Chapter 2

She almost made it through dinner before she broke her own rule.

The plan had seemed so clear before now, sitting alone in the kitchen with the bracelet in her pocket. 

‘Watch him and let him lie. See exactly how good he'd be at it.’

But then, he was home, humming under his breath while he loosened his tie. He poured himself a glass of the wine she had bought for the Hendersons' dinner they never attended, looking so entirely at ease in his own life that she simply stopped being willing to wait.

"How was your previous Singapore trip?" she asked.

"Good. Marcus even wants another round of revisions on the Meridian contract, so I'll probably be buried in that all week." He took a sip of wine, not really looking at her, as usual.

"And you? How was your week?"

"Quiet, nothing much." Ivy set her own glass of wine down without touching it. "I found your other phone."

Adrian didn't move for a second. She saw it, a small hitch, like a skipped frame in a film. Then he set his glass down slowly, buying himself time to fabricate another bunch of lies. 

"Ivy…"

"Lauren…," she said, after thoroughly practicing it in her head all day, "Three years, Adrian. You had a child with her, and you pretended like I was all you had? I saw the photos, and I looked at the dates." 

Her composure held right up until the last part, and then it didn't. "You told me you were in Singapore for the Kaufman deal and it was all lies?!"

He didn't reach for her or attempt to apologize. He picked his wine back up, and that, more than anything he was about to say, told her exactly how this conversation was going to go.

"It's not what you think," he said.

"You have a son. What exactly am I supposed to think that isn't that??"

"I mean it's not…." He exhaled, set the glass down again, and dragged a hand through his hair. When he finally looked at her, there was no shame on his face. Only a kind of tired irritation, as if she had shown up at an inconvenient hour.

 "You knew what this marriage was from the beginning. You knew what my family expected, what your father needed. We were never exactly a love story."

"We were legally married, Adrian"

"We were an arrangement that simply worked. You had most of what you could get, and I never once asked you to pretend otherwise." He said it simply. "I didn't think you'd want to know the details. I was protecting you from something that had nothing to do with you."

"Nothing to do with me?" Ivy heard her own voice come out flat, disbelieving. "You have a child, Adrian. With someone else, and you were coming home to me every night calling me your wife?"

"And I still am your husband." He said it without a trace of irony, as though the sentence made any sense at all. "Nothing about that has to change."

For a moment Ivy simply looked at him, this man she'd spent a decade building a life around, and felt something inside her go very quiet.

"I want a divorce," she said with a stern look.

Adrian actually let out a short laugh, like she had told a joke that hadn't landed. "No, you don't, Ivy."

"Well, I do!"

"Ivy." He said her name softly. "Think about this for one second before you say something you can't take back. Do you have any idea what a divorce would actually mean right now?"

"It would mean I stop being married to a man who lied to me for three good years!!" She responded sharply with tears building up in her eyes.

"It would mean your father loses everything." Adrian's voice didn't rise. That pierced like a hot knife. "His company has been running on financing from my family for two years. He didn't tell you, because he didn't want you to worry, but it's true. If I pull that funding tomorrow, Sinclair Group folds within a quarter. Everyone he employed, everyone who depends on him would be gone. Because of a piece of paper you'll sign at the courthouse."

Ivy felt the floor tilt slightly beneath her, the particular vertigo of understanding, all at once, that the ground she'd been standing on had never really been hers to stand on.

"You're lying!"

"Call him then." Adrian picked his wine back up, entirely unbothered.

"Ask him yourself. See what he tells you."

"You wouldn't do that to him, Adrian."

"I wouldn't want to." He said it almost gently, which somehow made it worse. "And you're not leaving me over some misunderstanding about my personal life, Ivy. Think about what you'd actually be walking away from. Think about what it would cost people who have nothing to do with any of this."

Ivy stood very still in her own kitchen, in the marriage she had just tried to leave, and understood with total clarity that she had not only lost a husband tonight.

She had just found out she'd never had the option to leave one.

"I need to think," she whispered through her tears.

She wasn't even aware she'd spoken out loud until Adrian replied.

"Take all the time you need." He said it as if he had already won. He picked his phone up off the counter, scrolling. "I have a seven a.m. call tomorrow, so I'm heading to bed now."

He kissed her cheek on his way past, as if nothing between them had changed at all.

Ivy waited until she heard the bedroom door close before she picked up her own phone with shaking hands and dialed her father.

He picked up on the second ring, his voice warm, unsuspecting. "Ivy. Is everything alright?"

"Dad." She had to stop, swallow, start again. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth. Is Sinclair Group being financed by the Vance family?"

The silence on the other end of the line lasted only two seconds. It was long enough to answer the question before he said a single word.

"Ivy," her father said slowly and carefully, "Umm... where did you hear that?”