Ethan
The bass from the club's speakers thumped against my ribs, a useless attempt to drown out the noise in my head.
I sat in the VIP section, a glass of twenty-year-old Scotch untouched on the table before me, watching the glittering chaos below like it was a poorly scripted play.
I was, as my friend Oliver would put it, "a mess."
"You've been staring at that ice melt for twenty minutes," Ji-hoon observed, his voice cutting through the music. He was always observing. "The deal with the Singapore conglomerate fell through?"
"No," I said, my voice flat. "The deal is fine."
"It's not a business thing," Jae-min declared, leaning forward. His tie was already loosened. "This is a woman thing. I know the look."
"There is no look," I said, finally taking a drink. The Scotch burned, but it didn't clear the fog.
"Bullshit," Oliver said calmly, swirling his own drink. He was the steady one, the one who saw through walls.
"We've known you since you thought a billion was a fantasy. You're here, but you're not here. Something's got its hooks in you.
So, talk. Or we keep guessing, and my next guess involves a scandal and the front page of the Post."
I shot him a glare. He just raised an eyebrow, unfazed. They were a wall of expectation. My closest friends. The only people who didn't want something from me, which was why I couldn't lie to them.
I set my glass down with a sharp click. The confession felt like pulling a shard of glass from my chest.
"There was an incident," I started, the words tasting like ash. "At Cynthia's birthday party. In Southampton."
"The pool house," Ji-hoon said quietly. He'd been there. He'd probably seen me leave.
A tight nod. "It was late. Dark. There was… a lot of champagne. On both sides." I dragged a hand over my jaw. "It was Clara's sister. Ava."
The silence at our table was sudden and absolute, a bubble of stillness in the roaring club.
Jae-min whistled low. "Ava? The quiet one? Damn."
"Clara's sister," Oliver repeated, his voice heavy with implication. "Your fiancée's sister."
"I am acutely aware of the relationship," I snapped, the anger flaring hot and immediate. Anger at myself. "It was a mistake. A blind, stupid moment. It meant nothing."
"Did it?" Ji-hoon asked, his gaze too perceptive.
"It can't mean anything," I corrected, the logic cold and clear in my mind. "It was one night. A lapse. It's done."
"And Clara?" Oliver pressed.
"She doesn't know. She can't ever know." The threat I'd made to Ava echoed back at me. I will ruin you. It had been necessary. Control the variable. Contain the fallout.
"So that's it?" Jae-min asked. "You just… bury it?"
"That's the plan," I said, finishing the Scotch. The plan was clean, simple, and airtight. Erase the night. Proceed with the expected merger, the marriage to Clara. Maintain order.
My phone buzzed on the table. A specific, dreaded ringtone. Family.
It was my father.
A cold sense of foreboding slithered down my spine. He never called this late unless the world was on fire.
I answered. "Father."
His voice was not angry. It was worse. It was grimly, surgically practical. "Ethan, You need to come home. Now. The Sterlings are on their way over with Charles and Camilla. There's been a development regarding the wedding."
"I have to go," I said, my voice already distancing itself from the chaos of the club, from the confession I'd just spilled. "Family call. It's about the wedding."
My friends exchanged a look I didn't have the capacity to decipher. "Everything alright?" Oliver asked.
"It will be," I said, the lie automatic. I stood, the expensive Scotch a sour weight in my gut. Whatever this was, I would handle it. I would reinforce the plan. Marry Clara. Bury the incident with the sister. Move forward.
I walked into the living room, a space of cool marble and curated silence and the scenario shattered.
The Sterling parents were there, seated stiffly on the modernist sofa.
My own parents were in their usual high-backed chairs, faces unreadable.
And there, perched on the edge of an armchair as if ready to bolt, was Ava.
Her head was bowed, her hands knotted in her lap. She looked small, hollowed out. She didn't look up.
My gaze swept the room again. A crucial piece was missing.
"Where's Clara?" I asked, the question cutting the thick silence.
No one answered. My father gestured to the empty chair opposite him. "Sit down, Ethan."
This was not a discussion. This was a tribunal. I sat, my spine rigid, my eyes never leaving my father's. "What is this? Why is Ava here?"
Mrs. Sterling cleared her throat. "Ethan, there has been… a development. A situation that concerns both families deeply."
A cold knot began to tighten in my stomach. My eyes flicked to Ava. She flinched.
"It seems," my father began, his words precise and surgical, "that the consequences of your actions at Cynthia's party were more significant than you led us to believe."
The floor fell away. No.
"Ava is pregnant," my mother said, her tone not gentle, but factual. A statement of damage.
The words landed, detonating in the quiet room. I stared at Ava. Her shame was a palpable thing in the air. The secret I'd sworn to bury was alive in the room, growing inside her.
"Given the circumstances," Mr. Sterling said, his voice all business, "the original arrangement is no longer tenable. A scandal of this magnitude would damage both families irreparably. The only viable solution is to preserve the union, but alter the participants."
I knew what was coming. I saw the brutal, cold logic of it laid out before me like a forced merger.
"The wedding will proceed," my father announced, his gaze pinning me to the chair. "But you will be marrying Ava Sterling. Not Clara."
The control I'd spent a lifetime building snapped.
"No." The word tore out of me, raw and absolute. I stood up, the chair scraping violently against the floor. "Absolutely not. If it is not Clara, then there will be no marriage at all."
The silence that followed was icy. Ava finally looked up, her eyes wide, wounded. I ignored it. This was about survival.
"You don't have a choice, Ethan," my father said, his voice low and dangerous. "You made your choice in that pool house. This is the cleanup."
"It was a mistake!" I roared, the facade of the cool billionaire heir gone, leaving only a cornered man. "I will provide for the child. Set up a trust. Anything. But I will not be forced into a marriage with… with her."
I saw Ava wince as if I'd struck her. I didn't care. This was a prison sentence being read aloud.
"The marriage is the provision," my mother stated coldly. "It provides the child with a name and our families with a shield. Your personal feelings are the least relevant detail."
The walls were closing in. The perfect, controlled future I had mapped out, the suitable wife, the orderly life was incinerated.
In its place was this: a trembling stranger, a child conceived in a dark mistake, and a life sentence in a gilded cage of my own making.
I looked at Ava, at the living, breathing consequence of my one loss of control. Hate, hot and desperate, bloomed in my chest. Hate for her, for myself, for this inescapable trap.
"This isn't a marriage," I said, my voice dropping to a venomous whisper meant for her ears alone, though the whole room heard. "This is a hostage situation."
Her eyes held mine for a shattered second, filled with a despair that mirrored my own. Then she looked away, surrendering to the same tide
that was drowning me.
The deal was done. My future was decided.
I was no longer marrying Clara.
I was marrying my mistake