“Lily—” The panic on his face was confirmation enough.And perhaps I should have been relieved.Of all the options about who it could have been, this was a better one.I stared at him for a long moment.The anger was still there, burning steady in my chest, but underneath it was something worse.Disappointment.Not because I’d trusted Ollie, but because I’d wanted to.Because for a brief, stupid moment, I’d thought maybe he was actually someone safe.A mistake I wouldn’t make so easily next time.
“Get out.”
Ollie looked at Henri, maybe hoping for some kind of intervention, but there would be no sympathy to be found.
“You might want to hurry, Ollie,” Henri said, his voice low and even.“I spoke with Alex Muncy this afternoon.I don’t think you’d like to be the focus of his next article.”He paused, letting that sink in.
Ollie stood frozen for a moment, looking between us like he was searching for a crack in the wall.He didn’t find one.He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and walked to the door.He paused with his hand on the handle, like he was going to say something else—some final appeal, some last attempt to rewrite the narrative.
But wisely, he thought better of it, not caring to look back as he left the room.The silence that followed was enormous.
My mother smoothed down her skirt, her composure slowly rebuilding.“Well.That was rather dramatic.”
“Mum.”I turned to face her.“You’re fired.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lily
I’d finally said it, and damn, it felt liberating.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”I kept my voice level, though my heart hammered against my ribs.“You’re fired as my manager… and if we’re being honest, you’re probation as my mother.”
“Lily, you’re upset.I understand.But let’s not say things we can’t take back—”
“I’m not taking it back.”I stepped closer to her—close enough to see the micro-calculations happening behind her eyes, the pivot she was already planning, the angle she was about to work.I’d watched her do it my whole life.
“You let Ollie into my room after you knew what he’d done.He published my private life, Mum.He took the worst thing happening to me and turned it into content, and your reaction was to check the engagement numbers.”
She drew herself up, her chin lifting the way it always did when she felt cornered.The posture of a woman who had never once admitted fault in her life.
“Everything I’ve done has been for your career.”
“No.”The word choked out of me.“Everything you’ve done has been foryours.You negotiated a morality clause into my contract so sponsors would feel comfortable—not so I would.You took that threatening note I gave you and buried it, because dealing with it might’ve been inconvenient for the brand.You pushed Ollie at me because a media boyfriend looked good in a press packet.Everything you’ve done has been about controlling me, not helping me.”
Her mouth thinned to a pale line.Henri shifted by the window but said nothing.He was letting me do this on my own, and I loved him for it.
“You don’t mean this,” my mother said, quieter now, the dismissal dressed up as concern.
“I’ve never meant anything more.”My heart ached, but I didn’t look away.“I needed a mother this season, but instead, I got a publicist.”
She picked up her handbag from the sofa with a deliberate slowness, every movement a performance of dignity.At the door, she turned back.Her eyes were bright, and for one terrible second, I thought she might actually cry.
“You’ll regret this,” she said.
The door closed behind her, and the room went still.I stood in the middle of it, breathing hard, my hands shaking at my sides.Something enormous had just shifted—a load I’d been carrying for so long my spine had curved around it, suddenly gone, leaving me standing straighter than I had in years.
When I turned around, Henri was still standing there, watching me with awe.
“You just fired your mother.”
“I just fired my mother,” I confirmed, and suddenly, I was laughing.
Henri crossed the room in two strides, pulling me into his arms.I buried my face against his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him anchoring me as the laughter dissolved into something that might have been tears.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured into my hair.
