Vivienne moved into my periphery. “A woman who loves you found out another woman drugged and attempted to assault you, and she’s angry. That’s not overreacting.”
I turned, eyes burning. “I was protecting her.”
She scoffed. “You cannot preserve the respect of a strong woman by keeping her in the dark,” she countered. “You can’t infantilize her. A woman like Elara will choose resentment over condescension every single time. You are letting your own insecurity—this boyish terror that she will see the real machinery of your power and find it monstrous—dictate everything. I’ve spoiled you, and it’s made you soft.”
I looked away. “She thinks the worst of me,” I said quietly. “Let her.”
Vivienne scoffed under her breath. “You think this is about judgment? That girl walked in blind and saw the ugliest pieces of our world in ten minutes.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell her,” I snapped.
“She would have stayed and supported you if you had,” my mother said.
My throat tightened.
She went on, her voice low and sharp. “You should have told her Seraphine is not getting away with what she did. Once the contracts are signed, the morality clauses will destroy both companies when the evidence is leaked. Call her now and tell her the Ashworths won’t get to keep most of that sixty million—tell her that people like us don’t go to jail. Shoving them to the brink of bankruptcy is the closest either of you will get to justice.”
She was right. Our plan was never for either company to succeed; it was to annihilate them. I had let Seraphine and her father think they were buying their way out of scandal with a sixty-million-dollar deal. I had let the Ashworths believe it was their salvation.
But the contracts were built on a timed trapdoor. The moment the ink was dry and their guard was down, the evidencewould drop—everything from the Zurich drugging to Alistair’s affair and abusive behavior. The morality clauses would trigger, voiding the deals and burying them in penalties and lawsuits. The Ashworths would lose everything, not just the money. Seraphine’s family would be shredded in the press and blacklisted for good.
“I don’t even care to explain anymore,” I said, though the words tasted like iron.
Her expression hardened. “You may be a Hale, but right now you’re acting like a child.” She shook her head. “I see now. You’re too immature for her. Too insecure. Too threatened by the fact that she isn't hanging onto you like you're gold.”
The dam inside me cracked. “You’re right. I’m immature. Maybe she was right from the start,” I said, the admission tearing loose. “Maybe we don’t work. I keep thinking about that night. The second she found out Alistair was back, what did she do? She handed me a fistful of cash like I was a paid escort and walked out. Just like that. Three years. Three years I bent for her. I made myself small, I played the boy, and I took the scraps of her attention when she decided to spare them. I almost broke myself in half trying to fit into the tiny, secret box she had for me.”
My voice was rising, shaking. “And for what? So the moment things got hard—the moment my world didn’t fit her neat, moral blueprint—she could look at me with the same disgust she has forhim?”
“But she told you from the beginning how it would be. She never promised you anything, and you stayed.” My mother’s voice was a firm anchor in my storm.
“I COULDN’T LEAVE!” The shout ripped from my throat, echoing in the still night. I was on my feet now, facing her, my chest heaving. “Don’t you understand? That first day, that firstnight… she laid down her rules. ‘This is casual. This is a secret. Don’t catch feelings.’ And Iknew. I knew it would gut me. But I couldn’t walk away. I had been yearning for her since I was a teenager, thinking she was untouchable, and I finally had a chance to touch her. She was the only thing I’d ever wanted that I couldn’t just buy or take. So I chose the scraps. I chose the secret. I chose to break myself, piece by piece, for any fragment of her she was willing to give. Yes, that was my choice. And now I have to live with it.”
The anger bled out as suddenly as it came, leaving me empty and exposed. My mother didn’t reach out to coddle me. Vivienne exhaled slowly.
“Well,” she said softly, “all that’s left now is choice.”
I looked up, jaw clenched, throat raw.
“You made your choices then,” she continued. “You made your choice tonight, too—anger instead of honesty, pride instead of vulnerability. And now you are exactly where all those choices led you.”
Her gaze narrowed. “There is no backward, Julian. You cannot return to who you were before her, and you cannot unsay what you said. All you can do now is make another choice. Forward.” She tapped her finger lightly against her own sternum. “And whether that means fighting for her or learning to live without her—that, darling, is on you. Not her.”
I swallowed hard, my chest tight, my palms damp. She lowered herself into the chair beside me, her posture impeccable even then.
“Love is not static,” she murmured. “It’s motion. It’s direction. And right now, yours is spiraling. So decide—move toward her, or move on. But you cannot stand still and hope she’ll come back.”
She stood and turned to go back inside, pausing at the door. “I love you,mon cœur. And I believe she does, too. But love is not a feeling. It is a series of choices. You must decide if you are brave enough to make the next one.”
Then she was gone, leaving me alone with the sky, the silence, and the weight of every wrong turn I’d ever taken to get here.
Chapter 40
Julian
Fourteen days of silence from her felt so profound it had weight—a texture like quicksand. It was the quiet of a tomb.
The apartment, once a sanctuary, was now just a collection of expensive, empty rooms that smelled like her fading perfume and my own rotting patience. She’d called only once, the day after she’d driven away in my car.
