woman who stole him.
Ten years of real love, worth jack shit.
I wiped the smile off my face. Screenshot. Save. I sorted every transfer record, every receipt, and every IOU. One by one, I compiled them all into an encrypted folder.
This tab? I would be settling it down to the last cent.
I’d barely finished when my phone buzzed. It was a message from Silco.
I figured he’d apologize. Explain. Instead, I opened it and saw one cold line.
“The engagement venue, catering, and everything I’ve spent on you these ten years come to a total of $150,000. Transfer it ASAP. Let’s make a clean break.”
I stared at the screen, my grip tightening around my phone.
A clean break?
He cheated. He betrayed me. He blew up my engagement party. And now I was the one who had to pay?
I sent back two words.
“Just wait.”
Then, I screenshotted his message and dropped it into the evidence folder.
Mia walked over with a coffee. She saw the message on my phone and slammed the mug onto the table, furious.
“How dare he? Mel, we’re suing him!”
I took a sip of the coffee. The warmth slid down my throat, but my heart was ice.
“Relax. We will. Just not yet.”
I would make him crash and burn in the brightest, flashiest place.
The rain outside stopped. Sunlight broke through the clouds and spilled over the stack of neatly sorted evidence.
Some things, once broken, would stay broken.
But what was I owed? I would take back every last penny.