Seven women rejected me at a charity gala in front of nearly four hundred guests, and by the seventh, people had stopped pretending they weren’t counting. Six months earlier, I’d been one of Chicago’s most sought-after millionaires, but that night I escaped into an empty courtyard feeling completely worthless, until a hotel janitor looked at me and asked the one question nobody else had bothered to ask.

"I’m sorry, Ethan," Vanessa Cole said beneath the enormous crystal chandelier. "I promised this dance to someone else."

I glanced behind her into the swirling sea of tuxedos and evening gowns. Nobody was waiting.

"That’s fine," I said, keeping my voice flat.

She gave me the same uncomfortable, tight-lipped smile I’d been seeing all evening. "I hope everything works out for you, Ethan. Truly."

Then she turned on her high heels and disappeared into the crowd.

Behind me, near the ice sculpture, someone whispered, "Seven."

Another man chuckled quietly into his champagne glass. "Who’s counting?"

"Everybody."

I stared into my glass of bourbon, watching the ice melt into the amber liquid. I wondered how a man who was worth an estimated forty million dollars six months ago could become someone people were terrified to stand beside.

Three weeks earlier, anonymous financial documents had reached top news outlets and financial regulators. The papers accused my company, Mercer Dynamics, of hiding forty million in losses, inflating government contracts, and funneling investor funds through shell vendors.

No criminal charges had been filed. No regulator had publicly accused me. But in the world of high finance, rumors were lethal.

My board of directors placed me on immediate, involuntary leave.

Then my fiancée, Brooke Langley, returned her two-carat engagement ring. She didn't do it in private over dinner. Her family’s publicist released an official statement to Page Six, stating she couldn’t "build a future around financial uncertainty."

Fourteen months of engagement. Four days of loyalty.

This charity gala was my first public appearance since my life exploded. My attorney, David Vance, and my younger sister, Maya, had begged me to stay home. But I had donated three-quarters of a million dollars to the Children’s Harbor Foundation over five years. When the executive director called me personally, staying home felt like hiding.

Now, standing in the grand ballroom of the Drake Hotel, I regretted every second of it.

One woman had suddenly remembered she needed to call her babysitter. Another claimed her husband wouldn't appreciate her talking to me. Lauren, who used to text me at midnight asking if my engagement was stable, had looked genuinely terrified when I walked toward her.

And then Vanessa became number seven.

Across the ballroom, I spotted Nolan Pierce laughing with three members of my board. Nolan had been my closest friend and business partner for fifteen years.

We built Mercer Dynamics in a drafty machine shop with six thousand dollars, two laptops, and more ambition than sense. When the allegations first hit the news, Nolan had hugged me in my office and whispered, "We’ll survive this, brother."

Four days later, the board voted him interim CEO.

Nolan suddenly caught me watching him. His smile vanished for a split second before snapping right back into place.