Chapter 1

• Chapter One
• Serena POV
• I always said I could live on ramen if the view was good enough, and here I am, proving that theory correct five nights a week. My Brooklyn loft is barely bigger than a rich man’s walk-in closet, but it’s got exposed brick, a window that actually opens, and a skyline view that belongs on the cover of Architectural Digest.
• And in the fall? Forget about it. Golden leaves float past my fire escape like a damn rom-com montage, and the air doesn’t feel like Satan’s asshole anymore. It’s the kind of crisp that makes you want to wear a sweater and make questionable life decisions involving cinnamon and pumpkin spice blends.
• Speaking of questionable decisions, there’s a steaming cup of Earl Grey on my kitchen island and a slice of fattening-rich carrot cake that I will fight someone over. Thick cream cheese frosting, just the right amount of spice, the whole nine. I was two seconds from devouring it like it owed me money while half-watching a video on how to keep succulents alive when the mail caught my eye.
• Bad idea.
• Because nestled between my electric bill, which I’m pretending doesn’t exist, and a flyer for a psychic who only takes cash apps, was it.
• A glossy, smug little magazine. Annual issue. “The Best 35 Under 35.”
• And right there on the cover? Julian-fucking-Cross...
• My ex. My mistake. My goddamn origin story.
• In the photo, he’s got that same slightly-too-long hair, the same perfect storm eyes, and that arrogant smirk that says yes, I did start a billion-dollar fintech company in my twenties, and yes, I probably just stole your girl.
• He stole a lot more than that.
• My crock pot.
• My virginity.
• My sanity.
• And unfortunately, my heart.
• I stare at his face on my kitchen counter, and for the first time in hours, I lose my appetite.
• Which is saying something. Because I really, really wanted that cake.
• I should’ve thrown it away. The magazine, I mean. Not the cake because who does that? But no. I picked it up like it was laced with cocaine and heartbreak and stared at Julian Cross like I didn’t already know every goddamn angle of his face.
• He still does that thing with his jaw. Tightens it slightly when he’s trying to look casual, like the weight of being God’s favorite son is just so exhausting.
• The article’s headline?
• “The Billion-Dollar Brain: Julian Cross Disrupts Global Banking”
• Disrupts.
• That’s a word.
• You know what else he disrupted?
• My entire twenties.
• I shove the magazine under a pile of unread mail like that’ll make him disappear, but of course it doesn’t. He’s still there. In my head. In my gut. In that little part of me that still fantasizes about confronting him at a gala in a slinky black dress and devastating heels, just so I can say, “Oh, I didn’t recognize you without your ego and my crock pot.”
• My phone buzzes.
• Ava:
• Tell me why I’m at this boring-ass networking event and your EX is on the cover of this finance rag they’re passing around like it's porn.
• I don’t even type. I just sent her a picture of the same cover, now bent slightly from rage-handling.
• Me:
• Welcome to my dinner plans being canceled.
• Ava:
• Girl. I’m ordering you wine. And ice cream. And probably a hitman.
• I smile. Briefly. Until I look over at the slice of carrot cake, now tragically abandoned.
• This night was supposed to be cozy. Peaceful. Just me, the city, and a baked good.
• Now?
• Now it’s me versus my past.
• And unfortunately for Julian Cross, I’ve got nothing left to lose.
• I didn’t always hate that stupid, beautiful smile. Or those stupid, gorgeous eyes that turned dark gray when he was tired and brighter when he was about to do something reckless.
• I didn’t always want to claw out my own heart every time I remembered the way his jawline would flex when he kissed me, slow at first, then like he needed it. Like he needed me.
• And don’t even get me started on those hands. Those big, warm, traitorous hands that could cup your face one second and promise forever in the way they held you, only to be gone by morning. And he is a master with those fingers. Trust me, I stood at the gates guarded by Saint Peter several times, just by a simple curl of his index finger.
• I used to love him so much it hurt.
• I used to think I was the luckiest girl in the fucking world.
• We were twenty-three and broke. And stupid. And in love.
• Julian used to make the worst jokes. Like painfully bad. Like dad on an energy drink, bad. But he’d say them with his whole chest, fully convinced he was the next stand-up prodigy, and I’d laugh. Every time. Because loving him made even the dumbest things feel golden.
• He called me his muse. His grounding force. His girl.
• And for a while, I believed him.
• Until the money started coming in.
• Until the board meetings, the tech summits, the IPO buzz, and the silent investors. Until my hoodie-wearing dreamer got replaced by a man with a stylist, a “brand image,” and a PR handler who looked like she modeled for some eccentric, pompous, high-fashion magazine, between slinging out NDAs.
• And then…
• Enter Beau Kingsley.
• Harvard jawline. Trust fund swagger. Angel investor. A handshake like a threat, and eyes that scanned you like he was calculating your net worth in real-time.
• He came into Julian’s orbit like a fucking comet. Lit everything up. And burned everything down.
• He didn’t like me from the jump. He made that very clear from the first champagne toast. Said I “didn’t fit the image.” That I was “sweet, in a small-town kind of way.”
• Which was funny. Because I’m from Jersey.
• But that didn’t matter to Beau. Or to the rest of the billionaire boy’s brigade. They had big plans for Julian Cross. And I wasn’t in them.
• So, let’s take it back to the old school.
• When we were nothing but star-crossed lovers and bullshit.
• Yeah, I know. That sounds cheesy. But it’s real.
• It was stupid and reckless and beautiful.
• I’m from Jersey, born and raised. But my parents, God bless their hustler hearts, used a friend’s address in Manhattan so I could go to a fancy private school where girls had monogrammed ballet flats and boys had surnames that sounded like hedge funds.
• I didn’t get to stay the whole four years (money’s not magic) but those two years? They changed me. Taught me how to stand tall in a room full of diamonds with nothing but Target on my back. Literally, and figuratively. Taught me that I belonged, even when no one handed me a seat at the table.
• That’s where I met Ava.
• My ride-or-die. My sugar-high, chaos-loving, brilliant-as-hell best friend. She once threatened to shove a Gucci loafer up a lacrosse player’s ass for calling me “the DE&I transfer.” We’ve been inseparable ever since.
• And of course (of course!) that’s also where I met Julian fucking Cross.
• He came from old money. The kind that doesn’t just come with trust funds, it comes with legacies and centuries’ worth of ledgers. Summer homes in the Hamptons. A lineage that includes a baron, a railroad magnate, and probably some shady land deals back in 1843.
• But he didn’t act like that. Not at first.
• He had this boyish charm and wild ambition, like he could actually bend the future to his will. And he looked at me like I was some kind of gravitational pull he didn’t know he needed until it hit him.
• His parents were sweet, but tight-laced. Very pull-yourself-up-by-the-Gucci-loafers kind of folks.
• So, when Julian turned 18, at his high school graduation, his dad handed him a check for $50,000 and said, “Good luck, buddy.” His father felt that the only way he would appreciate what he had was if he didn’t have it at all.
• No trust fund. No cushion. Just a challenge.
• And one line I’ll never forget:
• “Son, you can blow this money on a vacation or this little lady of yours… or you can do something spectacular. If it were me, I’d choose the second option.”
• So, he did.
• He founded CrossTech in a dorm basement with a whiteboard, too much caffeine, and dreams bigger than his rent.
• And after my graduation, two years after his, for a while, I was right there beside him.
• Midnight brainstorming sessions. Cheap takeout and even cheaper wine out of a box. I designed the first mockup of his app’s homepage with nothing but Canva and delusional confidence.
• We had nothing.
• Except each other.
• But five years later, CrossTech blew up. And I was blown off.
• No seat at the table.
• No title. No, thank you.
• Just a slow fade into black.
• Turns out there’s no room for loyalty when you’re too busy building an empire.
• Now before you go bolting and thinking I was pissed off because he didn’t compensate me for my time and effort.
• Well… you’d be right.
• But it wasn’t just that.
• I wasn’t in it for a paycheck. I wasn’t tallying hours like I was his unpaid intern.
• I wanted him.
• The boy who made promises to me on the roof of the shitty building we called home.
• It was a third-floor walk-up in the Bronx with a leaky faucet, roaches that refused to die, and a radiator that either did nothing or tried to kill us. But we loved it.
• That rooftop was ours.
• We’d lay on a blanket with a half-dead speaker playing bad R&B, looking up at the polluted sky and pretending we could see stars.
• He told me he’d love me until his last breath. That he wanted to rub my back when I was pregnant with our triplets, or so he fucking wished. That we’d name one after his grandfather, one after mine, and the third would get to be normal.
• He said we’d never change.
• No matter what.
• But guess what?
• He did.
• He fucking did.
• That $50K? He stretched it like a magician. Ate dollar slices and wore the same three button-downs on rotation. Slept three hours a night and taught himself code by watching videos on YouTube.
• He made the right investments.
• Talked to the right people.
• Slid into DMs with potential angel investors like they were long-lost friends.
• He hustled. God, did he hustle.
• Made some mistakes, too. Big ones. But he always came out the other side stronger. Hungrier. Sharper.
• And I was always right there. Believing in him when no one else did. Feeding him when he forgot. Grounding him when his head was too far in the clouds.
• But somewhere between scraping together change for Cafecitos and a seat at the table with VCs who wear loafers with no socks, I became…
• Too much of a reminder.
• Of who he was.
• Of where he came from.
• Of everything they told him he had to leave behind if he wanted to be “taken seriously.”
• And he bought it.
• The suits. The speech coach. The image consultants.
• The fucking Beau Kingsley starter pack.
• He traded us for an empire.
• And maybe he doesn’t even realize it.
• But I do.