Chapter 3 Three

Saffron's POV

The boardroom on the twentieth floor always smelled like coffee and old money. That morning it smelled like a trap.

I sat at the head of the long glass table with my mother on my right, her back straight, her pearls in place, both hands folded over her leather folder like a judge about to read a sentence. Six members of management filled the other chairs. Nobody was looking at the quarterly figures. They were all looking at me.

"The numbers are fine," old Mr. Hargrove said, clearing his throat. "That is not what we came to discuss."

"Then what did we come to discuss?" I asked, though I already knew.

"You need an heir, Saffron." My mother did not even lower her voice. "The board needs someone to stand behind this name when you are gone. A second you."

I looked at her. I knew exactly what she was really asking. She had been asking for five years, in every way a mother can, at dinners, at weddings, in the car, over the phone at midnight. Divorce her. Find someone who can give you a child. Find someone worthy of the family.

What none of them knew was that I loved my wife.

I loved her in a way that scared me. I loved how she hummed while she cooked, how she left little notes in my coat pockets, how she waited up on the nights I came home late and pretended she had only just woken. But I had learned early that love shown in front of my mother became a target. When I held Isolde's hand at a family dinner, my mother found something wrong with her cooking for months. When I praised her, the insults doubled. So I went cold. I stopped looking at her across the table. I stopped answering her notes. I told myself it was a favor, that a wife ignored was safer than a wife loved, and that someday I would find a way to fix it.

Five years later, the fix had never come.

"Sir." My secretary, Camille, leaned forward from her chair along the wall. "With respect, it is not only about an heir. The company needs visibility. A wife who is famous, someone the public already adores, would put your name in front of millions overnight. Think of the endorsements. Think of the press."

Her voice cut through what I was thinking, and I realized I had stopped hearing the room.

"The meeting has ended," I said.

My mother turned. "What did you just say?"

"The meeting has ended."

I stood. My chair scraped back so hard it hit the wall. Nobody spoke as I walked out, and nobody followed.

In the elevator I watched the numbers drop and felt every one of them in my chest. Everything irritated me. The soft music. The polished brass. My own reflection in the mirrored wall, jaw tight, eyes tired, the face of a man who had already decided something he did not want to do.

That morning Isolde had been in the kitchen when I left. She was humming. She asked if I would be home for dinner, and I said I did not know, and she said she would cook anyway. I walked out without eating. I remember her standing there with the spoon in her hand.

The doors opened on the ground floor.

My lawyer, Mr. Dunmore, was waiting by the front desk with a slim black folder under his arm. He was a quiet man, careful with his words, and he had not once asked me why.

"Is it complete?" I asked, taking the folder from him.

"Every page, sir, as you instructed. Her settlement is in the second section."

I flipped through it without reading. My fingers felt thick. I had made sure the terms were generous. More than generous. Whatever happened after today, she would not go without.

"Thank you."

I turned and there was a white Tesla at the curb, the newest model, as if the dealer had delivered it that morning. The door lifted, and Nyx Sinclair stepped out in a white dress and dark glasses, hair falling over one shoulder. A few people on the sidewalk had already stopped to stare. She smiled the way she did for cameras.

"You look beautiful," I said.

"Thank you." She slid her glasses up. "Is it done?"

"Almost. Let's go."

She took my arm. It felt like carrying someone else's coat.

I had never really wanted her. That is the truth. We met at a charity gala in spring and she walked up to me before the first course was served and asked me to dinner, as if she were asking the time. I said yes because Camille had said the exposure would help. Since then she tagged me in everything. Her videos, her stories, her mirror photos in the back of my car. Her followers started calling us a couple before we had even decided what we were. I let it happen. I told myself it was business.

In the car she scrolled through her phone, laughing at comments. I stared out the window. I watched the city thin into the long road that led home, to the house with the white gate and the garden Isolde watered herself because she did not trust the gardener.

"You're quiet," Nyx said.

"I'm thinking."

"About her?"

I did not answer. She slipped her hand into mine and I made myself smile. I practiced it, honestly. I held it in the side mirror's reflection until it looked natural. Wide, easy, happy. The kind of smile that would make a wife believe there was no hope left.

I was good at it. That was the worst part.

The gate opened. The car rolled up the driveway and I smelled something before the engine even cut off. Garlic, and beef, and something sweet underneath.

The door opened before I reached it.

She stood there in a cream dress I remembered from our first year. Her hair was pinned up and her eyes were bright, and there was a smile on her face that was meant for someone who had come home to her. Behind her, the table was set. Candles. Two plates. Two glasses.

She had cooked for me.

For one terrible second my feet stopped working. I wanted to walk past Nyx, past the folder, past everything, and put my arms around her. I wanted to ask what she had been about to tell me.

Instead my hand tightened on Nyx's waist, and I pulled her closer.

I saw it land. I saw her smile falter and break apart, piece by piece, as she looked at my face and at the woman beside me. I had rehearsed that moment in the car, and still I wasn't ready for how much it would hurt to watch.

I took the papers out of the envelope and held them out.

"Sign it."

She cried. She wiped her face with her right hand and dropped her left to her stomach, a small, quiet motion, like a woman steadying herself against a wave. I told myself it was grief. I looked at the pen instead of her.

She asked if this was how I was going to throw her away.

I said nothing, because if I opened my mouth I would have said the truth. Nyx kissed my cheek and curled her arm around my neck, and Isolde saw it all. I felt each second pass like a nail being pushed in.

Then Nyx told her she did not deserve me, and I stood there and let her.

She signed. Her handwriting was slow and clear, every letter in place, the same handwriting I used to find on little notes in my coat. She dropped the pen, picked up her bag, and walked toward the door without looking back.

"I promise you, Saffron Cole. You will regret this."

I smiled at her, cold and small, the way my mother smiles at waiters. It was the only face I had left that would not shake.

Then she was gone. The door stayed open, letting in a long bar of white sun and the sound of her footsteps fading down the drive.

I stood in the hallway holding the signed papers, the candles still burning on the table behind me.

Nyx stepped in front of me and ran her finger along my tie, her head tilted, her eyes searching my face the way people search a mirror.

"Thank God she has finally left you," she said softly.

I pretended to smile. But inside me, I didn't want her gone.