Betrayed by My Love, Recruited by His Enemy

Name: Betrayed by My Love, Recruited by His Enemy
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Gavin

Short stories | Completed

5.0

Comment(s)

2.6K

View

Chapters

My entire career was riding on one presentation to the formidable CEO of Thorne Industries, Julian Thorne. This project was everything I had worked for. But my boyfriend and business partner, Mark, showed up late with a rival designer. He then "accidentally" spilled coffee all over my laptop, destroying my only backup. He proceeded to present a sabotaged version of my work, making me look like an incompetent fool in front of the entire board. Back at our apartment, he admitted it was all a setup. He had used me from the start, stolen my project, and was now selling it to a competitor. Then he threw an eviction notice at me. The apartment, the business, everything was in his name. My name was only on the mountain of fraudulent debt he'd taken out to ruin me. He left me homeless, jobless, and broken on the street with nothing but the clothes on my back. Just as I hit rock bottom, a sleek black car glided to a stop. The window rolled down. It was Julian Thorne. His eyes were blazing with a cold fury I hadn't seen in the boardroom. "Get in the car," he commanded. "We have a mutual enemy. You're going to help me destroy them."

Betrayal Revenge CEO Romance Workplace

Chapter 10

The day before yesterday 19:35

Chapter 1

My entire career was riding on one presentation to the formidable CEO of Thorne Industries, Julian Thorne. This project was everything I had worked for.

But my boyfriend and business partner, Mark, showed up late with a rival designer. He then "accidentally" spilled coffee all over my laptop, destroying my only backup.

He proceeded to present a sabotaged version of my work, making me look like an incompetent fool in front of the entire board.

Back at our apartment, he admitted it was all a setup. He had used me from the start, stolen my project, and was now selling it to a competitor.

Then he threw an eviction notice at me. The apartment, the business, everything was in his name. My name was only on the mountain of fraudulent debt he'd taken out to ruin me.

He left me homeless, jobless, and broken on the street with nothing but the clothes on my back.

Just as I hit rock bottom, a sleek black car glided to a stop. The window rolled down. It was Julian Thorne.

His eyes were blazing with a cold fury I hadn't seen in the boardroom.

"Get in the car," he commanded. "We have a mutual enemy. You're going to help me destroy them."

Chapter 1

The air in the boardroom at Thorne Industries was so cold it felt like a physical weight on my shoulders. It smelled of expensive leather, recycled air, and the faint, sharp tang of anxiety-mostly my own. My portfolio, bound in black leather, sat on the vast mahogany table, a silent testament to six months of sleepless nights and caffeine-fueled desperation. This presentation was everything. It was the launchpad that would finally rocket my small design firm out of obscurity and into the stratosphere.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the oppressive silence. Julian Thorne, the CEO himself, sat at the head of the table. He was exactly as the business journals described him: sharp, imposing, with eyes the color of a winter storm that seemed to see right through you. His jaw was a hard line, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, betraying no emotion. He hadn't said a word in ten minutes, simply stared at the clock on the wall, each tick a tiny hammer blow to my confidence.

*Where is he?*

Mark, my boyfriend and business partner, was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago with the final presentation drive. He had the animated mock-ups, the final polished assets. My laptop had a backup, but the drive had the version we'd rehearsed, the one that was flawless.

The heavy oak door finally swung open. Mark rushed in, his face flushed, his usually perfect hair disheveled. But he wasn't alone. Trailing just behind him was Leo Vance, the lead designer from a rival firm, a man whose smarmy grin I'd come to despise at industry events.

My blood ran cold. *What is HE doing here?*

"My apologies, Mr. Thorne," Mark said, his voice a little too loud, a little too breathless. "Traffic was a nightmare." He avoided my gaze, his eyes darting around the room.

Julian Thorne's gaze flickered from Mark to Leo, his expression unreadable but radiating a dangerous stillness. "And you are?" he asked Leo, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the table.

Before Leo could answer, Mark fumbled in his briefcase. "The drive. Here." He pulled it out and moved towards the presentation console, his movements jerky and unnatural. As he passed my chair, his elbow connected with the cup of coffee on the table beside my laptop.

It happened in slow motion. The white ceramic mug tipped, a perfect arc of scalding brown liquid splashing directly onto the keyboard of my open laptop. A hiss, a flicker, and the screen went black.

A collective gasp went through the room. My breath hitched in my throat. The backup. The only other copy. Gone.

"Oh, God, Clara! I'm so sorry!" Mark exclaimed, his voice thick with false panic. He grabbed a napkin, dabbing uselessly at the drowned machine.

I couldn't speak. My mind was a roaring void. Six months of work. My entire future. Drowned in cheap coffee. My hands felt numb, my vision tunneling until all I could see was the dead black screen.

"It seems we have a problem," Julian Thorne stated, his voice devoid of any sympathy. It was a simple observation, as if noting a change in the weather.

Mark turned to him, his face a mask of distress. "Sir, it's my fault, completely. But this is a disaster for Clara. She's so... disorganized sometimes. I told her we should have had more backups."

The words hit me like a slap. *Disorganized?* I was the one who had worked until three in the morning every night while he was out at "networking events." I was the one who had built this entire project from a single idea. His body language was all wrong. He wasn't looking at me with concern; he was looking at Julian Thorne, gauging his reaction. His shoulders were squared, a performer on a stage.

And then I saw it. A flicker of a glance between Mark and Leo Vance. A tiny, almost imperceptible nod. A shared look of triumph.

It was a punch to the gut. This wasn't an accident.

"The drive, then," Mr. Thorne said, his patience clearly evaporating. "Let's see if your presentation is worth the drama."

Mark slotted the drive into the console. The main screen behind the table flickered to life. My logo appeared, then the project title. I held a sliver of hope. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just paranoid.

Then the first slide loaded. It was my design, my layout, my exact color palette. But the text was wrong. The data was skewed. The entire concept was subtly twisted, presented as inefficient and poorly researched. It was a perfect, surgical assassination of my work.

Slide after slide, he presented my project as a failure, using my own graphics to do it. The room grew colder. The board members shifted in their seats, their faces closing off. I felt a hundred pairs of eyes on me, not with sympathy, but with judgment.

I was frozen in my chair, a statue of humiliation. My career was dying in front of me, and my own boyfriend was the one pulling the trigger. He was destroying me with a smile on his face.

When it was over, a heavy silence descended. Julian Thorne rose slowly from his chair. He didn't look at Mark. He looked directly at me, his stormy eyes pinning me in place.

"Thank you for the presentation," he said, the words clipped and final. "We will not be moving forward. Security will see you out."

The dismissal was absolute. There was no room for argument. It was over. The board members began to file out, refusing to meet my eyes. Mark started packing up the drive, a faint, triumphant smirk playing on his lips as he turned his back to me.

I sat there, hollowed out, as the last of my dreams evaporated into the stale, conditioned air. My phone, a company device still linked to a shared cloud drive with Mark, buzzed on the table. I glanced down at it through a blur of unshed tears. A new text message had appeared on the locked screen, a preview visible. It was from Leo.

And it wasn't meant for me.

"Phase 1 complete. Thorne is furious. The project is ours. What about the designer?"

The words swam before my eyes. *The project is ours.* The accident wasn't an accident. The betrayal wasn't just personal. It was a conspiracy. And I was just collateral damage.

---