Chapter 2

Nadia’s POV:

The party ended around 4pm. The last of the expensive cars drifted down the long driveway and disappeared through the gates. The garden was suddenly quiet… just the sound of the catering staff collecting glasses and folding linens. I watched it all from the edge of the terrace, my heels in my hand because my feet ached too much to keep them on.

My head was heavy. The extensions Vivienne had forced on me that morning were still pinned into my scalp, and the weight of them had been pressing down on me all day. I wanted nothing more than to reach my bedroom, pull every single pin out, and cry into a pillow until there was nothing left.

I was already on my way there. I had made it to the end of the hallway, when I noticed the library door was open.

I should have kept walking. But something made me stop and look.

Vivienne was sitting behind the desk.

She wasn't doing anything. She was just sitting there, very still, with her hands folded in front of her. She looked directly at the door. And sat up when she saw me, like she had been waiting for me.

“Nadia,” she said. “Come in. Close the door behind you. We are long overdue for a real conversation.”

I walked in. The heavy wood door clicked shut behind me. The library smelled like old books and cigar smoke left behind by the men who had occupied it earlier. I stood in front of the desk, my heels still in my hand, my feet sore on the cold floor.

Vivienne stood up. She walked around the desk slowly and stopped a few feet in front of me.

“I have had enough,” she began. Her voice was still controlled. “I have been tolerant with you, Nadia. More tolerant than most women in my position would have been. But tonight at the party, you crossed a line that I cannot overlook. You spoke back to me in front of our guests. You implied that my son has no taste.” She tilted her head slightly. “Do you have any idea how much work goes into maintaining the reputation of this family? And in thirty seconds, you open your mouth and ruin it with your low-class attitude.”

Something shifted in my chest. I felt my heart beating fast. Usually, I would just look at the floor and say sorry, but today something was different. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe I was just broken.

“With all due respect, Vivienne,” I said, and I was surprised by how steady my voice sounded, “I am not the one who started that conversation tonight. You are the one who walked up to a guest complimenting my dress and told her I have no taste. You called me cheap. This morning, in front of three strangers you hired, you told me my hair was thin and called me desperate. You have been doing things like this since the day I moved into this house, and I have never once said anything back to you.” I paused. I made myself hold her gaze. “Today I said one thing. One sentence. And now I am standing in this library being told I have crossed a line. I have lived in this house for three years. And in those years, you have told me I am fat, or I am ugly, or I am poor, and I have no family. You treat me like I am a dog you found on the street. No, you treat your dogs better than me. but you make me feel like I shouldn't even breathe the same air as you. I am the one who has been putting up with the disrespect, not the other way around. I am your son's wife, but you treat me like a maid who isn't even good at cleaning.”

Vivienne looked at me for a long moment. There was no emotion on her face. “You have lived in this house for three years,” she said. “In those three years, I have housed you, clothed you, given you access to a life that a girl from your background could never have reached on her own. And you stand here and tell me that I have been disrespecting you?” She let out a short, clipped sound… not quite a laugh. “You are not his wife in any way that matters to this family, Nadia. You were a phase. A little experiment my son tried because he wanted to rebel against me. But even children eventually outgrow their toys.”

I opened my mouth to respond but no words came out.

The library door opened and Dorian walked in. His tie was undone and his jacket was gone. He stopped when he saw us, his eyes moving from me to his mother and back again.

“What is going on?” he said. “I could hear voices from the hallway.”

“Dorian…” I started.

“What did you do now, Nadia?” He cut me off, and the ease with which he did it… the automatic assumption that I was the problem, before he had heard a word of it… was like a slap. “After what I told you at the fountain? I thought I told you clearly to watch your mouth around my mother. And now you are still in here trying to pick a fight with her? You are just... you are being impossible tonight.”

“She is not fighting,” Vivienne said, calmly, from behind me. “She is speaking. Apparently she has quite a lot she has been holding inside.”

“She has been saying horrible things to me all day, Dorian,” I said, turning to face him fully. “She has been mean to me for the last three years. I know you know that. I know you have heard it. And I am asking you, right now, in front of her, Don't you care? Don't you love me enough to tell her to stop? Even tonight?”

Dorian looked at me. Then he looked at his mother, and looked at the floor.

The clock on the wall ticked very loudly in the silence.

“She is only telling the truth, Nadia,” he said. “You don't fit in here. You never have. And instead of trying to adapt, you just push back and make everything harder.”

“You are unbelievable!” I yelled.

“Keep your voice down.”

“You are standing right here listening to your mother call me a toy and all you can tell me is to keep my voice down?”

“Because you love making a scene and this is not the time…”

“Dorian.” Vivienne's voice cut across both of us like a blade. She had moved back behind the desk, then she opened the top drawer and removed something I couldn't yet see. She uncapped a pen and wrote. Then she slid a piece of paper across the surface of the desk and left it there, facing me.

I looked down.

A check. The numbers were printed in clean, precise figures. I counted the zeros once. Then again, because the first count didn't seem possible.

Five million dollars.

“Take it,” Vivienne said. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, and her expression was the expression of a woman who had just laid down the winning card and was waiting for the other player to accept it. "Take the check, Nadia. You’re beneath my son. Take it and get out of my son's life right now. Before Richard comes home, I want you packed and gone before the sun comes up. Five million dollars is more money than your whole family will ever see in ten lifetimes. It is a very generous offer for a girl who brought nothing to this marriage but a few suitcases of cheap clothes. And it is the only one I am making.”

I could not breathe. I stood there looking at the check and I could not breathe.

I looked at Dorian.

“Dorian,” I said. My voice came out barely above a whisper. “Look at what she is doing. She is trying to buy me out of your life. Tell her no. Tell her that our marriage means something. Tell her…”

“Nad.” He said my name like he was tired of saying it. “Maybe... maybe it's for the best.”

I heard the words. But it still took several seconds for their meaning to arrive.

“What?” I said.

“I said maybe it's for the best.” He shifted his weight. He still wasn't looking at me properly. “Look at us, Nadia. Look at what we are. We argue constantly. My mother is always stressed because of the tension in this house. It's not working. It hasn't been working for a long time, and I think somewhere you know that too.”

“I know that we have problems,” I said. “Every marriage has problems. That is not a reason to…”

“It's more than a problem,” he said.

The certainty in his voice was a different kind of blow.

“Then tell me what it is,” I said. “The real reason. Not the version your mother rehearsed with you. Tell me yourself.”

He was quiet.

“Tell me, Dorian.”

He looked up. His jaw tightened.

“I don't love you anymore,” he said. “I haven't for a while. And I have met someone else. Someone who actually belongs in this world. Someone who makes me feel like myself instead of making me feel like I'm always doing something wrong.”

There it was. All of it. Laid out clean and simple in the library of his father’s house.

“It's Lena,” I said. It wasn't a question.

Dorian said nothing. He just looked at the wall.