Crowned by Claws

On the night I was supposed to get engaged, I found my fiancé's hand up another woman's dress.

I wish I could tell you I screamed. I wish I could tell you I threw my glass in his face and made a scene people would talk about for years. But that is not what happened. I just stood in the doorway with my champagne still in my hand, and my whole body forgot how to move.

It is strange, the things your mind does when it is breaking. I remember I could hear the piano playing downstairs. Soft and pretty. I picked that song myself.

Let me go back a little.

That evening, I spent four hours getting ready. My hair was curled. My dress was pale blue, the one I saved three months of salary to buy, because I did not want to look cheap standing next to the Ashford family. My mother fixed my necklace again and again and kept saying, "Smile, Lila. Don't ruin this. The Ashfords are the best thing that ever happened to us."

My father's company needed the Ashford deal. Everyone knew that. I knew it too.

But I was not smiling for the deal. I was smiling because I loved Ryan.

Three years. I loved that man for three years. I remembered every birthday. I sat with him at night when his father shouted at him. I forgave him when he forgot my birthday, when he came late to dinner, when he told me I was "too simple" to understand his world. I told myself, this is what love is. You give more. You wait. You stay.

And tonight, he would finally put a ring on my finger in front of three hundred guests. Tonight, I would finally be enough.

That is what I believed.

Then the host called for the engagement speech, and Ryan was not there.

I laughed it off. I told everyone he was probably nervous. I looked around for my best friend Sabrina, because she always knew where to find him. But she was gone too.

A waiter told me quietly, "Miss Lila, I think Mr. Ashford went upstairs. To the private room."

So I went. With my heart beating happy, silly, stupid little beats. I even thought, maybe he is preparing a surprise. Maybe he is practicing his words.

I walked down the long hallway, past the golden lamps. The door of the private room was not fully closed. There was a thin line of light and I heard a sound.

A woman's laugh.

I knew that laugh. I had heard it a thousand times. At my kitchen table. In my car. In my bed, when she stayed over after a bad day and I held her hand until she slept.

I pushed the door open.

Ryan had Sabrina pressed against the wall. His jacket was on the floor. His hand was under her dress. Her arms were around his neck, and her lipstick was all over his mouth.

I don't know how long I stood there. A second. A year.

Something inside my chest did not break loudly. It just went quiet. Like a light being switched off in a house I had lived in for three years.

"Ryan," I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

They jumped apart. Sabrina fixed her dress fast, but Ryan did not. He only looked at me, and then he sighed. He actually sighed, like I was a small problem that came at a bad time.

"Lila," he said. "Why are you here?"

Why am I here?

I almost laughed. "It's my engagement party."

"Right." He rubbed his forehead. "Look, don't make this a big thing."

Don't make this a big thing.

I waited for him to say sorry. I waited for him to look ashamed, to beg, to lie, to do anything a man who loved me would do. I would have even believed a lie. That is the part that hurts the most. I think I wanted to believe a lie.

Instead he looked at Sabrina and then back at me, and his face went cold.

"I was going to tell you after tonight," he said. "Honestly, Lila, you should be thankful. My family wants this marriage because your father needs us. Not because I want you. You're boring. You're too easy. You do whatever I say, and I don't even have to try. Do you know how tiring that is?"

I felt each word land, one by one, like small stones.

You're boring.

Three years of my life, and that is what I was.

"Then why did you ask me?" My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "Why did you say you loved me?"

He shrugged. "It was easy."

It was easy.

I looked at Sabrina, my Sabrina, the girl I shared my secrets with. I wanted her to cry. I wanted her to say she was sorry, that it was a mistake, that it only happened once. She just crossed her arms, and I saw something in her eyes I had never noticed before.

She was not guilty. She was proud.

"Don't look at me like that, Lila," she said softly. "These things happen. You can't control who someone loves."

"You were my best friend."

"And now," she said, and she placed her hand on her flat stomach, "I'm going to be the mother of his child."

The room went completely silent.

I heard my own breath. I heard the piano from downstairs, still playing my song.

Pregnant.

I know it is strange, but the first thing I felt was not anger. It was a deep, empty kind of shame, as if I had been the fool in a joke everyone else already knew. How long? How many months had they laughed behind my back? How many times had I hugged her, thanked her, trusted her, while she smiled at me with his child inside her?

My hands started to shake. The champagne glass slipped and broke on the floor, and nobody even looked at it.

Ryan walked toward me, and for one wild second I thought he would finally say sorry. Instead he said, "Don't embarrass me downstairs. Just smile, say the party is cancelled, and go home. We can talk about the company deal tomorrow."

The company deal.

That was all I was to him. A deal. A signature. A girl who would keep quiet.

I thought of my mother's hands on my necklace. I thought of my father's tired eyes. I thought of every time I made myself smaller so that Ryan could feel bigger.

And something rose up in me. Not loud. Just steady and hot.

I took a breath. I looked down at the diamond ring in my purse, the one he gave me for "practice," because he said the real one would be given on stage. I pulled it out.

"You're right about one thing," I said. "It was easy. It was so easy to love you, because I gave you everything and you gave me nothing."

Then I threw the ring at his face.

It hit him right on the cheek and fell to the floor with a tiny, sad sound.

"Lila!" he shouted. "Are you crazy?"

Maybe I was. Maybe I had been crazy for three years, and tonight was the first time I was awake.

I turned and walked out. But the door was blocked.

Guests. So many guests. Half of the party had followed the noise upstairs, and now they were standing in the hallway in their expensive clothes, holding their expensive drinks, staring at me. I saw my mother at the back, her face white. I saw Ryan's mother covering her mouth. I heard whispers rolling through the crowd like a wave.

"Is that the fiancée?"

"I heard he cheated."

"Poor girl, she's so embarrassed."

"Well, what did she expect from a family like hers?"

My cheeks burned. My eyes burned. I wanted the floor to open and swallow me. I had never felt so small in my whole life. I stood there in my pale blue dress, the one I saved for, with a broken glass at my feet and my heart in pieces, and three hundred people watched me fall apart.

Ryan stepped out behind me. Sabrina held his arm. Together, they looked like the happy couple.

And I was the one who didn't belong.

"Lila," Ryan said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "pick up the ring, apologize, and stop this drama. You are making a fool of yourself."

I opened my mouth, but no words came. My throat was too tight. The tears I had been holding finally slipped down my face, and I hated them, because they proved he was right. I was weak. I was the fool.

I wanted to run. I wanted to disappear.

Then, from the end of the hallway, I heard footsteps.

Slow. Steady. Calm.

The crowd began to move aside, as if someone had pushed them with an invisible hand. The whispers died one by one until the whole hallway was silent. Even Ryan stopped talking.

A tall man in a black suit walked toward us. His face was sharp and cold, like it was carved from stone. I had only seen him once before, in a photo on the Ashford family wall, and I remembered that everyone said the same thing about him. Do not look him in the eye. Do not anger him.

He stopped right in front of Ryan. He did not even glance at Sabrina. His dark eyes moved slowly over the broken glass, the ring on the floor, and my wet face.

Something flickered in his expression. Just for a second. Something that looked almost like pain.

Then he spoke, in a low voice that made the whole hallway hold its breath.

"Ryan. Apologize to her."

All the color drained from Ryan's face. His mouth trembled, and he whispered one single word.

"...Uncle?”