Chapter 16
She is everything you will never be
Colin
Every light turns red the second I get close, and each stop feels longer than the one before.
I tap the steering wheel. My reflection glares back from the windshield, jaw tight, eyes hollow.
I mutter a curse when another light flashes red. “Of course. Why not?”
A horn blares behind me. I don’t react. The sound dissolves into the engine’s low hum, the trapped heat inside the car, the pressure building in my chest that won’t ease.
I shouldn’t have driven. Not like this.
The thought circles back to the same place: you did this.
It started with me.
I hit the gas, then brake hard as the next light turns red.
Another horn. Another reminder that even now, I can’t move forward.
“Brilliant,” I mutter under my breath.
Guilt claws at me, but anger is the only thing keeping it from devouring me whole.
Anger at myself. At Maya.
Somewhere between one light and the next, I feel my pulse accelerating and the bitter taste of regret.
I rake a hand through my hair, trying to control my breathing. It doesn’t help. The pressure won’t ease
Her voice won’t leave my head. Every word. Every pause. It hasn’t even been twenty minutes since she called, but it feels like a lifetime.
I thought I had already lived through the worst—that nothing could cut deeper than the night I walked in and realized Ceci knew everything, or the moment I was served divorce papers.
I also thought nothing could be worse than hearing Ethan tell me his father had been dead for years. Than listening to Alicia sob into her mother’s arms because of a pain I created.
But I was wrong.
The meeting’s been dragging for almost an hour. Numbers, forecasts, damage control, the same corporate noise that’s been eating at me lately.
I’m trying to focus, nodding at something one of the directors says, when my phone vibrates on the table.
Cecily.
I reach for my phone before I realize what I’m doing.
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing my chair back. I don’t wait for a response.
The door shuts behind me, the conversation fading out. I loosen my tie as I step into the corridor, my pulse quickening for reasons I can’t quite explain.
“Cecily?” I answer, voice lower than I intend.
“Colin,” She says in a whisper, “we need to talk.”
Her breathing is ragged. “Maya was here.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “What?”
“She showed up at the house,” she says, her voice faltering. “Alicia answered the door. Maya told her she was a friend of mine, that she wanted to surprise me.”
The blood drains from my face. “Fuck!”
“She walked right in, Colin. Found her standing in the living room like she belonged there.” Ceci’s voice breaks on the last word.
“After I asked Alicia to wait by the pool, she started talking… not about you, at first, but about my father. About her mother. About everything that happened between them.”
I stop pacing. “What are you talking about?”
“She said my father had an affair with her mother, for almost a year. That he promised to take care of them. And when he left... when he went back to my mom...” Her breath catches. “Her mother killed herself.”
The words come out in pieces. Broken, like she’s trying not to choke on them.
“She told me she was the one who found her. Dead in her bed.” Ceci says, then falters. “She said she called my father that morning and he told her to never call again.”
My stomach knots. “Christ, Ceci...”
“After throwing all that in my face, she basically told me our perfect family was built on lies. That my father destroyed hers… and that what happened to our marriage—” there’s a pause. “To our family. Doesn’t even compare.”
For a moment, neither of us seems able to say anything to break the silence.
“You understand what this all means, don’t you?” Ceci finally asks.
I don’t answer. But I do.
I was part of whatever twisted plan lived inside Maya’s mind. And I walked right into it of my own free will.
Shame burns first, spreading through my chest until it’s hard to breathe. Then comes the disgust, curling through my stomach like poison.
But the worst part is the guilt. It comes with the constant reminder that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t opened the door in the first place.
She only ever had access to us because I gave it to her.
And now Ceci and the kids are the ones bleeding for it. I destroyed the foundation that held us together. All of it for nothing.
There isn’t an apology in the world that could absolve me of that kind of sin.
“Ceci,” I manage, my throat dry. “I know my word doesn’t mean anything to you anymore.”
I stop, trying to steady my voice, but it comes out cracked anyway. “But I swear to you—I won’t let her hurt you or the kids again.”
Silence.
Then a soft, hollow, “Okay.”
And the line goes dead.
For a moment, I just stand there, phone clutched in my hand, staring at nothing.
I send a quick text to Jonathan:
Me: Keep leading the meeting. Family emergency.
I don’t wait for his reply.
I’m already moving fast, almost running down the corridor that leads back to my office. I hear the slap of my shoes against the marble, the uneven sound of my breathing.
By the time I reach my office, my hands are shaking. I grab my car keys from the desk and head straight for the elevator.
When the doors slide shut, I catch my reflection in the mirrored panel. All I see is the face of a man who’s nowhere near done paying for his sins.
I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Philip had an affair. I always saw him as an example, the kind of man I wanted to become.
And to find out he had an affair that lasted almost a year?
Ironically, it makes us alike. The length doesn’t matter, not when both of us made the same choice.
To betray the vows we made. To betray the people we swore to protect.
I want to believe it’s a lie, another twisted way for Maya to inflict pain on the people I love because I finally rejected her. But by the time I park, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that. My pulse is pounding so violently it drowns out everything else.
I get out and head straight for the building. The doorman barely looks up and doesn’t say a word, which can only mean my access is still active.
As I cross the lobby, disgust floods through me, not just for her, but for myself.
For every time I’ve walked this same path, pressed this same elevator button, knocked on that same wooden door, carrying deceit in my hands and arrogance in my breath.
Every step feels heavier now. Each one is a reminder of how easily I sold pieces of my integrity and called it control.
When I knock, the sound is hard, almost violent.
Maya opens the door almost immediately, one heel on, the other abandoned by her feet. Getting comfortable at home again, after tearing mine apart.
I push the door open and step inside without a word.
She slips off the other shoe, turns to face me.
“You went to my home,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I need—”
“Shut the hell up,” I snap, stepping closer. “You went to my house. You tricked my daughter into letting you in. You stood in front of my wife and played the victim. What now? Some self-appointed executioner of your own trauma?”
I’m inches away, towering over her, my words dripping with disgust.
“How much of what you said to Ceci was a lie?”
Maya swallows hard. “None of it. Everything I told her was the purest truth. Philip had an affair with my mother. He practically lived with us for almost a year. I was eleven.”
I drag my hands through my hair and turn away, trying to process it, trying not to vomit on the thought alone.
“So you targeted me,” I say at last. “You targeted my family as revenge for what Philip did, because you think he owed you something?”
“I never planned for it to go that far,” she says quickly. “It wasn’t supposed to be more than a few times, but I fell for you, Colin. I love you. I couldn’t let you go.”
I stare at her, at the woman who ruined my life.
No... at the woman I helped ruin mine.
“You’re sick,” I hiss. “You infiltrated my company, played with innocent people’s lives, all because of something Philip did over a decade ago. And what about my children? They’re kids, Maya. Did you even think about them when you planned your twisted little revenge?”
She flinches, but I don't stop.
“It’s only a matter of time before the company’s legal team ties everything back to you. Any doubt that was left is gone. That article, the sources, the bullshit you fed the press. Every bit of it was you.”
I shake my head, revulsion creeping into every word.
“It’s pathetic how you painted yourself as some tragic heroine... when you’re the exact opposite.”
“I did it for us!” she cries. “For us and for our son. You’re not the first rich, powerful man to have an affair, Colin—and you won’t be the last to leave his wife for someone younger, prettier, better. People just need to know it was for love.”
That’s when I laugh.
Because it’s so fucking absurd.
“Someone prettier. Better. Love?” I repeat, shaking my head. “You couldn’t be a better version of Cecily if you were born again. You don’t even deserve to stand in the same room as her. She is everything you will never be. Grace. Strength. Decency. Absolute perfection.”
I step closer, my voice low, cutting. “You could spend the rest of your life chasing what she already is without even trying, and you would never come close.”
Her hand flies up, but I catch her wrist before she can touch me.
“Hitting me won’t change the facts,” I mutter, my eyes hard. “You’ll still be exactly what you are. A resentful, delusional woman who uses her body to take what she could never earn.”
I let go and wipe my hand on my coat. The revulsion is physical now. I can feel it crawling over my skin.
“Don’t sit on your high horse pretending you didn’t love every second of it,” she spits. “The helpless girl act. Always begging for your approval. You fed on that.”
Her eyes lock onto mine, furious and desperate at the same time.
“I saw the way your eyes lit up whenever you talked about your college days. You missed being that guy. The one who took what he wanted. I gave him back to you.”
She steps closer. Her voice rises with each word, her fury barely held in check.
“The way you reacted every single time I gave in to you. Me, completely at your mercy. You thrived on that. You love being in control, Colin. And I gave you that. Freely.”
Her tone shifts. A bitter laugh slips out.
“Don’t lie to me. Or to yourself. Just because your perfect family fantasy, the white picket fence, the fairytale facade, has already shattered. They know now. They know what we were. What we did.”
She moves closer, her eyes burning.
“Yes, we did. Because I wasn’t alone any of those times.” Her voice gives way, fury and heartbreak colliding. “Don’t try to deny it now that everyone knows the man you really are.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Because she’s right. At least about that.
For a while, I did like it. The control. The power. The illusion, carefully built, that I could take whatever I wanted and never face the consequences.
And that’s what makes it unforgivable.
When her hand drifts to her stomach, that same nauseating gesture she’s used before, something inside me snaps.
“Stop touching your stomach like that,” I hiss. “You think it’s going to make me feel something? You think it’s going to make me want this? I don’t want you. And I sure as hell don’t want that child. All it does is remind me how far I’ve fallen, how much I disgust myself for ever letting you in.”
She folds her arms around her stomach, protective, like she’s trying to save what’s already gone.
“It doesn’t matter how I got into your life,” she says, her voice wavering. “I love you, Colin. I do. From the moment you touched me, I knew. You’re the first man I’ve ever loved. And now I carry the proof of that love inside me.”
“Don’t tell me you love me,” I snarl. “You don’t know me. Tell me one thing you know about me. One thing beyond how I like my cock sucked.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a whore!”
I let out a cold, humorless laugh.
“No. You’re not a whore,” I say, cruelty tightening my mouth. “Whores are smarter. They get paid. You just spread your legs for delusional ideas and pitiful revenge plans.”
I give her a long, cold look, taking her in from head to toe, and the memories hit like a punch. Every time I touched her. Every moment I let myself want her.
“Every time I thought about being with you, all I felt was regret,” I say, my jaw tight. “But now? Now it’s pure disgust.”
I step closer. My voice drops.
“Don’t show up at my company again. Don’t call.
Don’t email. Don’t so much as breathe near anyone in my family.
If you do, having you blacklisted across the state, across the country, will look like mercy.
And that will be the least of your problems if you open your mouth about me, the company, or my family again. ”
She doesn’t move. She just stares, trembling, her hand resting over her stomach.
I turn and walk out without another word.
The sound of my own footsteps follows me down the hall, each one a reminder of my role in the destruction of my family.