Chapter 2

I stayed up all night watching every press junket, interview clip, and podcast snippet he had put out.

Piece by piece, the full story of his tragic romance came together.

I had never realized Ethan Sterling was capable of loving someone with such fiery, reckless abandon.

His "muse," Jessica Cole, had been his private tutor back in high school.

Jessica came from a dirt-poor rust-belt town in the Midwest. Under normal circumstances, Ethan's aristocratic mother would never have hired a girl from that background.

But Jessica was a genius.

She had aced the SATs with a near-perfect score, landed a full ride at Columbia, and quickly built a reputation as an elite academic coach. Every student she worked with saw their test scores skyrocket.

Impressionable and desperate to get into an Ivy League school, Ethan fell head over heels for her on day one.

Jessica resisted him at first, keeping things strictly professional. But Ethan was relentless.

For nearly a year, he chased her. Right before Thanksgiving, he even endured a brutal, sixteen-hour overnight Greyhound bus ride just to stand in the freezing snow and catch a glimpse of her.

Her defenses crumbled. They fell into a passionate, secret relationship.

The ending, according to Ethan, was an old, tired trope. His domineering mother cut Jessica a check for ten million dollars to walk away. And Jessica took the money.

Recounting this part, Ethan looked down, clenching his fists in dramatic agony: "I was too weak back then. I was terrified of my family's power. If I had just stood my ground... would she still have left me?"

The comments section under the livestream was having a collective meltdown:

“Omg, an unapologetic simp king! God, drop a billionaire like this into my life before I shrivel up!”

“So what if she was a gold digger? He’s literally making excuses for her, blaming his own cowardice! I’m crying real tears!”

“Where do I manifest a man who will mourn me on national television twenty years later?!”

Using a burner account, I commented under the top post:

“Simp king? More like a spineless fraud. He couldn't even stand up to his own mommy, so he dragged a poor girl into his drama. When things got real, he folded like a cheap suit. If you don't have the backbone, don't play the hero.”

Within seconds, replies flooded my notifications:

“Look at this bitter troll hiding behind a burner! Who hurt you, sweetie? Sucks having a miserable life, huh?”

I stared at the screen and let out a quiet, hollow laugh. I looked over at my sleeping son in the hospital bed.

Yeah. Life really did suck right now.

When I poured the entire Vance family fortune into saving the Sterling Group from total collapse, I never heard a single word about this epic tragedy.

After twelve years of shielding him from corporate espionage, hostile takeovers, and media scandals—after building his empire into a global powerhouse—he decided it was time to wax poetic about his lost love.

It was bitter indeed.