Chapter 3:The final betrayal

She turned to check the time. 2:47 a.m. 

Damon hadn't arrived back at home. 

She felt a stinging pang in her chest, but she pushed herself to consciously breath gently. It was not novel. Like last night, he had spent many evenings away. But tonight, after everything, the whispers, the looks, the humiliation, his absence felt different. It came across as a statement. 

On the nightstand, her phone buzzed, its vibration breaking through the quiet. 

She reached for it with doubtful fingers. one note from Vanessa. 

Look at Seraphina's post. 

dread knotted low in her gut. Her pulse pounding against her ribs, her hands became sweaty as she swiped open the app. The screen loaded slowly, but when it did, each breath she had left left one sharp exhale. 

Her most recent piece was a darkly lit, closely close picture. A woman's bare back against silk sheets, a masculine hand resting possessively on her hip. 

Lillian's blood ran cold. 

The caption beside it said: Tonight will live in memory. 

Her fingers got tighter around the phone. Her knuckles went white from that great hold. She knew that hand, even though the picture itself was deliberately vague and ambiguous. Its form, the veins on the wrist, the way the cuff hardly peeped into the picture. 

Damien. 

Her vision became hazy. 

She wanted to scream, toss the phone across the room, break anything, anything, that would help her to release this intolerable agony inside her. 

She closed her eyes rather instead. 

taken in. Pushed out. 

Sharp and merciless pain turned inside her, but she choked it down. This was not the first turnabout. That would not be the last. 

She moved over the rotating doors, the air smelling fresh coffee and polished wood. Executives in tailored clothes, helpers carrying files, quiet chats filled with urgency, the elegant lobby alive with movement, its tall marble columns and immaculate black flooring. 

Then she entered. 

And the globe froze. 

Heads looked around. Slower movements. Though the murmurs were subdued, she sensed the change in the air, the stolen looks, the way certain staff members lowered their eyes, suddenly busying themselves with chores absent on the list. 

She was not only a surprise visitor. 

She was unique. 

Lillian kept on her stroll. 

She passed old faces, people who had attended their wedding, who had once congratulated her for assuming Mrs. Ashford. They now saw her as though she were only a ghost living in the empire her husband governed. 

As she walked to the executive floor, her pulse pounded in her ears. 

Straightened at the sight of her, the young woman in a navy blazer, the main desk receptionist, had immaculate hair tied into a bun. 

Lillian spoke in a cool, steady manner. "I should see Damon." 

The woman stopped, her fingers hanging over the keyboard. "Mr. Ashford is... right now in a meeting." 

Lillian wrinkled her brow. "then I'll wait." 

The receptionist swallowed and looked down, maybe looking for a justification. 

Lillian had no need for hearing it. 

She realised. 

New from the woman's posture's tightness, the hardly hidden pain in her eyes. New from the way the whole floor seemed electrified with something unsaid. 

Damon was on hand. 

And he was not isolated either. 

An intense pulse of wrath curled under her ribs. She nodded once. "Don't trouble me announcing." 

She turned without further word and headed directly towards his office. 

Ahead loomed the door, its sleek black finish a sharp contrast against the glass walls encircling it. 

The last gate. 

She extended her hands for the handle. 

The receptionist answered uncertainly and called after her. "Mrs. Ashford, I really don't think," 

Lillian closed the door. 

Langley, Valhalla. 

She stood next to Damon's desk, wearing just his white dress shirt, the neat cloth draping off her tiny form as though she belonged in it. Her lips curved in a deep, contented smile as her damp, raven hair hung to her collarbone. 

Lillian's hands shook at her sides as her stomach turned. 

Seraphina spoke in a purr, full with victory. "Oh, beloved, shouldn't you knock?" 

Lillian's world slanted, but she kept anchored in place; her body was unresponsive as her thoughts shouted at her to react, to move, to speak, to act. 

She then turned to see him. 

Damian. 

Arrangements folded up under his large oak desk, shirt undone at the collar. Arrangements He radiated that same easy control, the man in charge. But the ground changed beneath her not because of his looks. 

It was his demeanour. 

Not shocked at all. Nothing guilt about. 

Simply disinterest. 

As though she did not exist. 

Like she hadn't simply entered on his treachery. 

He reached for his cufflinks, fastening them with slow, careful accuracy, his every movement meticulous, as though her presence were only a slight annoyance. 

Lillian's nails sank into her palm. 

Inside her, a dozen emotions battled: anger, hurt, shame. She forced herself to stand tall though, smothering them all. 

Seraphina let out a really long sigh. "You impoverished person." Her fingertips straying the edge of Damon's desk, she turned to him. "You omitted telling me we had an audience this morning." 

Though her pulse hammered, Lillian refused to let anybody see her break. 

At last Damon turned to look at her. 

Their stares locked. 

She wasn't sure if she imagined anything flickering in his sight, so ephemeral, so unreadable. 

Then he uttered the words that broke her in a voice as silky. 

"You should not be here, Lillian." 

Her heart halted. 

Seraphina giggled quietly. She turned her head to say, "Yes, darling." "Have you not sufficiently embarrassed yourself?" 

First to move was Seraphina. 

She moved slowly and deliberately across the distance between them, her bare legs showing from under Damon's clean white dress shirt. The fabric swallowed her frame, yet Lillian's tummy turned over from her thoughtless, intimate wear. 

Sitting on Damon's desk's edge, she crossed one long leg over the other. She leaned in and planted a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek then, as if bending the knife further. 

Lillian sensed the tilt of the world. 

Damon didn't respond. He wasn't rigid. He stayed. 

He just let it to happen. 

Seraphina's lips opened into a languid, contented smile. Her head tipped and her emerald eyes sparkled with laughter. "You're early, darling.." 

Lillian's pulse burst into her ears. 

Every instinct screamed for her to respond, to smack that haughtily off Seraphina's face, to demand responses from the guy seated so coolly behind the desk. She refused to provide them the gratification, though. 

Rather, she raised her chin, trained indifference hiding the fury inside her. 

"How unfortunate," she murmured with a flawless flow. "I had no idea I should schedule a meeting to see my own husband." 

Seraphina laughed lightly and airily. She cooed, whirling a strand of her raven hair. "Oh, Lillian," she said. Damon is a rather busy man. She let the words hang between them then spoke in a conspiratorial tone, downing. "I guess I just fit into his calendar more precisely than you do." 

Lillian's fingers curled at her sides into fists. 

She turned to Damon then, looking for anything, anything, in his manner. 

A flickering of remorse. a sloshy guilt. 

She came across nothing. 

Damon let out a slow, almost bored-measuring tone. With unfathomable serenity, his black eyes locked with hers, his fingers tapping a meaningless cadence against the desk. 

At last, he spoke. 

Not a clarification. Not a denial; rather, a statement of fact. 

Just three cold, intentional sentences. 

You ought not to be here. 

Her one knowledge was that she had to go. 

The doors fell silently behind her with a sombre finality the instant she entered the lift. Trapped with the ghosts of what she had just seen, the narrow walls pressed in. 

She grabbed for the button, her fingers shaking, but she did not press it straight away. 

She stood there, fixed on her reflection in the mirror doors. 

Her hair was still immaculate and her makeup was perfect. She seemed unbroken from the outside. Made. But her eyes revealed her differently. 

There was the storm, building under surface level. 

She breathed then pressed the button. 

The fall was shockingly slowly slow. Every floor that went by, every second that passed tightened the knot in her chest. 

Her hands had stopped shaking as she arrived at the lobby. 

Her heels tapping on the polished marble floor, Lillian emerged into Ashford Enterprises' great hall. Executives racing to meetings, interns bearing trays of coffee, security officers positioned at the door encircled her in normal morning hustle. 

Still, she strolled feeling like a ghost. 

nothing stopped her. Nobody gave her a call afterwards. 

They all knew. 

She pushed open the glass doors leading outdoors to breathe the clean morning air. The city was waking, vehicles honking, people moving deliberately. Still, the world had not stopped. 

Still, there was something inside her. 

She had assured herself s

he could live with this marriage. She could swallow the loneliness, the whispers, the humiliation. She could stay, regardless of everything. 

But nowadays days... 

Something broke today.