Chapter 29
Chapter 29
CHASE
Ethan’s yearly athletes’ charity.mixer was the kind of party people lied about being invited to.
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It wasn’t a birthday. It wasn’t a random club appearance. Once a year Ethan Monroe opened up a private estate, invited a carefully chosen mix of professional athletes across leagues, and turned the night into a high-end fundraiser that doubled as the most exclusive networking event on the calendar.
Football players. Hockey captains. A few Olympic names. Sponsors who wrote checks with too many zeros. Getting through the door meant something.
Sophie had talked the entire drive over.
“You’ll see tonight,” she said, checking her reflection in the passenger mirror for the third time. “Whatever story she’s been selling falls apart the second you’re in a real Monroe room. There won’t be any family photos of her. No one will treat her like she belongs. It was a game Chase. A sick little game to make you jealous after you moved on. I’m so glad that everything will finally be out in the open tonight.”
I nodded, but the certainty I had been clinging to felt thinner by the hour.
“And please do not embarrass me tonight.” She continued. “The second we learn that your ex-girlfriend is a fraud, let us move on from that topic.”
I nodded as we started walking.
Inside, the estate was all low lighting, expensive liquor, and the kind of effortless wealth that didn’t need to announce itself.
I recognized faces from endorsement campaigns and rivalry games. Sophie stayed close, already scanning for cameras and reporters. She wanted them to get good snaps of her outfit.
Ethan Monroe was near the main lounge, taller than most of the room, easy posture, the kind of presence that made people orbit without being asked. I waited for a gap and stepped in, hand extended.
‘Ethan. Chase Holt.”
He looked at my hand, then at my face, and recognition landed immediately.
‘I know who you are,” he said.
For half a second I felt a stupid rush of satisfaction. Of course he knew me. Captain of the Southbay Vipers. League presence. Enough visibility that a quarterback of his caliber wouldn’t need an introduction.
I felt pride and so did my wife. An easy smile formed on her face.
Then Ethan continued, voice calm and unmistakably cold.
‘You’re the guy who cheated on my sister.”
The words wiped everything else out.
Beside me, Sophie went rigid. My own body locked up so hard I forgot to lower my hand for a second too long. Ethan finally glanced at it, unimpressed, and I let it drop.
He looked at Sophie next, taking her in with the same blunt assessment. “I don’t see it,” he said. “Why you chose her over Blair. But to each their own.”
There was no heat in it. No raised voice. Just a flat, almost conversational judgment that somehow cut deeper because of how little effort it required.
I couldn’t find a response. The entire theory I had been building-the missing photos, the convenient timing, the possibility that Blair had used a famous successfully unlockedlapsed in real time under the weight of one
sentence from her actual brother.
My sister.
Chapter 29
Blair was his sister..
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Sophie recovered first, though her voice came out tighter than she probably wanted. “There must be some confusion. Blair isn’t-”
Ethan didn’t even look at her when he cut in.
“There isn’t.”
He lifted a hand and waved someone over.
I turned and then froze.
What the fuck? I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing right.
Blair was crossing the room in a black dress that made the arena jersey version of her look like a different person. Her hair was down and straight. Her expression was already closed by the time her eyes found mine. She narrowed them slightly, the same way she had in the hallway after the game, and kept walking until she reached her brother’s side.
Ethan glanced at her, then back at me, and actually grimaced.
“Shit. Blair-I’m sorry. I forgot to cancel the invitation he got through you months ago. Completely slipped my mind.”
Blair’s gaze moved from Ethan to me, then to Sophie, taking in the full picture with a calm that felt worse than anger.
“It’s fine,” she said. “He was always good at showing up in places he wasn’t wanted. It’s because of me he got invited to a lot of events like this one.”
The old instinct to defend myself rose and died just as fast.
There was nothing to defend. The man standing beside her shared her blood, her last name, and enough casual authority to confirm everything she had already told me in plainer words.
The bills. The quiet help. The doors that opened. The warning that I didn’t know what I was losing.
I had lost it anyway.
Sophie forced a thin smile. “We should mingle. Let’s look for other people to talk with.”
Neither Ethan nor Blair responded. The dismissal was polite only in the sense that no one bothered to make it cruel.
I stood there for another second, the noise of the party continuing around a moment that had just rewritten the last six years of my life, and felt the full weight of the mistake settle in.
Blair Monroe had never been pretending.
I had simply refused to see her.
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.