My jaw locked. Hard. “You think I was calm? This is her punishment. I was managing the situation—”
“No. It’s not right. And now I feel like I’m living in the middle of something I didn’t consent to. Something ugly. Something dangerous. I don’t know if I can do this, Julian. This is starting to feel like I’m going from the Ashworths into something worse.”
That comment hit me like a blade to the ribs.
“So that’s it?” I said quietly. “One thing you don’t understand and suddenly you’re comparing me to them? You’re really going to stand there and say I’m like them? That I’m the same as the people who treated you like a tool? Who used you? Who broke you? I’m like your husband?”
“Your family just used you the same way,” she shot back. “And you let them.”
My vision tunneled. “Elara.” My voice cracked into something raw. “Don’t you ever compare me to that man. I would rather cut my own hand off than treat you the way he treated you.”
“I’m not talking about him,” she said softly. “I’m talking about how he and his family operate. I’m talking about you using your trauma to get what you want. That scares me. That feels manipulative. That feels—” She swallowed. “Familiar in a way I never wanted to feel again.” She shook her head. “Worst of all, you let me walk in there blind. You let me become the beneficiary of… of whatever that was! You made me complicit!”
My pulse roared in my ears. “I did not tell you what happened in Zurich,” I said, struggling for breath, “because I didn’t want you to see me that way. Weak. Humiliated. I didn’t want to watch it change something in your eyes.”
“Don’t twist this,” she whispered. “I’m not ashamed of you. None of that was your fault. I’m scared of your world.”
“It won’t touch you,” I said immediately.
“It already has.”
A cold, terrible realization crystallized. The way she was reassessing me—the Ashworths had been a known evil; I was becoming an unknown one. I could feel her slipping through my fingers, and the only weapon I had left was my tongue.
“This isn’t about what happened to me. You’re just looking for an exit.” The fear and insecurity I’d been carrying since the first night she tried to leave me finally boiled over. “The second it gets real—the second you see what it actually takes to keep what’s mine—you balk. Maybe you just can’t handle being someone’s everything. Maybe you miss the simplicity of being Alastair’s nothing.”
It was the cruelest thing I’d ever said to her. I saw it land—a mortal blow. The fury in her eyes died, replaced by a wounded, final stillness. She didn’t slap me. She didn’t cry. She just stepped back, tears burning the rims of her eyes.
She shook her head. “I love you. But this? This feels like drowning all over again.”
I reached for her. She knocked my hand away and reached into the breast pocket of my suit jacket with trembling fingers. The key fob for my Aston Martin slid out into her palm.
“Elara,” I rasped. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave like—”
She walked past me. “I’m taking your car,” she said, her voice breaking. “I need space. And you—just give it to me.”
She stepped through the door, her shoulders rigid. I walked out behind her. My car’s engine purred to life; the sound felt like a taunt. She didn’t look back as the car pulled smoothly through the gates and disappeared into the dark.
I stood alone in the driveway, melancholy seeping into my bones. The echo of my own words—maybe you miss being his nothing—rang in the silence, a curse I’d built with my own two hands.
I had basically become her husband. And she’d just taken my keys and driven away. It pissed me off even more. How was she so resolute when it came to me, but had bent for them for years? The unfairness of it was a bitter pill to swallow.
Maybe we weren’t right for each other. That thought alone felt like a stab in the chest.
Chapter 38
Elara
I drove straight from Julian’s parents' house to the Ashworth estate. It was after eight.
I didn’t call ahead. I walked into the formal living room where Alistair, his mother, and a pale-looking Mr. Ashworth were having tea, as if playing house while the walls crumbled.
“We need to talk. Now.”
Three sets of eyes lifted to me, a mix of surprise and immediate suspicion. I didn’t sit.
“There’s a deal that was secured for the company. A sixty-million-dollar, five-year distribution partnership with Fortier Global and LuxePartout. It would save the business. It would secure everything.”
Suspicion in Mrs. Ashworth’s eyes turned into a frantic, greedy light. “Elara, that’s… that’s miraculous! How did you—?”
