Chapter 228
“That’s — that’s Gaston Collins!” Fiona grabbed Chad’s arm, her nails digging in. “The Collins heir! The billionaire! I saw him in Forbes! He’s the one who bought the Hudson Yards lot for cash!”
“Who?” Chad managed, dumbfounded.
Jocelyn walked toward the car. She paused in front of Aspen.
“Have a nice wedding, Aspen,” she said, her voice sweet as poison. “Try not to lose this one.”
She got in. The hand-stitched leather wrapped around her like a second skin. It smelled like safety.
Gaston shut the door — a solid, expensive thud that felt like a full stop at the end of a very long sentence.
𝗡𝘦w 𝘸𝘦е𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝘩а𝗉t𝗲𝗿ѕ 𝗈𝗇 𝗴𝘢𝗅𝗻𝘰𝘃𝘦𝗅𝘀.𝘤о𝗆
He turned to the crowd for one moment.
He found Chad’s eyes.
His gaze was cold and predatory — the look of a wolf assessing a particularly slow rabbit. Chad instinctively stepped back and nearly tripped over the curb.
Gaston got in, and the Aston Martin pulled away smoothly into the night, leaving the reunion attendees standing in a cloud of exhaust and disbelief.
“That was Gaston Collins,” Fiona repeated, shaking. “Jocelyn Wolfe married Gaston Collins.”
“No! It was an actor! Jocelyn hired an actor!” Chad’s composure crumbled entirely. “An actor!”
“An actor with a half-million-dollar car and a ten-million-dollar ring on her finger?” Bella laughed from the sidewalk. “Face it, Chad. You lost. Game over.”
She hopped into her Uber as it pulled up behind the chaos and waved out the window. “Bye, losers.”
Inside the Aston Martin, Jocelyn let out a breath she felt like she had been holding since 2014. She slumped against the seat.
“You wore a tux,” she said, looking at him.
Gaston kept his eyes on the road, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips.
“I figured if we were going to make a scene, we should do it properly.”
The parking lot of the Plaza was a tangle of valet runners and confused guests. Kieran’s silver Porsche screeched to a halt near the entrance. He jumped out, leaving the engine running. He had missed the main event entirely, held up in a meeting with his lawyers about the plummeting Douglas Corp stock.
He took one look at the sidewalk and frowned. Aspen was yelling at Chad. Fiona was crying into her phone.
“What happened?” Kieran asked, striding over.
“Jocelyn… she left. With a guy,” Chad stammered, looking shell-shocked.
“A guy? Who?” Kieran’s jealousy flared instantly.
“It was Gaston Collins,” Aspen said, grabbing Kieran’s arm, her voice tight with fury. “He showed up. For her.”
“Collins?” Kieran stiffened. He touched his nose instinctively — the memory of Gaston’s fist still a phantom ache. The man who punched me. The man who publicly claimed her.
Just then, Bella’s Uber inched past in the backed-up traffic near the exit. Kieran glanced through the window. Bella was in the back seat, laughing and texting. On the seat beside her sat a black gift bag with gold lettering: Collins Corp.
Kieran’s mind worked quickly, his towering narcissism straining to reframe the humiliating reality into something he could live with.
.
.