Chapter 2: Replaced

Vanessa walked out of the shadows and took his hand like she'd rehearsed it.

Maybe she had.

The spotlight caught her red dress and turned it into something on fire, and the little girl on her hip blinked at the brightness and hid her face in Vanessa's neck.

"Everyone," Damien said, "I'd like you to meet Vanessa."

The applause started slowly, then swelled, and I stood there feeling it wash over me like water I was drowning under.

"Vanessa Sinclair," he said. "My fiancee."

The word landed somewhere behind my ribs and stayed there, sharp.

"Fiancee," I whispered.

"We're not going to hide it anymore." He smiled at her. Not in the crowd. At her. "I'm done pretending my life is anything but this."

Cameras flashed. A dozen little suns went off at once, and every one of them was pointed at the stage, at him, at her, at the child.

Someone popped a champagne cork and the whole room laughed and cheered like this was the best news they'd heard all year.

I couldn't move. My feet had grown into the marble.

"And this," Damien said, lifting the little girl's tiny hand in his, "this is Lily. My daughter."

The floor tilted.

"His daughter," a woman near me breathed. "So the rumors were true."

"Two years old," someone else murmured. "Do the math."

"Poor thing," a third voice said, not about the child. "She really had no idea."

"How could she not know? You'd have to be blind."

"Or stupid."

"Damien." I heard my own voice from very far away. "Damien, stop."

He didn't hear me. Or he heard me and it didn't matter, which was worse.

"Lily will be raised as a Blackwood," he said. "She is the future of this family. My heir."

His heir.

Seven years. Three pregnancies I lost with his name on my lips in a hospital bed he never came to. And he was standing under a spotlight naming another woman's child his heir while the champagne flowed.

I started walking. I don't remember deciding to.

People parted for me, whispering, and I climbed the two steps to the stage before anyone thought to stop me.

"Is this a joke?"

The microphone caught it. My voice went out over the whole room, cracked and too loud, and the laughter died into a hush that was almost worse.

Damien's smile finally faltered. "Aurora."

"Tell me this is a joke." I was shaking so hard the gift box rattled in my fist. "Tell me you didn't just, in front of, tell me this isn't real."

"Get off the stage."

"We're married, Damien." I laughed and it came out like a sob. "You're my husband. We're, this is our, I made you something. Look. I stayed up three nights, I made you..."

"Put it away."

"Look at it."

"Aurora." His jaw was tight. His eyes went past me to his parents in the front row, checking, always checking who was watching. "You're embarrassing yourself."

"I'm embarrassing myself."

"Yes."

Margaret rose from her seat. She didn't need a microphone. Her voice carried on its own, cold and clean, cutting straight through the silence.

"A woman who cannot give this family an heir," she said, "has no place standing on that stage."

A few people laughed.

That's the part I'll never forget. A few of them actually laughed.

"Seven years of nothing," Margaret went on, warming to it, playing in the room. "Three pregnancies and not one living child. And she wonders why my son looked elsewhere."

"That's enough," I said, but it came out small.

"Is it?" She smiled. "Look at you. Look at what you let yourself become. Did you truly believe a man like Damien would stay?"

"Damien." I turned back to him. I put everything I had left into it. "Please. Whatever I did, whatever you think I did, we can fix it. We can go somewhere and talk, just us, like we used to, remember, when we had nothing, remember the apartment on Fifth, you said, you promised me..."

"It's over."

Two words. That's all he gave me.

"No." I shook my head. "No, you don't get to just say that. You don't get to stand up here and, with her, with a baby, and just, no."

He reached into his jacket.

He pulled out a folder. Cream colored, thick, official, and he held it out to me across the stage with a steady hand.

"The papers are already drawn up," he said. "Sign them and this is easier for both of us."

I stared at the folder. "You brought divorce papers to our anniversary."

"I brought them because I knew you'd make a scene."

"When did you..." My mouth was dry. "How long have you been planning this?"

Something flickered across his face. Gone before I could name it. "Sign, Aurora."

"Answer me."

"There's nothing to answer."

A man in a gray suit stepped up beside Damien, a pen already uncapped in his hand, and I realized he was a lawyer, that Damien had brought a lawyer, that every part of this had been arranged down to the pen.

"You planned all of it," I said. "The guest list said Bennett. Not Blackwood. You already took my name off before I walked in the door."

Damien said nothing.

Vanessa said nothing either, but she watched me over the child's head, and there was something in her eyes that didn't triumph exactly. Something quieter. Something that looked almost like a warning.

"There's more you should know," Damien said. "The shares. Your position at the company. It's already been handled."

"Handled."

"Transferred. Reassigned. You don't hold anything anymore."

I laughed, and it scared the people in the front row. I could see them lean back. "I built that company. I wrote your first three proposals. I sold my mother's ring to make payroll. The winter we almost folded, do you remember that, do you even..."

"That was a long time ago."

"It was ours."

"It was mine." He said it was flat, no heat, which somehow made it worse. "You helped. I'm not saying you didn't help. But it was always going to be mine."

"Helped." The word came out of me broken in half. "I gave you my whole life."

"And I'm giving it back to you. Take it and go."

Across the room I found one face I knew, Ethan, Damien's brother, standing near the bar with his glass halfway to his mouth. For half a second our eyes met. He looked away first. He didn't say a word. Not one word, and he was the only person in that room who ever pretended to be kind to me.

"Sign the papers," Damien said.

"Look at me when you say it."

He looked at me.

And there was nothing there. That's the thing that finally broke me. Not the cruelty. Nothing. Seven years and he looked at me like I was a stranger holding up his party.

"Fine," I said.

My hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold the pen. A drop hit the page before I could stop it, and I thought it was ink, and then I understood it was a tear, that I was crying, that I'd been crying for a while and hadn't felt it.

"Aurora," Vanessa said softly, and it was the first time she'd said my name. "You should just take the deal and go. It's better this way. Trust me."

"Don't." I couldn't look at her. "Don't you dare talk to me."

I pressed the pen to the line.

I begged him one more time. I hate that I did, but I did.

"Damien." Barely a whisper. Just for him. "Seven years. Please. One reason. Give me one real reason and I'll believe you, and I'll go, I'll go quietly, just tell me the truth about why."

He leaned in, close enough that only I could hear it, and for one insane second I thought he might soften, might be the man from the apartment on Fifth Street.

"You stopped being useful," he said.

Then he straightened up and gestured to the pen in my hand like a host offering a guest the door.

I signed.

My name came out crooked, the letters swimming, and the last thing I saw before I let go of the pen was the tear sitting on the paper, right beside my signature, catching the spotlight, still wet.