Sienna's POV

I had been secretly in love with my childhood friend for five years. Finally, I mustered the courage to propose to him.

But he looked me in the eye and said, “It was just for fun. Did you really take it seriously? Who marries a fling, anyway?”

“Our feelings for each other since we were kids… That was just a game to you?” I asked in disbelief.

He shrugged and replied casually, “Don’t worry, Sienna. Even if I go through with the family-arranged marriage and marry someone else, I won’t abandon you.”

Then his voice softened as if offering me a gift as he continued, “I’ll still see you, just like before. Maybe not every month—how about every week instead? Isn’t that enough?”

Subconsciously, my hand moved on its own and the sharp slap echoed between us. Afterward, I turned my heels and walked away.

An arranged marriage, huh? Fine. I’d find my own match. And it’d be a damn good one.

At my bachelorette party, I didn’t expect Lance Madron to have the audacity to show up with his fiancée in tow, no less.

Later, on the rooftop, he cornered me. His hands circled my waist, and he leaned close, his breath teasing my ear.

“Sienna, it’s been so long. Haven’t you missed me?”

I pushed his face away, scowling. “Your fiancée is downstairs, and you’re acting like this?”

“She knows about you,” he said with a smirk. “She came here today on purpose to show you who’s boss. I’m just here to remind you, out of the kindness of my heart. Everyone knows how long you’ve been chasing me. So, for my sake, why don’t you just bear with it, huh?”

“You’re disgusting!” I cut him off, my voice sharp.

He acted unfazed, shrugging with that insufferable smirk of his. “Come on, I know you love me. Why not just settle for being my mistress? Isn’t that enough for you?”

His eyes sparkled with expectation as if I should be grateful for this so-called privilege. Those alluring eyes—so intense they could melt hearts—wandered to my collarbone, darkening with desire.

Then, Lance leaned in to kiss me, but the crash of glass shattering from downstairs stopped him in his tracks.

Hearing it, he pushed me away as if I were poison and his face instantly became composed.

“What’s going on?” I demanded, my chest tightening with unease.

Lance adjusted his shirt, feigning innocence. “No matter what happens down there, just endure it. It’ll blow over soon.”

His cryptic words made my stomach churn. Without wasting another second, I bolted downstairs.

As soon as I reached the main hall, I saw a woman smashing my things with a baseball bat.

“Maia!” someone shouted, trying to calm her down. “What’s going on? You went to the rooftop and came back this mad?”

“Stop it now, Maia, before you ruin everything in Sienna’s house!” another pleaded.

The once-glorious champagne tower was now a pile of broken glass, shards littering the floor.

It didn’t take much to guess who was responsible for the chaos.

Maia Fowler stood there, wild-eyed, shouting, “I’ll do whatever I want! She dared seduce my fiancé. Yet I'm not allowed to be angry about it?”

As she spoke, she raised the bat, aiming for a porcelain vase on a nearby shelf.

Just then, I yelled, “Stop it!”

But despite my shout, she didn’t even turn around and the vase shattered into pieces. Only then did she turn to me and glare at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“Sienna, Lance said he doesn’t like you anymore. So why are you still so desperately and shamelessly pushing yourself into him?”

Her voice dripped with disdain. “You threw this party just to seduce my fiancé and embarrass me, didn't you? Do you think it’s fun to humiliate me?”

“I didn’t seduce him!” I shot back, denying her accusation.

But she snorted, lifting her chin defiantly. “Ask them—who here believes you? But if you really want me to believe you, slap yourself ten times. Then I might consider it.”

I rolled my eyes in disbelief. Of course, nobody believed me. Years of pining after Lance had left me with a reputation I couldn’t shake. Explaining myself here felt pointless.

However, Maia wasn’t done. Soon, one of her friends pulled out a phone and cast photos onto the screen.

In one, it looked like I was leaning in to kiss Lance—though I remembered it as me shoving him away. In the next, he was coldly pushing me aside, and I stood there, my face blank.

To anyone else, it painted a clear picture: I was the desperate one throwing myself at him.

Sienna's POV

Tears streamed down Maia’s face, drawing murmurs from the crowd around us.

“Sienna, you’re in the wrong here! You knew he was taken, so you can’t blame her for wrecking your house!” someone said.

I turned to Lance, a cold smirk tugging at my lips. “Quite the little power play you two cooked up. So, are you paying for the damages, or is she? You’re aware of how much that porcelain set costs, right?”

Lance’s face twisted with visible pain as he stared at the shattered remains of the priceless vase.

But Maia, still crying, turned her fury on him. “You knew she was trying to seduce you! Why did you still go up there to see her alone?”

Lance immediately ran to her, wrapping her in his arms. “Maia, listen. She said if I talked to her one last time and made things clear, she’d leave me alone for good. You saw me reject her—I’ve made it obvious there’s nothing between us. If I wanted her, don’t you think we’d have been together by now? Please, stop crying.”

Maia blinked up at him, her tears subsiding as she swallowed his lies like gospel.

Meanwhile, I stood there, stunned, watching their performance. Unable to help myself, I started clapping slowly, the sound cutting through their theatrics.

Part of me wanted to tell her the truth—reveal what kind of person Lance really was. But before I could, her eyes landed on the faint lipstick stain on Lance’s collar.

Her demeanor shifted again in an instant. Like a lioness provoked, she grabbed the bat again and continued smashing anything in her path.

The things she was destroying were treasures left to me by my parents, so I couldn’t let her keep going.

“Maia, stop this right now!” I shouted. Then I turned to Lance, my voice sharp. “You! Get your lunatic fiancée and get the hell out of my house!”

With my sudden panic, Maia figured out my weak spot, and her swings grew wilder. I tried to grab the bat from her hands, but she turned and swung it at me instead.

I barely dodged the blow and nearly fell. Yet, she lunged forward with so much force that she stumbled and knocked me to the ground. My back hit the floor, and shards of broken porcelain dug into my skin. Pain quickly shot through me and tears welled in my eyes.

Despite that, Lance didn’t even glance my way. Instead, he scooped Maia into his arms, inspecting her for injuries.

“Maia, are you okay? Does it hurt?” he asked frantically.

She only had a small cut on her arm from the broken glass, yet, Lance, looking like a man possessed, picked her up and rushed her out the door, heading straight for the hospital.

And just like that, I was left lying among the wreckage.

After someone helped me to the hospital and I’d gotten my wounds treated, a string of unfamiliar text messages popped up on my phone.

[Sienna, consider this a warning. Stay away from Lance if you know what’s good for you. Don’t make me ruin your reputation in this city. By the way, all those handmade gifts you gave Lance? They’re dog toys now—literally. My dog plays with them. I only kept them because I felt bad for you. Otherwise, they’d be in the trash.]

The messages stung like a slap to the face.

No wonder Lance always dodged my questions about where my gifts went, claiming he had “stored them carefully.” Turns out they were in his fiancée’s dog’s mouth.

My heart sank as the realization hit me: In his eyes, my feelings were worth nothing.

Fine. If that’s how they wanted to play it, I wouldn’t hold back.

Without hesitation, I dialed the number of Lance’s uncle. “Sir, your nephew and his fiancée trashed my house and injured me. I'm now in the hospital. How are you going to settle this?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

The thought of Howard Sharp’s icy face made me nervous, but he was the head of the Madron family. Ever since his grandfather adopted him and handed over the reins of the family business, his word had been law. Even Lance, the biological grandson, had to toe the line.

And as an employee of Apex Solutions Group, I had every right—both professionally and personally—to bring this to his attention.

“I’ll take care of it,” came his curt reply.

As such, the call ended abruptly, leaving me staring at my phone.

After a while, I figured Howard wasn’t planning to follow up. Frustrated, I lay on the hospital bed, cursing out every branch of Lance’s family tree in my head. Of course, I didn’t spare Howard from my rant either.

Sienna's POV

But as I thought about Howard's concern, my mind wandered to less innocent ideas.

"If that Skinflint dares to treat me like that jerk Lance, I swear I’ll marry him just to ruin his family for as long as I live!”

“Done ranting?”

The familiar voice made me freeze on the spot.

“S-sir? Why are you here in person?”

Ignoring the pain in my back, I scrambled to sit up, my guilt making it impossible to meet his eyes. Surely, he didn’t know I was calling him Skinflint, right?

Howard saw me wince and stepped closer to help.

“Didn’t you call me to handle the situation?”

Gripping his hand, I instantly broke into a cold sweat.

I was nervous, but I tried to play it cool. “Lance and his fiancée trashed my house—”

But before I could repeat my words, he cut me off. “I heard it. I’ll take care of it. Focus on recovering first.”

Over the next few days, to my utter disbelief, Howard took it upon himself to look after me at the hospital.

“Sir, really, compensation is enough. You don’t need to go this far,” I mumbled as he was slicing fruit for me.

He paused, the knife hovering mid-air. “You’re sure about that?”

His gaze carried a strange intensity, making me hesitate. Before I could respond, he finished cutting the fruit and—horror of horrors—reached for my personal laundry to wash it.

Panicking, I shot out of bed. “I’ll do it myself!”

I moved so quickly that I stumbled straight into his arms. Luckily, he caught me, careful to avoid the bandages on my back.

“Take care of yourself,” he said gently, holding me in place.

I felt trapped, my words tumbling out in frustration. “Look, I shouldn’t have called you names, but what Lance did isn’t something a few days of care can make up for.”

There was no denying it: even rich people could be stingy.

This cold, ruthless businessman—known for his cutthroat deals—was now trying to save money by doing my laundry? I half-expected that if I let him, he’d fire me and blacklist me from the industry as payback for my “care.”

Thankfully, I decided to set the record straight. Surely, now that everything was out in the open, Howard wouldn’t go back on his word, right?

While I was stewing in my thoughts, a male nurse came in to change the bandages on my back.

But Howard grabbed the tray and dismissed the nurse.

“Lie down. Take it off,” he said flatly.

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

Every word made sense individually, but together? Not so much.

“What the hell, Skinflint? What are you trying to pull?”

Oops. My inner thoughts slipped out.

His face turned red—actually red—all the way to his ears. It was the first time I’d seen him look flustered.

“I’ll find a female nurse,” he muttered before practically bolting to the nurses’ station.

Sure enough, he brought back a female nurse to handle it, but for the next few days, he continued to look after me with meticulous care.

On the day I was discharged, he insisted on driving me home. As I mentally prepared how to ask for proper compensation, the car stopped in front of an unfamiliar villa.

“Boss, this isn’t my house,” I said, confused.

“I know. Your house is being renovated after the damage,” he replied matter-of-factly.

Renovated? That was news to me.

Before I could protest, he was already unloading my luggage and carrying it inside.

The villa was enormous, yet eerily devoid of servants. After showing me around, Howard headed to the kitchen to cook.

Having missed work for five days, I felt guilty about slacking off. After inhaling the meal he prepared, I forced myself to catch up on a project for my boss.

When I finally handed him the proposal, he frowned deeply as he read through it.

“Are you trying to write a novel?” he asked, his tone exasperated.

I clenched my fists, seething silently.

“Come here. I’m not going to eat you,” he added when he saw me take two cautious steps back.

As I stood frozen, he rubbed his temples with an air of resigned patience.