The Aftermath

I don't even know how I managed to get to the estate. I remember running at least two red lights I shouldn't have, and drivers honking and cursing at me as I cut across lanes without checking. My hands won't stop shaking on the wheel the entire drive.

I pull up the long empty driveway, gravel crunching under the tires, and sit there for a second just staring at the house. Lights on in the foyer. Lights on upstairs. Normal. Untouched. Like my whole world hasn't just ended forty minutes ago.

I get out of the car, my eyes scanning the front of the house on instinct, checking for staff. I don't want an audience for this. Whatever is about to come out of me, I need it to happen somewhere where word doesn't get around to anyone about how badly Ariadna Valdés fell apart tonight.

The front doors are already open.

I step into the entryway, and for a moment it swallows me the way it always does, marble floors polished enough to reflect the chandelier above, the ceiling stretching two stories up, a hallway of closed doors on either side that lead to rooms barely anyone uses. It's the kind of entrance built to make people feel small before they even reach the parts of the house anyone actually lives in.

I just keep walking ahead. My feet already know where they are going.

His office is at the end of the east hallway, the one room in this entire house that has always belonged to just the two of us. The one room I felt safe in when my mom died. Where I sat the night I got my acceptance letter and cried from relief instead of fear. Where he taught me to be still when I needed to think, and to speak when I finally had something worth saying.

I push the door open, and he's already standing, like he'd been pacing before I got here.

"Ari."

That's all it takes.

The tears I've been holding back since I walked out of Leandro's bedroom finally break loose, and my legs stop working somewhere between the doorway and where he stands. I don't remember covering the distance between us. I just remember being in his arms, my face pressed into his shoulder, ugly-crying in a way I haven't let myself do since I was a child.

"Shhh, my pretty girl." His hand moves through my hair. "It's going to be fine, okay? It's okay. The wedding is going to be fine."

I go still.

The tears are held back now by something sharper. I pull away from him.

"There's no wedding, Dad." My voice comes out louder than I mean it to. "I'm not getting married."

I watch the confusion land on his face, questions waiting behind his eyes that he'd rather not ask out loud.

"Daddy, he cheated." The words spill out before I can soften them. "Leandro's been cheating. The wedding is in three fucking weeks. Who does that?"

Confusion crosses his face all over again. "What are you talking about, Ariadna?"

"He's been cheating, Dad. Cheating on me. With Camila."

Saying it out loud for the first time guts me. My insides twist at the sound of it, like the words themselves are doing damage I hadn't felt yet.

His face twists with even more confusion.

"Camila?" he echoes.

"In Leandro's apartment. She was there." My breathing turns ragged.

"Shhh. It's okay. Breathe, honey."

He hands me a glass of water. I take a slow sip, forcing myself to breathe the way he taught me in this same room years ago.

He waits. For once, he doesn't ask another question. He just watches me, giving me the time I need to put myself back together.

I wipe my face with the back of my hand and take another breath.

"I'm okay," I say, though my voice still sounds strained. "I can explain."

He nods, his expression still tense.

So I start from the beginning. How I walked into a nightmare. How his own... how Camila slept with my fiancé. How Leandro told me I was overreacting.

His jaw tightens. I watch his hands ball into fists at his sides.

There's anger in his eyes.

My dad never gets angry. He's protective, steady, the kind of calm that used to make me feel like nothing bad could happen as long as he was in the room. I've never seen him like this.

The door swings open.

Vivienne.

My stepmother stands in the doorway, one hand still on the frame, taking in the room, my dad's fists, the tear tracks on my face. I wonder what happened to the common courtesy of knocking before entering.

She's been part of this family since I was twelve, since she married my dad two years after my mom passed and brought Camila into our house like a sister I never asked for, but grew up loving anyway.

"What's going on?" she asks, her voice low, careful, measured, the same tone she's used my whole life to keep peace in this house.

Neither of us answers right away. The silence stretches long enough that I can hear the clock ticking somewhere behind my dad's desk, steady and indifferent to the absolute turmoil in this room.

"Ariadna." She says my name like she already suspects something, and I ask myself how much of this she already had an idea of.

"Ask your daughter," I say, and I watch something flicker across her face before she can school it back into place.

She doesn't get the chance to respond.

My phone starts ringing in my hand.

Leandro's name lights up the screen, and before I can even decide whether to pick up, headlights sweep across the office windows from the driveway outside.

My dad is already moving toward the window, mine and Vivienne's eyes following him as he goes.

"Ari." His voice has gone quiet in a

different way, like a warning. "Someone's here."

I don't need to look to know who it is.