Page 34 of The Dark Stranger
He had never meant to fall for Jenna. Not really. To him, it had started as reckless fun, ego-stroking attention from someone shiny and dangerous-adjacent. He knew she moved around people with money and power, knew her world brushed up against men who made others nervous.
But he didn’t know the depth of it.
Didn’t know whose daughter she really was.
Didn’t know the rules he’d stepped into.
What he did know was this: Becca was rising.
Her name carried weight now. Her work spoke for itself. Clients waited months just to sit in her chair. And slowly, subtly, Izzy stopped being the one people noticed.
He was no longer the center.
Hewas the boyfriend.
And Izzy had never been good at standing in anyone’s shadow — not even someone he claimed to love.
So he started talking.
At first, it was small. A drink too many. A careless comment. A half-smile paired with a “you didn’t hear this from me.” He knew how small towns worked. He knew who talked. He knew who embellished.
And he fed them.
He told them things Becca had trusted him with — things from a past she had survived, not flaunted. That once, when money was tight and the bills didn’t care about dignity, she’d done cam work. That she’d sold nudes. Feet pics. That she’d made good money doing it and walked away when she didn’t need to anymore.
He twisted that into something ugly.
He told them she “still did things on the side.”
That she “liked easy money.”
That she’d “do whatever it took.”
He mentioned, casually, that she’d tried drugs once — said it like it was a habit instead of a moment she’d hated and never repeated. That she partied. That she wassloppy.
He lied about her work — said she stole designs, lifted art from places no one could trace. That her talent wasn’t original.
And the lie that hurt the most — the one he knew would stick — was the one about her body.
He told them she slept her way up.
That high-profile artists had “helped” her.
That clients paid for more than ink.
All of it fiction.
All of it calculated.
Because if he couldn’t rise with her…
He would drag her down to where he stood.
And sitting there alone, the weight of it finally settled into something cold and steady inside Becca.
This hadn’t been betrayal born of weakness.
It had been jealousy.
