The Vivienne Cole

Raven

“Vivienne is home. You will be nice to her.”

That was what he called and told me when I was getting into the car.

I am going to meet my soon-to-be stepmother. The irony of this whole situation is almost laughable.

I am sitting in the back of this black limousine as James drives me to the penthouse, replaying everything that happened in that office, and the more I replay it the more it stings.

I cannot believe Roman treated me like a child.

That is what hurts the most. Not the careful distance he put between us or the way he stood at that window with his back to me. It is the fact that even after everything, even after I stood in front of him and told him the truth, he looked at me like I was still nineteen and didn’t know what I was doing.

But even at nineteen I knew what I was doing. I knew that I wanted him.

I knew exactly what I was asking for when I asked him to teach me how to touch myself. Then he gave me my first real orgasm and I have spent three years touching myself every morning to the image of him.

James pulls up to the building and I push everything down and step out.

The Bellerie penthouse sits on the top two floors of one of Roman’s buildings in the heart of Boston. It looks out over the whole city, with marble floors, high ceilings, and a staircase that curves up to the second floor, like something out of a film. The kind of place that makes you go quiet when you walk in whether you have been there a hundred times or never.

I grew up here.

Mr. Thomas is already at the door when we pull up. He is older than I remember, a little slower, but his face when he sees me lights up the way it always did and something in my chest loosens just a little as I smile at him.

“Mr. Thomas.”

“Miss Bellerie.” He takes both my hands in his the way he always did. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you. It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too.” He takes my bag from James and wheels it toward the entrance. “Good thing you are home actually. Miss Cole is already turning this place into something else entirely.”

I follow him inside. “What has she done?”

He looks at me with that patient face of his. “You will see.”

We ride the elevator up and I look at my reflection in the polished doors and think about how I am going to survive the next three weeks. Seeing him every day. Sitting at the same table. Watching him with her. Watching him be someone’s husband.

He simply cannot get married again.

It sounds irrational even inside my own head but I don’t care. The two of us were enough. Roman and I. We had each other and we grieved together and we built something in the quiet of that penthouse that felt like its own kind of family.

And now there is going to be a wife and a stepdaughter and a whole new life and I am supposed to smile through all of it.

The elevator opens.

I step out and stand frozen.

The portrait is gone. It is the first thing you see when you come into the house. A huge framed photograph of me, mum, and Roman. It lived on that wall for twelve years and now there is a larger framed photograph of Roman and Vivienne in its place. I stare at it for a moment and then make myself look away and find Aria on the other wall. A whole portrait of a girl who has never spent a single night here, hanging where my mother’s favourite painting used to be.

I look around the room. Mum’s white flowers. Gone. The ceramic bowl where Roman dropped his keys every evening. Gone. The photograph of Mum and me at the beach. Gone.

Like we were never here. Like she was never here.

He is trying to erase us. That is what it feels like standing here. Like Roman has decided to take everything that was ours and quietly make it disappear before his new family moves in.

Tears blur my vision and I blink them back, look at the ceiling for a second, and take a deep calming breath. I tell myself I will not cry. Not today. Not ever.

And that is when I see her.

Vivienne Cole is sitting at the dining table with wedding design boards spread out in front of her. She is even more beautiful in person than she is on any screen or billboard and I hate that I notice that immediately.

She looks up when I walk in and her eyes move over me the way you assess something you want to know if it is up to your standards.

She doesn’t smile. “You must be Raven.”

“Yes.” I keep my voice pleasant. Roman said to be nice. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

She holds my gaze a moment longer than necessary and then looks back down at her boards. I stand there feeling exactly like what her eyes said I was. An inconvenience that has just walked through the door.

I turn to leave and then she looks up again. “Come here. I need a second opinion.”

I hesitate for a moment and then walk over.

The boards are covered in color swatches and fabric samples and floral arrangements. She is meticulous, I can see that already. Everything is laid out in a very specific order. She taps two swatches. “Which color for the wedding day. Be honest with me.”

I look at them. Burgundy, deep and dramatic. And yellow and peach, warm and soft.

“Please not pink,” she says. “I have had enough pink around my home because of Aria. I cannot deal with more of it.”

“Yellow and peach then. It’s warm without being too soft and the flowers will photograph beautifully against it.”

She looks at the board again and is quiet for a moment. Then she nods. “You know what, you are right. Yellow and peach it is.” She looks up and this time the coolness in her expression softens just slightly. “Thank you, Raven. I think you are going to be a great help to have around.”

I smile because Roman told me to be nice and because I am nothing if not obedient when I need to be.

“Your father and I love each other very much,” Vivienne says, holding my gaze for a while before returning it on the board. “We want that day to be absolutely memorable.”

Your father. I almost laugh at that.

I force a smile, “It will be beautiful.”

“Of course, it will.”

I excuse myself before my face says something my mouth knows better than to.

Roman is not my father. A father does not fuck his daughter. And he has fucked me and completely ruined me for anyone else. He knows that and has been punishing himself for it ever since by keeping me away.

And yet here we are.

Here I am, smiling at the woman he is marrying, in the house that used to be mine, missing him in a way I have no right to and wanting him in a way I have every reason to stop.

I follow Mr. Thomas toward the guest wing and tell myself to hold it together.

I have a lot of questions for Roman when he gets home. I need to understand why he is erasing me from his life.