The Perfect Deception

Lucas's POV The white lie I'd dropped in that conference room—"Lia and I are engaged. Wedding next month"—was a masterstroke, a grenade lobbed straight into Brandon's territory. I'd watched it detonate: his face draining of color, eyes widening in shock, then narrowing into betrayal. The blood had rushed from his cheeks, leaving him a pallid imitation of his usual swaggering self. His jaw had tightened, a muscle jumping frantically as he processed the seismic shift in his carefully constructed world. My best friend—ex-best friend—had stormed out, fists clenched, his exit punctuated by the angry scrape of his chair against the polished floor, leaving the blueprints scattered like shrapnel, symbolic of the wreckage I'd left in his wake. The silence he left behind was almost as deafening as his fury. It bought me time, precious time to cement my position; it carved out space for me to maneuver; and most importantly, it bought me Lia, pulling her out of the orbit of a man who didn't deserv