Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player novel Chapter 192

Chapter 192

“I was a teenager,” she says. “Of course I blamed you. But I’m glad I did, honestly. It made things clearer. I’ve had to fight every day to hold onto what should’ve always been mine. And if you’d stayed, if you’d been in the picture, I would’ve had to fight you too. And Emilia, I wouldn’t have let you win.”

There’s no venom in her tone. That’s what makes it worse. She means it.

My chest tightens. “So what did you do?” I ask. “To get even?”

“Oh, I’m not mad about Luther anymore,” she says, almost offhandedly. “I was, for a while. But blaming you wasn’t fair. I know that now. And… I’m sorry. For that.”

The apology lands with a strange kind of weight. But she keeps going, and her voice hardens again.

“When everything about you hit the news, the market didn’t care that you weren’t technically one of us anymore. The headlines dragged Vanderbilt Holdings through the mud. Investors panicked. Stocks dipped. And I spent weeks cleaning it up. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Sitting in boardrooms being questioned about someone who hasn’t even spoken to you in years?”

She lets out a soft laugh. “So… yeah. I made Tessa think she was pregnant. Watched her spiral for a few days. It gave me something back – a little balance. But we’re even now, so I’m not angry anymore. As long as you don’t cross any more lines, I’ll stay out of your way.”

The rage comes in waves sharp, hot, impossible to swallow. Diana doesn’t even flinch. She sips her water like we’re talking about the weather, eyes locked on me like she’s measuring the exact second I’ll snap.

And suddenly, I’m not here anymore. I’m thirteen again, watching a younger Diana scream because the housekeeper trampled her strawberry garden. She’d nearly burned the woman with a curling iron. She didn’t cry, didn’t throw a tantrum. Just calmly cornered her and flipped the switch.

Mum and Dad sent her to therapy. She came back quieter. Smarter. But she never stopped believing she was right.

“Bad actions should have bad consequences,” she used to say, like it was simple maths. “Good actions should have good ones. That’s fair.”

She was never cruel for no reason. That’s what made her dangerous.

“It must be the curse of brilliance,” Luther used to joke. “Her brain works too fast to make room for empathy.”

He didn’t know how right he was.

I take a breath. Then another. “So Tessa’s not pregnant.”

“Of course not,” Diana says, gesturing lazily to the sheet of paper under Tessa’s phone. “You can check.”

I do. Just to be sure. Her real test results – negative. I fold them again slowly, like handling something fragile.

“Why?” I ask. My voice is tight but steady. “Why would you do that?”

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