Meanwhile, parked in his car and waiting fruitlessly for Arianna Stone, Cameron Hughes received a call from his buddy.

On the other end, Miles Young’s voice sounded hesitant. "Where are you right now? Are you still waiting for her?"

Cameron rubbed his eyes, still heavy with sleepiness, and let out a grunt of affirmation.

"Don’t bother. Just come back."

Cameron blinked, caught off guard. "What’s wrong?"

Miles wasn’t about to give him the play-by-play. "Just get back here and you'll see."

Without letting Cameron respond, he hung up.

Cameron scowled, tossing his phone onto the passenger seat as the screen went black. He had no intention of indulging such a cryptic call, so he went back to staring out the window. Arianna’s behavior lately had been bizarre. Her attitude toward him was lukewarm at best, cold at worst. Not only that, but she had actually warned the gate security that he wasn't a resident, strictly forbidding them from letting him through.

That was the only reason he was still stuck rotting in his car.

Miles, seemingly unwilling to let it go, started blowing up his phone with messages. When Cameron finally opened one of the photos, his pupils constricted. He typed back furiously: "What is this? Where did you get this?"

Miles: "Bro, I think she’s actually done with you this time."

Cameron’s eyelid twitched. His knuckles went white as he gripped his phone, his defensive instinct kicking in instantly. "What kind of garbage are you spouting? Are you sick or something?"

***

When Cameron finally got home, he didn't even stop to take off his coat before charging toward the second-floor bedroom. "Where is it? Let me see."

Miles was already waiting for him at the door. Down in the living room, the rest of the crew was sprawled on the couch, eyes glued to their phones as they hammered away at a game. Only Alexis Morgan seemed distracted, her thumb lazily scrolling through her feed, though her gaze tracked Cameron’s frantic silhouette as he bolted up the stairs.

"Dammit, Alexis! I'm dead! I'm dead! Help me!" Noah Carter barked, his face turning red as he watched his avatar get wiped out. He whipped his head around to glare at her. "Seriously? What are you doing, man?"

Only after Cameron disappeared into the bedroom did Alexis finally snap out of her trance. She gave Noah a cold, vacant look. "What?"

Noah was so pissed he shoved his phone right under her nose. "I’m dead, that’s what! You just stood there like a statue. You didn’t even move!"

"My bad, my bad," Alexis laughed it off, her eyes darting toward the stairs. "Hey, did you see the box Miles was carrying earlier? What was inside?"

Noah wrinkled his nose. "Miles said it was a delivery from Arianna."

"Arianna?" Alexis echoed, feigning shock. "I thought they already broke up?"

Noah shrugged. "Who knows?"

Something crossed his mind, and he let out a sneering laugh. "Break up? Hardly. With how loaded Cameron is, does Arianna really have the guts to let go of that? Women, man. She’s just pulling a power play to keep Cameron on a leash."

Alexis felt a sudden, sharp jolt of unease. She glanced back at the bedroom door on the second floor. It was shut tight.

***

Upstairs, Cameron and Noah were currently of the same mind. Cameron eyed the cardboard box on the floor with utter disdain. "What is she trying to pull now?"

Inside were every gift Cameron had given Arianna over their two-year relationship: necklaces, bracelets, glass paperweights... she had returned the entire lot. Miles, who had been the one to help Cameron purchase these gifts, knew exactly what it meant. He stood by the door with his arms crossed, wearing an expression of detached amusement.

"Well? What do you think her game is?"

Cameron curled his lip in mockery. "Trying to play hard to get, is she? God knows where she picked up these tired, cliché tactics."

"Whatever. Doesn't matter."

He had wasted an entire morning rotting in front of her building, and she hadn't even bothered to show her face. Now, coming home to this—a package returned in front of his friends? Cameron’s temper flared. He snorted, finding the whole thing ridiculous. "She really thinks this little stunt is going to manipulate me? She’s underestimating me."

With that, he turned and marched toward the door, his movements sharp with resentment.

"Where are you going?" Miles asked.

Cameron didn't answer. He ducked into a storage room and hauled out a dusty box of his own—the collection of gifts Arianna had given him. They were heavy. He had never even looked at them; the ribbons were still perfectly tied, the packaging untouched. He hadn't cared enough to open them—after all, given Arianna’s background, what kind of quality could he expect?

"If she wants to play games, I’ll play along."

Cameron chuckled dismissively, pulling out his phone to order a local courier service. He planned to send these straight back to her. An eye for an eye. If she wanted to see who could be more ruthless, he was happy to oblige.

Just then, without a word, Miles pried open the box, tore through the pristine wrapping on one of the items, and caught sight of a familiar logo. He froze, then shoved the box toward Cameron. "Hey... is this, uh, KZ? I’m not hallucinating, right? Is this actually real?"

Cameron stopped cold. He snatched the box from Miles’s hands and tore it open. It was a high-end, designer men’s tie. One look at the craftsmanship was enough to know it was authentic.

Cameron fell into a sudden, heavy silence. A thought flickered in his mind, and he began frantically digging through the rest of the box, tearing open every package—ties, cufflinks, sunglasses, shoes...

Miles helped him rip through the items until the floor was littered with tissue paper and designer labels. By the end of it, even Miles looked stunned. "No way. Arianna bought you all this? These are worth way more than the stuff you bought her. Where did she even get this kind of money?"

Only Cameron knew. This was money Arianna had scraped together from her part-time jobs back in college.

And the worst part was... Cameron had never put any real thought into the gifts he gave her. He’d always just done the bare minimum. A two-hundred-dollar mass-produced ornament was nothing compared to a high-end silk tie.

"People always said she was just with you for your money," Miles murmured. "Doesn't look like that's the case, does it?"

The words hit Cameron like a physical blow. He realized with a sudden, sinking dread that even if Arianna had been after his money, he hadn't let her get a dime out of him. Every time he’d bought her a gift, it was cheap. When they first started dating and Arianna was working part-time, he’d offered to give her some cash to spend, and she’d turned him down flat. She’d looked him dead in the eye and said, "I can earn my own way. I’m not with you for your money."

Back then, he had believed her. But then the whispers started. The status gap between them was too wide, and the people around him never stopped drilling it into his head: *She's just here for the cash.*

Eventually, he had let them convince him. He’d even told other people the same thing.

He had been so, so wrong.

"And that’s not all," Miles muttered. "I’ve got a few more of her gifts at my place. They didn't look cheap either."

Cameron’s head snapped up. "What do you mean, you have them?"

"You forgot? A few times when we were in a rush to head out, you just dumped her gifts in my car. I asked if you wanted them back later, and you said just deal with them however I wanted."

"Where are they now? Are they still at your place? I'm going to grab them."

"Not anymore," Miles said, looking down at the pile of expensive, heartfelt gifts scattered across the floor. "I tossed them out a long time ago."

Cameron stared at the ruins of what he had carelessly discarded, and for the first time in his life, he didn't have a single word to say.