Heartbroken Heir: Fortune After Farewell

I've been with my girlfriend, Erin Palmer, for five years. But the moment she finally lands the job she's always dreamed of, she dumps me.

It feels like a blade twisting in my heart. Without my support, she would've never gotten to where she is now.

What stings even more is discovering she's been cheating on me with my supervisor, Gavin Trent.

Yet little does she know that this company is just one of the subsidiaries under my name.

During our fifth year together, my girlfriend, Erin Palmer, finally got the job she'd been dreaming of.

At lunch, my coworker, Jared Monroe, nudged me and joked, "You know what they say—when people get a decent job, the first thing they do is dump their partner who is so-called ‘out of their league’. You'd better be careful."

I laughed and punched him lightly in the arm. "Quit spouting nonsense. We're doing great!"

That night at her celebration dinner, I showed up at the restaurant door with a bouquet in one hand and a carefully chosen gift bag in the other.

Erin's best friend, Chloe Adams, smiled and asked her, "Erin, who's this?"

Erin turned around, glanced at me, and said casually, "Oh, he's a classmate from university."

I stopped dead in the doorway. My hand was half-raised in greeting. For a second, I didn't know whether to keep it up or pretend I'd never moved at all.

I forced myself to walk over, set the flowers and the gift down on the table in front of her, and said, "Congratulations on getting into the job you wanted. I've got something to take care of, so I'll head out first."

Then, I walked away before my voice could crack.

Back home, I sat curled up alone in the dark living room, replaying our entire relationship over and over again in my head, trying to figure out if I'd done something wrong or if I'd somehow made Erin mad.

I'd spotted Erin from a distance the day we enrolled in university. She stood there in a ponytail and a plain white T-shirt, the sun lighting up her bright, confident smile. She looked like she was glowing.

From that moment on, no one else ever caught my eye.

I pulled every favor I could and asked around in every possible way until I finally found out her name. She was Erin Palmer, a freshman in the linguistics department.

What happened after that was embarrassingly cliché.

On rainy days, I'd give her an umbrella. On hot days, I'd bring her cold drinks. At noon, I'd bring her lunch. Whenever she got sick, I showed up with medicine.

After a month of relentless effort, I finally won her over.

Right before graduation, Erin told me she was going back to her hometown to prepare for the civil service exam. She wanted a secure job in the public sector. Then, she looked at me and said she hoped I would go with her.

So, I turned down