He Secretly Used Our Down Payment to Buy Her a Luxury Bag Chapter 01

He Secretly Used Our Down Payment to Buy Her a Luxury Bag Chapter 01

I took the $100,000 my boyfriend and I had saved for a down payment on a house and spent every penny of it on a designer handbag.

That night, when Elliot Ashford found out, his eyes reddened. “Stella, have you lost your mind? Without that money, we can’t buy a house. How are we supposed to get married?”

I ran my fingers over the bag in my hands and said calmly, “Then we won’t.”

******

Elliot’s expression froze at my response.

“What did you just say?” His voice trembled.

I looked at him and repeated, “I said we’re not getting married.”

His eyes widened in disbelief. After a moment, he slowly crouched in front of me and took my hand.

“Stella, what happened? Did someone scam you? This isn’t the Stella I know.”

I pulled my hand away, perfectly clearheaded. “No one scammed me.”

Elliot frowned. “Then why—”

I cut him off before he could finish. “I just wanted to carry this bag and see what it felt like.”

Elliot froze, staring at me as though I were a stranger.

After a long silence, he stood. “You’re serious?”

I nodded.

His hands tightened into fists. “Fine.”

Then he turned and went into the bedroom, where he stayed for the rest of the night.

I stared at the closed door for a while before setting the bag on the coffee table and picking up the iPad beside me.

When I woke the screen, the wallpaper was a photo of a couple.

The man was Elliot.

The woman wasn’t me.

The previous Tuesday, the iPad I had used for video editing for six years finally died. I had planned to buy a new one, but after spending two days looking at the price tags in stores, all I could think about was how much money Elliot and I would need once we were married.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to spend $1,500.

I bought a used one on Mercari.

It arrived that morning. I eagerly tore open the package, only to discover that the seller hadn’t wiped the device.

I was about to contact the seller when my finger slipped across the screen, unlocking it and taking me to the home screen.

That was when I saw the photo.

I sat there for a long time before opening Messages with trembling hands. The instant I saw that familiar hand-drawn black cat icon, my heart sank.

For the next two hours, I read every message between the account owner and Elliot.

By the end, I knew three things.

First, the account belonged to a woman.

Second, she was his sugar baby.

Third, Elliot had lied to me for three years. He wasn’t an ordinary office worker at all. He was the heir to one of the wealthiest families in the country.

Even a routine transfer to her could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

As I read, I found myself adding up the amounts. Halfway through, the endless zeros began to blur together, and I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

When I returned to the living room, I sat on the couch and replayed every moment of our three-year relationship.

The most expensive gift Elliot had ever given me was my engagement ring.

It had cost $3,000.

That wasn’t even enough to cover a single prepaid package at her luxury med spa.

Six months earlier, I had fallen in love with a dress at the mall. It cost $250 and wasn’t practical enough for everyday wear. It was the kind of thing you would only wear on a beach vacation.

Elliot noticed how much I liked it and squeezed my hand. “Buy it. We can go to the beach for our honeymoon, and you’ll have the perfect reason to wear it.”

But the moment he said that, I started thinking about the house and the wedding again. We had so many expenses ahead of us.

I smiled and shook my head. “Forget it. For a couple hundred dollars more, we could buy a portable AC unit for the new place.”

Elliot lowered his gaze. “Stella, you’ve had to sacrifice so much because of me.”

I immediately shook my head. “That’s not true. As long as we work hard together, we’ll build the life we want.”

He looked at me with absolute conviction. “Stella, I swear I’ll never let you down.”

Back then, I had truly been moved.

I’d always thought Elliot was practical and dependable. When he said he wanted to buy a house and marry me, he transferred his entire paycheck into our house fund every month and kept only $200 for himself.

Now that I knew the truth, it felt like being slapped across the face.

The whole thing was sickeningly ironic.

When the woman in those messages whined that she had nothing to wear, Elliot had the newest collections from every major luxury brand delivered straight to her home.

Yet when I liked a slightly expensive dress, he had subtly talked me out of buying it.

While I agonized over whether I could justify spending $1,500 on a new iPad, Elliot had bought her a handbag without even blinking.

I looked up the price.

It was exactly $100,000.

That was the exact amount Elliot and I had spent three years scrimping and saving.

In that moment, I couldn’t even name what I felt.

I couldn’t cry, but something thrashed inside me, swelling until it felt as though it would split me open from the inside out.

So I went to the designer boutique and bought the exact same bag.

As I held it in my hands, one thought kept circling through my mind.

So this was what a $100,000 handbag felt like. It was almost weightless in my hands, yet impossibly heavy.