Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 11

Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 11

I looked at him coldly. A sharp pain shot through my wrist, but I didn’t flinch.

“What happens between me and him is none of your business.”

“None of my business?” Sebastian laughed, a harsh, furious sound. His blue eyes flashed with a possessiveness and madness I had never seen. “Chloe, have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten what we are to each other?”

I laughed too, at his innate arrogance, his sheer absurdity.

“Academic partners.”

At that, the muscles in Sebastian’s face twitched. His expression turned ugly.

“Nothing more,” I added mercilessly.

Those two words were a dagger dipped in ice. His hand tightened, his fingers digging into my skin.

“Academic partners? Nothing more? Chloe, do you think the five years we spent in the shadows were some kind of children’s game?”

With a sudden burst of strength, I wrenched my hand free and stepped back, disgusted, as if I had touched something filthy.

“When did we ever have a relationship?”

I stared at his face, twisted with anger, and enunciated each word clearly. “Sebastian, your fiancée is Isabella. Tonight is your engagement party.”

“Chloe!”

Sebastian was completely enraged. The elegant composure he took such pride in had vanished.

“How many times do I have to explain it? This is just a transaction! It’s to help Isabella’s family cover up the scandal. Apart from that agreement, there’s nothing between us.”

“Is that so?” I gave a cold laugh. “Then why are you playing the perfect golden couple with her? Why are you letting all of East Coast high society believe you’re deeply in love?”

My questions were a volley of bullets, forcing him back step by step.

“Sebastian, for the five years we were together, how many times did I ask you to introduce me at an art history dinner? Just once. Just to say, ‘This is my girlfriend, Chloe.’ Did you ever do it?”

I hadn’t wanted to rip open these old wounds tonight and make myself look like a hysterical, resentful woman.

But he was forcing my hand.

“Last semester, you lied and said you were going to California for family business. But you flew to New York to help Isabella with her family’s PR crisis. When you stood in her living room and called yourself her ‘staunchest supporter’ for a *Vanity Fair* reporter, did you think for one second about me, your ‘secret girlfriend’ hidden away in the dark?”

“Isabella’s family reputation was on the line. She needed someone by her side to prove to the board and the other families that she wasn’t alone.”

Cornered, Sebastian fell back on his old, tired speech about “responsibility.”

“She trusted me, Chloe. Was I supposed to just stand by and watch a family allied with ours for generations be disgraced?”