Chapter 10: Betrayal

The click of the latch was a gunshot in the silent hall.

Inside the room, the voices, the laughter, the life—all of it stopped.

Aurora's hand was still on the cold, heavy brass. It was no longer her hand. It was a piece of stone, a mechanical lever. She pushed.

The heavy mahogany door swung open with a soundless, expensive whisper.

It revealed the scene like a curtain rising on the final, tragic act of a play.

Time did not stop. It shattered.

The room was a suite, cast in the same cold, pre-dawn gray light as the foyer. And by the floor-to-ceiling window, silhouetted against the pale, ashen sky, they stood.

Liam. And Vanessa.

This was not a "3 AM meeting." This was not "staff gossip." This was not a "client gift."

This was the truth.

He was in his shirtsleeves, the ones from the foyer, but his tie was gone. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, exposing the hard, unforgiving line of his collarbone.

She was not in her navy blue suit.

She was in a robe. A robe of crimson silk.  The exact color of the red dress. The exact color of her lipstick. The exact, bloody, damning color of the ruby in Aurora’s hand.

Her dark hair, which was always in a painfully tight chignon, was undone. It spilled over her bare shoulders, a chaotic, intimate mess. Her feet were bare on the plush carpet.

They weren't just talking. They weren't just in the same room.

They were pressed against the glass, caught in the "passionate embrace" the blueprint of her life had foretold. His hand was on her hip, his fingers splayed, proprietary. Her hands were on his chest, her crimson-nailed fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt.

As the door opened, they broke apart.

But not in a panic. Not in a flurry of guilt or shame.

They turned, slow and annoyed, as if she were a clumsy, invisible maid who had dared to interrupt them.

And for one, long, eternal, agonizing second, the three of them were frozen in a perfect, horrific tableau.

Aurora, the ghost in her white lace wedding dress, a prisoner in pearls, her face pale and stunned, her hand still holding the door open.

And Vanessa.

Vanessa, who did not bother to pull her robe tighter. Who did not flinch. Who did not look ashamed.

She simply crossed her arms, a slow, deliberate movement. She looked Aurora up and down, from the pearls at her throat to the 20-pound silk skirt puddling at her feet. She took in the vision of the perfect bride.

And she smiled.

It was the same smile from the rehearsal dinner. The same triumphant, assessing, victorious smile. Her crimson lipstick, the same shade as the robe, was smeared. Just slightly, at the corner, in a way that was more damning than a thousand words.

The smile said it all.

He's mine. You're just the merger. And you were stupid enough to come and see for yourself.

And then, there was Liam.

He did not, as she had seen in her nightmares, look furious.

He went pale.

It was a profound, shocking, and terrible paleness. The blood drained from his face, leaving his skin the color of ash, making his gray eyes look like two burnt holes in a mask. He was not angry. He was not sad. He was, simply, caught.

He stared at Aurora. He looked at her, the bride, standing in the doorway, and his mask of control, the one he had worn his entire life, the one he'd used to gaslight her in the corridor, the one he'd used to roar at her in the foyer... it evaporated.

He looked, for one second, like a man who had just watched his entire empire, the one he'd built on lies, crumble to the ground.

She'll walk, his voice echoed in her mind, the words he'd spoken from behind this very door. She'll do what she's told.

He had miscalculated. The asset was no longer behaving as predicted.

The string quartet, two floors below, was still playing. The sound of the processional, that hopeful, climbing, beautiful melody, drifted up and into the room through the open door. It was a grotesque, mocking, insane soundtrack for her own destruction.

Aurora’s world didn't just shatter. It dissolved.

The "broken glass" she had swallowed, the "broken glass" she had cleaned up... it was in her lungs, her veins, her eyes.

She couldn't breathe. The corset, which had been a cage, was now a vice, crushing her ribs, suffocating her. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick. The room tilted. The crimson robe was the only color in a world that had turned to gray.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to tear the dress from her body, to rip the pearls from her neck. She wanted to launch herself at them, to rake her nails across that smiling, crimson mouth. She wanted to demand why.

But she did none of those things.

She stood frozen. A silent, white statue of her own grief.

The silence in the room stretched for an eternity. Ten seconds. Twenty. A lifetime.

It was Liam who broke it.

He finally, finally, moved. He took a step away from Vanessa, a clumsy, jolting movement. He raised his hands, palms out, as if approaching a wild, terrified animal.

"Aurora."

His voice. It wasn't the cold, cruel voice from the foyer. It was a new voice. A voice she had never heard. It was hoarse. Strangled.

"Aurora, this... this is not... It's not what it looks like."

It was the weakest, oldest, most pathetic lie in the history of the world.

And it was the sound of that lie, that insult, that finally broke her paralysis.

She took one step into the room.

The heavy door swung shut behind her, the click of the latch sealing the three of them in the room.

Her tomb.

"It's not..." she whispered. Her voice was a dry, rasping croak. "It's not what it looks like?"

She looked around the room. The rumpled sheets on the bed, which had clearly been used. The two empty champagne glasses on the nightstand. The crimson silk robe.

"It looks like you've been sleeping with your assistant," Aurora said, her voice terrifyingly calm, the words precise and sharp, like slivers of glass. "It looks like you were sleeping with her while I was downstairs at our rehearsal dinner. It looks like you're still with her, on our wedding day, in my home, while I am in my wedding dress."

She took another step, the silk dress whispering over the carpet.

"Am I missing something, Liam? Is there a detail I'm not seeing?"

Vanessa remained silent, watching, that small, amused smile still playing on her lips. She was enjoying the show.

Liam's face, which had been pale with shock, now flushed with a desperate, frantic anger. He was losing control, and he knew it.

"Aurora, listen to me," he said, taking a step toward her. "You need to be calm."

"Calm?" she laughed. It was a terrible, broken sound. "You want me to be calm?"

"It was... it was a moment of weakness," he said, his eyes darting to Vanessa and then back to Aurora. He was already spinning the story. "It was a mistake. A stupid... terrible mistake. It means nothing."

It means nothing.

The words hit her harder than a physical blow.

All of it. The 3 AM meetings. The red dress. The whispers. The lies. The ruby earring. The night she had spent in a cold, hollow hell. It means nothing.

He was still lying. He was still trying to manage her.

"A mistake?" she said.

"Yes. It's over. Right now. It's done. Vanessa, get your things. Get out." He was the CEO again, barking orders.

Vanessa's smile finally faltered. She looked at Liam, her eyes wide with fury. "Liam..."

"Get. Out," he roared, not looking at her. His eyes were fixed on Aurora.

He turned back, his expression softening, pleading. It was a performance. It was all a performance.

"See?" he said, his voice dropping. "It's done. It meant nothing. This... this is just... it's stress. The merger. It was a moment of weakness. It will never, ever happen again."

He reached for her. His hand, the same hand that had been on Vanessa's hip, reached for her arm.

"Aurora, darling," he whispered. "Don't let this, this... nothing... destroy everything. Our future. Our family. Your father..."

He was doing it. The same thing he did in the corridor. Using her father, using the merger, using her love against her.

He was still, even now, trying to get her to walk.

He thought she was that weak. That stupid. That obedient.

She'll walk. She'll do what she's told.

He touched her arm. His fingers, warm and familiar, closed around the delicate lace of her sleeve.

The "broken glass" inside her didn't just twist. It turned to ice. A glacial, final, clarifying cold.

She looked at his hand on her arm. She looked at his face, pleading and false.

She felt the ruby earring, still clutched, sharp and painful, in her other hand.

She lifted her hand. The one that wasn't holding the earring.

And she slapped him.

It was not a hysterical, flailing slap. It was a swing of pure, cold, calculated ice. Her palm, made strong from a lifetime of riding and tennis and being a Vale, connected with his face with a sound that was as sharp and final as a gunshot.

CRACK.

It was the loudest sound she had ever heard.

Liam's head snapped to the side from the force of it.

The string quartet, in the garden two floors below, was still playing.

Vanessa gasped.

In the ringing, deafening silence, Liam slowly, very slowly, turned his head back.

A bright, crimson handprint was blooming on his pale, shocked cheek. He looked at her, his gray eyes, for the first time, full of nothing. No anger. No lies. Just... stunned, empty shock.

He had miscalculated.

Aurora didn't cry. She didn't scream. She didn't wait for another excuse.

She unclenched her right hand.

The ruby and diamond earring fell from her numb fingers, landing on the plush carpet at his feet, a tiny, glittering star swallowed by the shadows.

It was over.

She looked at him, at the red mark on his face, at the woman in the crimson robe, at the rumpled bed.

She held her head high, a bride in her shroud of lace.

And, with the string quartet playing her exit music, she turned her back on them, yanked open the door...

And she ran.