Chapter 7 – The Ring Shop

POV: Elena

I spent most of the night staring at my ceiling and wondering how my life had managed to collapse so completely in less than twenty-four hours.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Jace standing in his study with my old notebook in his hand. Each time I drifted off, I woke up to the image of my diary circulating around campus, with hundreds of students laughing at me.

By morning, exhaustion had settled into my bones. I had almost convinced myself I wasn't going when a knock sounded at my bedroom door. Not my mother's soft knock. Not one of the house staff.

Jace's. Impatient and demanding. I rolled onto my side and buried my face deeper into my pillow. "Go away." The door opened anyway. Of course it did.

Jace leant against the doorway, looking annoyingly composed for someone who had spent the previous night blackmailing me. He wore a fitted black T-shirt and grey athletic shorts, his dark hair still slightly damp from a shower. His eyes moved over my pyjamas. "You aren't dressed. I sat up slowly. "No kidding." "We leave in twenty minutes." "I'm not going." His expression didn't change. "Yes, you are."

The certainty in his voice immediately made my temper flare. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and folded my arms.

"No. I'm not."

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Jace reached into his pocket and pulled out the pink notebook. The air immediately left my lungs. His gaze never left mine.

"Get dressed, Elena." The quiet threat worked exactly as he knew it would. I hated him for that. I hated him for knowing exactly how to control me. Most of all, I hated the fact that he was winning.

Twenty minutes later, I found him leaning against the front entrance with a set of car keys spinning around one finger. His eyes immediately moved over me.

The simple cream sweater and jeans I'd chosen weren't fancy, but they were decent enough for public humiliation. A faint smirk touched his mouth. "See? You clean up nicely." I glared at him. His smirk widened, and that made me quite uncomfortable. He opened the door to the car, pretending to be the gentleman he isn't, of course. I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of his SUV while he drove us towards the city.

The silence between us was thick enough to choke on. I kept my eyes fixed on the passing buildings outside the window and pretended he wasn't there. Unfortunately, pretending Jace Calloway didn't exist had never worked particularly well for me.

"We need a story," he said, and I looked over at him. "A story?" "A relationship timeline," I laughed humourlessly. "Right. Because that's the logical next step after blackmail." His jaw tightened, but he ignored the comment. "People are going to ask questions. We need answers that sound believable. "I looked back out the window. "Fine. Tell me how our great love story began." The sarcasm was obvious.

Jace sighed.

"Our parents got married. We started spending more time together. We became friends." I stared at him. "Friends?" His grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel. "That's what we're telling people." "You used to make me cry for fun." His expression darkened. "That isn't part of the story."

No.

Apparently the truth rarely was.

The jewellery store was located in one of the most expensive parts of the city, surrounded by luxury boutiques and high-end restaurants. The moment we walked inside, I felt painfully out of place. Everything gleamed. The marble floors. The glass displays. The diamonds were sparkling beneath carefully placed lights. Even the employees looked expensive.

A woman greeted us immediately. "Mr Calloway. We're delighted to see you again." Again. Of course Jace had been here before.

The woman turned towards me with a bright smile. "And this must be your fiancée." The word hit me like a slap. Fiancée. Jace didn't hesitate. "She is." The lie came far too naturally. I forced a smile while fighting the urge to walk straight back out the door.

A few minutes later, we were seated in a private showroom while trays of engagement rings were placed in front of us. The diamonds were absurdly beautiful. They were also absurdly expensive. I stared at one ring in particular and immediately looked away. It probably cost more than everything my mother had earned in a year before marrying Richard.

"You should try one on." I looked up. Jace had picked up a ring from the display. The design was elegant rather than flashy. A single oval diamond sat on a thin platinum band surrounded by smaller stones. It was beautiful. Which somehow made everything worse.

"No." His expression remained calm. "Elena." "No." The saleswoman glanced awkwardly between us. Jace ignored her. Before I could pull away, he reached across the table and took my hand. The contact caught me completely off guard. For a brief second, neither of us moved. His fingers wrapped around mine, warm and steady. My heart skipped a bit. Then he slid the ring onto my finger.

The room seemed to fall silent.

The diamond sparkled beneath the showroom lights, catching every beam and scattering it across the glass displays. My chest tightened unexpectedly.

Because for the first time, the situation didn't feel like a threat written in text messages or whispered inside a locked study. It looked real. Terrifyingly real. It felt so real, I almost believed I was truly getting engaged to Jace Calloway.

The saleswoman smiled. "That one suits you perfectly." I barely heard her. My eyes remained fixed on the ring. When I finally looked up, I found Jace watching me. His expression had changed. The arrogance was gone. So was the anger.

For the first time all morning, he looked almost unsettled. As though he had suddenly realised the same thing I had. The lie wasn't just a plan anymore. It had become something the rest of the world could see.