Chapter 2

ISABELLA'S POV

The black dress is Valentino.

I bought it three months ago for an evening exactly like this one and I have never worn it. I stand in front of the mirror in the guest wing and fasten the clasp at the back of my neck and  take one slow, quiet breath.

My reflection stares back at me.

Composed. Luminous, even. The silk falls to the floor in a clean, unforgiving column. My hair is pinned just so. The pearls at my throat are my grandmother's there are the only things I own that have nothing to do with Ethan Sinclair or his contract or the name that I have been require to wear like a second skin that has never once fit properly.

I feel like a woman with nothing to herself but her pride.

Ethan is in the living room when I emerge, already dressed, but on his phone looking very distracted. Surrounding him is the authority of a man whose mind lives permanently three steps ahead of his body. He looks up when I enter. His eyes moving over me in a quick, professional, assessing manner. As though he wants to confrim if I am prepared for the evening.

That is not the way a husband looks at his wife...what am I saying he has not once in twenty-three months has he ever looked at me like a friend would not to talk of how a husband would.

"Ready," he says. It is not a question. Already moving toward the door.

"Ready," I confirm.

He holds the elevator as we step in. We get to the lobby he extends his arm without looking at me and I place my hand in the crook of it as we step out onto the pavement and we become the picture the evening requires. A couple. A unit. A man and the woman who belongs beside him.

The loving story is assembled in under three seconds. We are very good at this.

The gala is at the Mandarin Oriental. The ballroom is a study in understated wealth, designed in low gold lighting, white linen, and filled with the soft murmur of people who move billions before the rest of the city finishes breakfast. I know almost every face in the room. I researched them all at some point in the past two years because knowing the room is the only way I know how to make myself useful in a marriage that has never asked anything else of me.

For the first hour, Ethan stays close to me.

He places his hand at the small of my back when we are introduced to the Lachlan Group's CEO. He leans down to say something in my ear about the Singapore deal and I nod and laugh at exactly the right moment and his hand falls away the instant the introduction is complete.

The warmth is performed. The connection, manufactured. All of it executed without a single real feeling between us.

Then his phone vibrates.

He glances at the screen, and immediately I can see something cross his face, it is quick, small, and gone before anyone else would catch it. But I caught it. I have spent twenty-three months studying the expressions of this man who never looks directly at me. I catch everything.

He excuses himself from the group. "I'll be back in a moment," he says.

I watch him go.

Holding onto my champagne, I track him through the crowd without turning my head. I have developed a peripheral vision sharp enough to cut glass. Twenty-three months of watching a man who never watches back will do that.

He stops at the far side of the ballroom in front of a lady.

She is tall. Blonde in a green dress cut dangerously low at the back, the kind of dress that requires total confidence in your own body. She turns when she sees him approaching and the smile that breaks across her face is not the smile people give to professional acquaintances.

It is the smile of a woman who has been waiting.

She puts her hand on his arm and he does not move it away.

My eyes falls on the earrings she's wearing and from where I stand I can see it clearly.

A teardrop, golden earing, with a small diamond at the lowest point of each one, catching the light of the chandeliers above.

She is wearing the pair.

Natalie Brooks. I know that name. When I first heard that name four months ago through his partially open doors to his study while discussing with his Personal Assistant my curiosity had made me search for her only to find out she is a popular model. But I told myself to not mind as she doesn't pose any risk. Moreover I am not the kind of woman who will jump in without conclusion.

I lied to myself.

I am exactly that kind of woman. But because of pride I have just been waiting until the evidence was undeniable.

It is undeniable now.

I turn back to the Lachlan CEO smile and I say something about emerging markets and he laughs and reaches for another glass of champagne thinking I am utterly charming.

Across the ballroom, Ethan Sinclair stands with the other woman's hand resting on his arm and does not move it nor look for me, infact he has not looked for me once all evening.

My hand around the champagne flute tighten. But I am past the stage of feelings that need tight hands to contain them. 

What lives in me now is clarity.

I excuse myself, finding a table near the windows. I sit down and open the notes app on my phone and I start typing.

I am not grieving. I want to be precise about that, even inside the privacy of my own head. The thing moving through me right now is not grief. Grief is warm. This is cold. It is the particular, useful cold of a thing finally confirmed...when the suspicion you have been carrying dissolves into certainty and all the energy you spent on doubt becomes available for something else entirely.