Drew lost his scholarship three weeks later. He tried to warn Spencer and Philip that Adrien was coming for them next, and they laughed in his face. Spencer’s family had money and lawyers, and Philip’s last name was enough to make people look the other way, so neither felt threatened by some nobody with a grudge.
Two Years, Eighteen Women, and One Engagement Party
Spencer couldn’t be handled the same way. When a girl at school accused him of grabbing her at a party, his mother had lunch with the principal and the girl suddenly transferred districts. When rumors about Christa started circulating, his father donated to the athletic department and the whispers died overnight. You can’t take down someone with a crowd of adults ready to bury anything unflattering, so Adrien graduated, moved away, took a job, and waited for Spencer to build a life his parents couldn’t make disappear.
Two years after graduation, an engagement announcement showed up at 3 a.m. The woman was Eloise, blonde, smiling, wearing a ring the size of a small country, and Spencer stood beside her with the same smug face and dead eyes, pretending to be warm for the camera. The comments were full of heart emojis and “couple goals.” Adrien stared at the photo until sunrise. Spencer finally had something worth losing, and three weeks later Adrien moved to his city and took a coffee-shop job six blocks from his house.
Learning Spencer’s routine meant learning his secrets. Women kept leaving his apartment while Eloise was at work, one in a short dress carrying her heels at 7 a.m., another two days later. By the end of the first month, Adrien had counted 18 different women, along with photos of Spencer pressing women against walls in parking garages, screenshots of dating profiles he was still using, and video of him stumbling out of hotels. Three of the women gave written statements. None of them knew he was engaged.
Six weeks in, Spencer spotted Adrien’s car outside his office and slammed his palm against the window hard enough to rattle it. He threatened to have Adrien arrested for stalking. When Adrien said the name Christa, his eyes widened for half a second, and then he laughed and asked if Adrien was still crying about that. “I am not Drew,” he said, bragging about his family’s lawyers. Adrien showed him a photo of him leaving a hotel with a redhead, then a video from an elevator, then the statements. Spencer called the woman a visiting cousin. “Are they all cousins, too?” Adrien asked.
Spencer grabbed Adrien’s shirt through the window and said people like him always win, that his father played golf with judges and his mother lunched weekly with the mayor’s wife. Adrien peeled his fingers off one by one. “I don’t have to prove what you did to Christa,” Adrien said. “I just have to prove you’re a cheater.”
The engagement party was that Saturday. Adrien parked across from the venue and watched the guests arrive in expensive clothes, Eloise’s parents, her friends, her co-workers, everyone who mattered to either family. Thirty minutes after the party started, Adrien sent everything to Eloise, giving the room time to settle in. Through the windows, Adrien watched her smile fade as she scrolled, her hand fly to her mouth, and her whole body start to tremble.
She crossed the room with her phone raised. When Spencer called the photos fake and the whole thing a setup, she read one of the written statements out loud, a woman describing four months with a man who’d told her he was single. The room went silent. “I was picking out flower arrangements and tasting wedding cakes,” Eloise said, “and you were sleeping with someone else for four months.” She pulled off her ring, threw it at his chest, and said she hoped it was worth it.
When Spencer tried to follow her out, his father hauled him back by the arm. In front of roughly 200 people, he said the family’s reputation was destroyed and that, as far as he was concerned, he no longer had a son. Spencer’s mother wouldn’t look at him, and his friends were already backing away. Adrien watched him stand there with nowhere to go. It felt good, just not as good as expected, and good enough to keep going.
Five Years of Closed Doors and One Late-Night Call
That night, Adrien sat in the dark and scrolled to the last photo of Christa, taken at a coffee shop two weeks before she died. She was laughing, and her eyes were actually bright for once. Spencer’s life was in pieces, but she was still gone, and the one who started everything was out there living well.
Philip got harder with every year. He graduated law school with honors, landed at one of the most prestigious firms in the state, and posed at charity events with judges and politicians in suits that cost more than Adrien’s rent. Journalists wouldn’t touch it because his family had connections at every major outlet. Lawyers wouldn’t take a case against a family that powerful, and the original police report had vanished from the system. Some nights Adrien lay awake wondering whether this was a waste of a life, and whether Christa would even want it. Then came the memory of Philip patting her head like she was a dog, and the anger came right back.