“And you stood by it.”
“Yes,” he says again, softer now, “because that’s what we do. We follow orders.”
“I’m not one of you,” I breathe, gasping around his hand at my neck.
“No,” he says. “But you’re married to me. Which means whether you like it or not, you’re bound by it as well.”
I shove him again, his hand barely loosening at my throat. “All you do is tear my life apart and then hand me scraps like I’m supposed to thank you. Ford and Dex were—are—everything to me!”
His jaw clenches. “He’s alive, Martine. Isn’t that what matters?”
“No,” I say, tears spilling over. “What matters is that you made me believe he wasn’t.”
I try to shove at him, and Dale pounds at Hayden's arm to release me.
Tears stream down my face as I look at the man I love, who held a horrible secret from me.
But I know better now.
Nothing I feel for Hayden will ever be untouched by this betrayal.
And nothing about this night is over. I look over to Dale and am devastated by what I see.
A single, gasping sob cuts through the silence, sharp and wet and awful. When I turn, she’s standing just beyond the threshold, still barefoot, mascara bleeding down her cheekbones; her hand is pressed to her mouth, as if she’s holding her entire soul in.
Then she drops.
Right there on the marble, in the dress she picked to seduce half the guest list, she folds in on herself and begins to cry in a way I’ve never seen. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just wrecked.
I move without thinking, and by some grace, Hayden lets me go.
My knees hit the floor beside hers, and I reach for her, pulling her against me. She doesn’t resist. She clings to me like she’s drowning, her arms wrapping tight around my ribs, her body shaking against mine.
I don’t speak. There’s nothing to say.
We stay like that, tangled and shaking, as the sound of doors opening and the staff echoing behind us. Archie is standing over us, watching with his icy, observant eyes.
The music has stopped for good. Trays of untouched caviar sit abandoned on the credenzas. A pair of Louboutins is lying near the stairs. Everything feels surreal, like a dream that has been interrupted before it could become a nightmare.
Dale hiccups against my shoulder, her fingers digging into the thick silk of my dress.
“He promised me,” she whispers. “Ford promised me forever.”
I don’t know what to say. So I hold her tighter.
Because even in the quiet, I can still feel the scream trapped in my throat. Dale is just as wronged as I am, and instead of losing a brother, she lost a lover who chose to leave her. Who promised her forever and then decided to walk away.
I don’t know who has it worse.
I hold Dale tighter, one hand running down her back like I can somehow soothe both of us at once. But something in me starts to itch. The air shifts and grows heavy.
I lift my head.
There’s no one directly in the doorway, no obvious movement in the shadows, but every nerve in my body screams that we’re not alone.
“I feel like I’m being watched,” I whisper.
Hayden’s head snaps toward me immediately. Archie steps forward from the shadows near the corridor, where he has been keeping his distance but listening. He rolls his shoulders like he’s preparing himself for war.
