Chapter 2
Behind him, rain slid down the enormous windows overlooking the gardens of our Westchester estate.
Security lights illuminated the wet stone terraces.
The chandeliers reflected in the polished dining table.
Every surface in that house gleamed.
I had spent ten years making sure of it.
“There is someone else,” Vincent said.
My fingers stopped moving.
For one foolish second, I felt the familiar instinct to protect myself by pretending I hadn’t heard him.
Then I put the papers down.
“Lena Archer?”
His face changed.
That was answer enough.
Lena Archer.
The woman Vincent had loved before me.
Before his father died.
Before a twenty-seven-year-old Vincent inherited a business empire and became a man who measured his days in acquisitions, deadlines, and obligations.
I knew their history.
Everyone close to Vincent knew it.
Lena had been the girl who knew him before his name appeared on magazine covers.
She had left New York.
He had stayed.
Years later, he met me.
I was a surgeon then.
I worked exhausting shifts at St.
Catherine’s Medical Center, came home smelling of hospital disinfectant, and often forgot to eat dinner until midnight.
Vincent used to say he loved that I wasn’t impressed by his money.
He said I was the only woman who argued with him without being afraid.
He said I made him feel human.
I believed him.
I believed almost everything he told me in those early years.
“When did she come back?”
I asked.
“Six months ago.”
Six months.
I thought about the last six months of my life.
The anniversary dinner Vincent had canceled.
The weekend in Connecticut he had postponed.
The nights he came home smelling of expensive cologne and cold autumn air.
The way he had started looking at his phone during breakfast.
I had noticed every change.
I had simply been too loyal to give those changes their obvious meaning.
“Have you been sleeping with her?”
“No.”
He answered immediately.
I believed him.
Vincent could be cold.
He could be controlling.
He could be cruel without understanding he was being cruel.
But he had always been disturbingly direct when he decided a truth was necessary.
“Do you love her?”
I asked.
Silence.
He looked at me as though he were searching for the least damaging arrangement of words.
I had seen him do that in business meetings.
It usually meant the other person was about to lose.