CHAPTER THREE: DINNER AND THE MOTHER

# Chapter Three: Dinner and the Mother

Dinner is at eight exactly.

I stand outside the dining room in the black dress he left for me, and I cannot make my feet move. My hands are cold. My throat is tight. The dress fits too perfectly, like he measured me while I slept.

The doors are open. I can see him.

Alexander sits at the far end of a long black table with a glass of red wine in his hand. He has changed into a dark shirt, sleeves rolled up, and looks relaxed and powerful and entirely at home in this glass kingdom.

He looks up and sees me.

"Come here."

One word. Not a request.

I walk in. My heels echo against the marble, and he watches me the whole way, his eyes moving slow from my face down to my feet and back up again. I feel bare even though the dress covers everything it should.

"You're late."

"I'm not." My voice comes out thinner than I want. "It's eight on the dot."

"You kept me waiting thirty seconds." He says it without looking up. "In my house, thirty seconds is late."

I want to throw the water glass at him. Instead I grip the edge of the table hard enough that my knuckles whiten.

Mrs. Alvarez appears without a sound and pulls out a chair for me, not beside him but directly opposite, far enough that I have to raise my voice just to be heard across the table.

We eat in silence for a while. The food is perfect. I cannot taste a single bite of it.

Then he speaks, still looking at his plate.

"Your mother called your old phone today. Four times."

My head snaps up.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her nothing. Your old phone is disconnected." He finally lifts his eyes to mine. "I had Mrs. Alvarez send flowers to her house tomorrow, with a note saying you're on your honeymoon in the Hamptons with no signal."

"You had no right to do that."

"I have every right." His voice does not rise, but something in it sharpens. "You're my wife. Your family is my responsibility now. I'll handle them."

"You don't get to handle my family like they're business assets."

He smiles, and there is no warmth in it at all.

"Everything is a business asset, Chloe. Even love. Especially love."

Before I can answer, the elevator chimes.

Alexander frowns. He was not expecting anyone.

The doors open and a woman steps out, tall and elegant in a white coat, silver hair pulled back tight, beautiful in the way that makes everyone around her feel smaller. She could be Alexander in twenty five years and a different body.

"Mother." He is on his feet before I register he has moved. "I wasn't expecting you."

His mother. My stomach drops through the floor.

Her eyes sweep the penthouse and land on me, tracking my black dress, my face, the diamond weighing down my finger.

"So this is her." Her voice could frost glass. "The Brooklyn artist."

I stand too fast and my chair scrapes loud against the marble.

"Hello." My voice shakes on the single word.

She does not answer me. She looks past me, straight at her son.

"You married her without telling me. Without asking me. After everything we discussed."

"We discussed nothing that concerns you." His voice cuts sharp.

She laughs, and there is no humor in it at all.

"You were supposed to marry Vanessa. Vanessa would have given you London. What does this one give you, besides a failed gallery and a father who steals?"

"My father does not steal." The words are out before I can stop them.

Both of them turn.

His mother arches one perfect eyebrow.

"Does she speak for you now, Alexander? Or does she speak out of turn often?"

He comes around the table and sets his hand at the small of my back. His palm burns straight through the fabric.

"My wife speaks when she wants to speak." His fingers press into my skin, a warning wrapped inside the words.

His mother steps closer, close enough that I catch her perfume, cold and expensive.

"A word of advice, little girl." Her voice drops so only I can hear it. "My son does not love. He collects. Cars, houses, companies. Now he has collected you. When he grows bored, he will put you down exactly like he put down Vanessa. Remember that tonight, in his penthouse, in his bed."

Tears sting my eyes and I refuse, refuse, to let them fall in front of her.

Mrs. Alvarez materializes again, perfectly timed.

"Dinner is getting cold, Madam Knight."

His mother's smile goes tight.

"I'll leave you to your honeymoon." Her gaze slides back to Alexander. "Call me tomorrow. We need to discuss the board meeting, and your little art project."

She turns and walks back to the elevator without a goodbye. The doors close on her like a curtain falling.

Silence crashes back into the room.

Alexander lets go of me and sits back down as if none of it happened.

"Sit. Eat."

"How am I supposed to eat after that?" My voice comes out louder than I mean it to. "Your mother hates me."

"My mother hates everyone." He picks up his wine. "It isn't personal."

"She said you were supposed to marry someone named Vanessa."

He goes still. Half a second, no more, but I catch it.

"Vanessa is gone." Flat. Final. "She isn't relevant."

"She sounded relevant to your mother."

He sets his glass down hard enough that wine jumps over the rim.

"Enough."

I flinch.

He stands and crosses to the window, his back to me, shoulders drawn tight.

"Vanessa was my fiancée two years ago. She left. End of story."

"Why did she leave?"

He turns slowly. His eyes have gone dark, something dangerous moving behind them.

"Because she learned the same lesson you're about to learn."

"What lesson?"

"That living with me isn't a fairy tale. That I don't know how to be soft. That I will control every minute of your day until you're begging me just to let you breathe."

My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.

"Is that why you bought me? Because she left, and you needed a replacement for your image?"

"No." He crosses the room toward me, slow, deliberate, until there is almost no space left between us. "I bought you because for five years I have thought about the Bennett name. I dreamed about your father watching his precious daughter call me husband. Vanessa has nothing to do with you. You have everything to do with revenge."

He tips my chin up with two fingers, forcing my eyes to his.

"And now that I have you, I find I don't want to share you. Not even with my mother. You'll stay away from her. Understood?"

I nod, because I cannot trust my voice.

"Good." He releases my chin. "Go to bed, Chloe. You look tired, and tomorrow is your first day as Mrs. Knight in public. There's a charity gala at the Met, and every camera in New York will be on you. You'll wear red. You'll smile. You'll make them believe you're madly in love with me."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I make sure that gallery you love so much is a parking lot by next week."

He says it the way other people comment on the weather.

I stare at him, stunned all over again. This is the man I married. A man who can ruin me with a single phone call and not even raise his voice doing it.

I turn and walk to my room without another word, the black dress suddenly feeling like armor too thin to stop anything.

Behind me his voice follows, low and certain of me.

"Sweet dreams, wife."

I shut the door, lock it, and finally let myself come apart against it.

Tomorrow I face all of New York as his loving wife.

And no one will know I am already counting the days until I can get out.