My Billionaire Ex Won't Stop

Sienna's POV

The cappuccino had gone cold twenty minutes ago. I kept my hands wrapped around the cup anyway because if I let go, Eleanor would see them shaking.

Sunset Roast. Floor-to-ceiling windows. San Francisco's sky bleeding out in orange and pink. Across from me, Eleanor Vance adjusted her Hermès scarf and kept talking in that voice — the one that sounded like a lullaby and cut like a scalpel.

"You understand, of course, that what you're doing is fundamentally selfish." She paused, her fingers drumming once against the marble tabletop. "Ethan has responsibilities. A legacy built over generations. And you —"

She let the word hang in the air between us.

"I never asked him for anything," I said quietly, my voice barely audible above the café's ambient noise.

Eleanor laughed. Soft. Cultured. Devastating. "Oh, my dear child. You didn't have to ask. That's the entire problem." She shook her head. "I truly don't know what he sees in you."

The words landed like a physical blow. She reached into her Birkin and withdrew a check, sliding it across the table. The number made my vision swim, zeros blurring together.

"If this becomes public," Eleanor continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, "the scandal will follow him for life. Nominal niece sleeping with her uncle. The tabloids will have a field day. His board appointments, his political connections, the charitable foundations that bear our family name — all of it, gone." She leaned forward. "Is that what you want for the man you claim to love?"

Nominal niece. The words hit my sternum like a fist. Because she was right, and that was the most devastating part. My mother had been Raymond Vance's ward, taken in when her parents died, raised as family but never quite family.

In the eyes of their world — their carefully constructed society of old money and older secrets — Ethan was my uncle. What felt like the purest love from the inside — what would it look like printed in a headline? What would it sound like whispered in country club powder rooms?

My hands began to shake despite my efforts to control them. I picked up the check. Folded it. Slipped it into my coat pocket where it sat like a lead weight.

Eleanor rose, gathering her things with the satisfaction of a woman who always got her way. "You've made the right choice, dear. Ethan will thank you for this someday, even if he doesn't understand it now."

The apartment was dark when I got back, shadows stretching across the hardwood floors. I heard Ethan before I saw him — keys in the lock, his footsteps heavy with exhaustion.

He stepped through the door and stopped, taking in the scene I'd arranged: candles flickering on every surface, white roses in crystal vases, the dining table set for two.

"Shit." He breathed the word like a prayer. "Sienna, I —"

He'd forgotten. Our anniversary. The day we'd first admitted what we felt was more than it should be.

"It doesn't matter," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "Sit down. We need to talk."

"Baby, I'm sorry —" He was reaching for me, and I stepped back as if he'd burned me.

"We shouldn't have started this. We were a mistake from the beginning."

Silence stretched between us like a chasm. His jaw tightened. He lit a cigarette with hands that weren't steady, the flame from his lighter casting harsh shadows across his face.

"Sienna." His voice was carefully controlled. "Look at me and say that again."

I turned my face away, focusing on the city lights beyond our window.

"Look at me!" His hand caught my chin, forcing me to face him, and I saw everything there — confusion, hurt, the beginning of understanding that this was really happening.

"Let go of me."

"No."

"I never wanted to marry you." Each word was glass in my throat. "Being with you was the biggest mistake of my life. All those things you gave me — the jewelry, the trips, the promises — it just made me sick."

I watched something shatter behind his eyes, watched the man I loved break apart in real time.

Then he smiled. The worst thing I'd ever seen — empty and sharp and utterly defeated.

"Fine. Go."

At the door, his voice stopped me one last time. Quiet. Broken. "Sienna. Is this really what you want?"

"Yes."

I walked out. Didn't look back. Couldn't.

The parking garage echoed with the sound of my heels on concrete. I made it to the car before my legs gave out. Seven missed calls by the time I turned off the phone, his name lighting up the screen.

I pulled over at a lookout point and sat there, Eleanor's check burning in my pocket.

And then the memory hit me.

Eight months ago. This same apartment. Summer night, AC broken, windows thrown open. Me on the living room floor in shorts and a tank top. Ethan emerging from the shower in nothing but boxer shorts, water tracing paths down his chest.

He'd sat beside me on the hardwood floor. Too close. Close enough that I could smell his soap, feel the heat radiating from his skin.

"Sienna." His voice rough with something I'd been pretending not to recognize for months.

"Don't."

"Why?"

"Because if you say what I think you're going to say, I won't be able to stop myself from saying it back."

His thumb found my lower lip, tracing it with a gentleness that made my breath catch. "You're not my blood. You've never been my blood."

"That won't matter to them. To the world."

"I don't care about them."

When he'd kissed me, it tasted like surrender and revolution and coming home all at once.

But underneath the heat, underneath the relief of finally letting go — there'd been a cold thread I couldn't cut.

Because the last time we'd been at a family dinner, Eleanor had smiled at me across the table and said, "Ethan, be a dear and help your niece with the wine." And he'd poured my glass without flinching, and I'd drunk it without flinching, and we'd both pretended the word hadn't landed between us like a grenade with the pin still in.

That was the thing about us. The wanting was easy. It was the rest of it — the lying, the hiding, the constant performance of being nothing to each other in rooms full of people who would be horrified if they knew the truth — that ate you alive from the inside out.

We'd both known it was the beginning of the end.

Now. The lookout point. Rain beginning to streak the windshield. The city spread out below me, millions of lights belonging to people with simple loves.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Started the car. Drove toward the airport through streets that blurred together.

Seattle. A life without Ethan Vance. A life where I could breathe without wondering who was watching.

But as I merged onto the freeway, his voice echoed in my head: "Is this really what you want?"

The check crinkled in my pocket.

I pressed harder on the gas.