Chapter 2: Shattered Trust

Twenty-seven. That number ricochets through the hollow caverns of my mind while I rummage through those crammed plastic bags in my arms in search of my house keys. Not that I'm old but I'm not young, either, especially in Elizabeth Walton's utopia where women my age ought to have at least produced two heirs by now.

I shifted the weight of the birthday decorations to my hip and finally fished the keys from my purse. Silver and gold streamers peeked out from one bag, along with the custom cake topper I'd ordered weeks ago. Michael had been so consumed with the Masterson merger that I'd decided to handle my birthday celebration: a small and intimate dinner, just the two of us.

To connect back. After he had forgotten why we fell in love with each other, an infinite number of pregnancy checks and families became their close affairs.

The house was in silence upon entering my home, with sunlight cutting through tall windows creating elegant lines across the marble floor that echoed beneath my heels. Normally, I would expect to see Maria hovering in the entrance hall, bags in hand and ready to catch me up on all matters about the house. But today it was empty.

"Hello?" My voice echoes under the high ceilings. "Maria? Michael?"

Silence.

I placed the bags on the console table and took off my sunglasses. The wrapped gift for Michael vintage watch I'd had tracked down that matched the one his grandfather wore in the only photograph he kept of him- seemed heavy in my hand. A peace offering of sorts. It was a reminder that no matter what pressure or disappointments we faced, we were still Aria and Michael. Against the world.

Muffled voices echoed upstairs. Michael was home early. Perfect. Now I could surprise him, show him the decorations, maybe convince him to take the rest of the afternoon off...

I gathered my bags and headed upstairs, a light skip in my step. I approached the door to Michael's study, voices more distinct now. A man and a woman.

I froze, clenching the banister.

That laugh would be recognized anywhere.

Jessica.

My sister said she would come by the house to drop off some foundation documents for Elizabeth, but that was supposed to be yesterday. What was she doing here now? With Michael?

Another laugh, lower this time, more intimate. Something cold and slick uncoiled in my stomach.

The study door was cracked open, just an inch, just enough.

My feet carried me forward against their will, moving silently across the plush hallway carpet. Suddenly the shopping bags were feeling like a thousand pounds, dragging down my arms as though trying to hold me back.

Don't look. Go downstairs. Call out. Make noise.

But I could not stop. There was some horrible magnetic power drawing me toward the crack of light seeping from the half-closed door, and the unmistakable sounds coming with each step.

I pushed the door wide open.

Time splintered.

Sister. Husband. Naked bodies intertwined on the leather couch I have sat upon countless times, reading while Michael worked late. Her long legs, so like mine but not mine, wrapped around his waist. His hands tangled in her dark hair. Their bodies move in an ancient rhythm of betrayal.

The bags slipped from my numb fingers. The crash jolted them apart, Jessica meeting my gaze over Michael's shoulder.

No shock. No embarrassment. Just a cool appraisal, like I was an inconvenience rather than the wife whose life she was wrecking.

"Aria." It sounded strange on her lips. As though she was trying it as a trial.

Michael spun around, face sucking palely as he scrambled to cover his nakedness. "Jesus, Aria—"

Breath failed. The room spun, heaving the oxygen from my lungs. My lungs felt like they were on fire. My throat felt to be closing.

Jessica just lounged like the confident air she exuded into everything, lying in wait against the cushions of the couch as though she were on a beach.

"This is not what it looks like," Michael told her. It was the most pathetic lie in history coming from a spotted husband.

I felt a bubble of frantic laughter build in my chest. How could it be anything else?

"Happy birthday to me," I whispered words scraping my throat raw into forming syllables.

Jessica then beamed-the actual smile-as she finally reached for her castaway dress. "He needed someone who could give him what he wants, Aria. Five years already and no sign of a baby? Their family needs an heir."

So little air there was in the room, and the precision of that cruelty cut it from me. The room felt like it was spinning faster.

Michael was talking, stringing excuses like a toddler fumbling through broken English. My mind perhaps ever narrowed to the decorations scattered across the floor- the silver banner proclaiming "Happy Birthday" now draped obscenely across Jessica's discarded stiletto.

I backed away into the doorframe.

"Aria, please-" Michael reached toward me, half-naked, face contorted into what looked like guilt but could not be guilt because it's a fairy tale. Guilt requires a conscience.

"Don't touch me." Those words came from far away, someone too strong for me. Someone who certainly was not crushed under the weight of two betrayals.

I turned and ran. Down the sweeping staircase that had once made me feel like Cinderella entering the ball. Across the foyer Michael had carried me through five years ago, both of us laughing. Out onto the front porch, where sunlight poured in, dazzling me with its blatant cheerfulness.

I fumbled with my car keys, dropping them on the third attempt and managing to open the door. Mansion doors creaked open behind me.

"Aria, wait!"

I wouldn't look back. Couldn't. Because if I did, if I saw his face again, I would either shatter completely or, worse, I might listen to whatever lies he could come up with in the sixty seconds since I caught him in bed with my sister.

The engine purring loudly was a welcome sound. I reversed too quickly, screeching my tires all the way. Michael was in the driveway behind me, hastily dressed in wrinkled clothes, his hair brushed in tendrils by my sister's fingers.

Vision-blurred, I drove nowhere in particular-another way. Away from the mansion. Away from the vivid picture in my mind of Jessica's smug grin. Away from whatever was left of my so-called life.

I stopped at a red light, fumbled for my phone, and called the only person I could think of.

"Sam? It's me." I broke my voice. "I need somewhere to go."

"Aria? What's wrong? You sound terrible."

"My life is over, Sam," she sobbed as the first waves of tears came, hot and fast. "I believed everything, and it was a lie."

The light signaled me to cross. Horns blared behind me, but I could not move. Couldn't see through the deluge of tears.

"Where are you?" Sam's voice sharpened with concern. "I'm coming to get you."

My phone buzzed with an incoming call. Michael's face flashed on the screen, the photo I'd taken of him last summer when we'd escaped to Cape May for a weekend, and his smile had been real then. Or had that been a lie too?

I declined the call.

"I'll text you the address," I managed. "Please hurry."

I pulled into a coffee shop parking lot and killed the engine. When I stopped moving, reality pummeled me with the suffocating wave of what had just happened. My phone lit up again. And again. And again. Calls from Michael. Texts filled my screen.

*Please come home*

*It was a mistake*

*We need to talk*

*I love you*

I shut the phone and pressed my forehead into the steering wheel, my body racked with sobs that felt like they could tear me apart from the inside.

My sister. My husband. The two people I trusted most in the world.

The betrayal was not just sexual; it was Jessica's words, piercing into the core of my most profound insecurity. Five years and still not a single baby.

Was it all this while? Did I exist merely to be the example of a poor incubator for the precious heir to Walton?

I stared through the windshield at strangers coming in and out of their lives all while mine lay in smoky ruins. A mother walked by with her wee daughter coming from a mall, both licking ice cream cones with not a hint of my disturbance meters away.

Here was a family I might never have.

No, a family I did not wish—a family I did not want with a man who could betray me so completely. Not with a sister who could smile while stabbing a knife into my heart.

I will not let them destroy me. I will be no other footnote in the illustrious history of the Walton family. I took a deep and shuddering breath, then wiped my face with trembling hands.

Twenty minutes later, when Samantha's car pulled into the lot, I was no longer crying. The hurt hadn't lessened had crystallized harder, sharper, and more dangerous.

"Whatever happened, we'll get over it," she said before moving on in a fierce hug when she took one glance at my face.

I pulled back, facing her concerned gaze with dry eyes.

"I'm filing for divorce," I said, like stones dropping into still water. "I shall no longer be humiliated by them."

I never told her about the strange relief concealed under the pain, like the weight of huge burdens slowly being lifted as I imagined walking away from the Walton expectations weighing down on me for half a decade.

I never told her about the cold, almost savage, release of every ounce of pent-up joy agitating in my heart in the knowledge that from that day on, I would never have to endure another one of Elizabeth Walton's pitying glances at yet another charitable function.

Not about the icy resolve that was now building in my heart, hardening upon my shattered heart like protective armor.

If Michael and the Waltons wanted war, then they shall have it.

But they will soon find out that they have gravely underestimated what Aria Campbell—formerly known as Walton—could do when pushed.