Her Husband’s Secret Baby with Her Sister (Her Marriage in Crisis #86)

1. Amanda

— ? —

Amanda

The champagne flute feels like a prop in my hand.

I’ve been holding it for forty minutes without taking a sip. Room temperature by now. Flat. But I keep it there because it gives my fingers something to do besides shake.

Two hundred people fill the first floor of our home. Our home. The words still feel borrowed, even after three years. Crystal chandeliers cast everything in honey-gold light. Women in designer gowns cluster like exotic birds. Men in custom suits laugh too loudly at jokes that aren’t funny.

And I smile.

I smile until my cheeks ache.

“Amanda, darling, you’ve outdone yourself.” Celeste Montgomery air-kisses both my cheeks, leaving a ghost of Chanel No. 5 behind. “The orchids alone must have cost-”

“Julian wanted white,” I say. “Only white.”

“Well.” She glances around. “Where is the birthday boy?”

Good question.

“Mingling,” I say smoothly. “You know Julian.”

I don’t know where Julian is. I haven’t seen him in over an hour. But I’ve gotten very good at lying with a smile. Three years of practice.

The caterer needs approval on the second course. The string quartet wants to know if they should extend their set. A congressman’s wife corners me to discuss her daughter’s charity gala.

I handle it all.

This is what I’m good at. This is why he married me, really. Not for love. For logistics. I was his executive assistant for two years before I was his wife. I scheduled his life, anticipated his needs, made everything run like clockwork.

Now I do the same thing. Just with a ring on my finger.

Roman Vance stands near the bar.

Julian’s brother. The black sheep. The one who walked away from the family business and never looked back.

He’s watching me. He always watches me at these events - I’ve noticed it before, the way his gaze follows me across rooms. I’ve never known what to make of it. Never let myself think about it too carefully.

Tonight his eyes look worried.

I look away. I have a party to run.

“Have you seen my husband?” I ask Dell, Julian’s head of security, when I finally break free.

His jaw tightens. Almost imperceptible. “Not recently, Mrs. Vance.”

He’s lying. I’ve worked with Dell for five years. I know what his lying face looks like.

“Thank you,” I say.

I don’t push. I’ve learned not to push.

Vivienne was here earlier. I saw her in that red dress - the one that costs more than our childhood apartment’s monthly rent - laughing at something Julian whispered in her ear. His hand on her lower back. The same spot he touches on me when he wants to steer me somewhere.

My baby sister.

Twenty-seven and beautiful in a way I’ve never been. Effortless. Golden. The one our mother always looked at like she’d won something.

I don’t see her now either.

The thought crawls up my spine like ice water.

It’s not the first time I’ve noticed them together. Three months ago, I walked into Julian’s study and they sprang apart - too quickly, too guiltily. He said they were discussing her job search. Last month, I found her earring in our bathroom. She said she’d borrowed the shower after yoga.

I believed him. I believed her. I’m good at believing.

Stop it, I tell myself. You’re being paranoid. You’re looking for problems because the alternative - that your marriage is exactly as hollow as it feels - is worse.

But I’m already moving toward the east wing. Already climbing the marble staircase, my heels clicking against stone that cost more than my college education.

The second floor is quiet. Roped off from the party. Soft music drifts up from below, muffled by distance and closed doors.

Our bedroom is at the end of the hall.

The door is closed.

I shouldn’t be here. I should be downstairs, making sure Senator Whitmore’s wife has her dietary restrictions accommodated. I should be checking on the cake. I should be smiling, smiling, always smiling.

My hand is on the doorknob.

It turns.

I see his back first.

Julian’s shoulders, bare. The muscles shifting under his skin as he moves. The familiar birthmark below his left shoulder blade that I’ve traced with my fingers a hundred times.

He’s pressed against someone. Pressed into someone.

Red fabric pooled on the floor.

Vivienne’s red dress.

Her fingers digging into his back, nails painted the same crimson as her lips, leaving half-moon marks I’ll see later in my nightmares.

“Julian-” My voice is barely a whisper.

He doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t even slow down.

“Close the door,” he says without turning around. “We’re almost done.”

Almost done. Like I’ve interrupted him reviewing a contract.

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I’m frozen in the doorway of my own bedroom watching my husband with my sister, and he’s annoyed that I’m making him acknowledge it.

Vivienne turns her head. Looks right at me. And smiles.

“Mandy.” She says my name like a greeting. Like we’ve bumped into each other at the grocery store. “You could knock.”

Julian finally pulls back. Reaches for his shirt on the chair. He moves with the same unhurried precision he does everything with - buttoning each button while I stand there with my chest caving in.

“Julian, please-” I start.

“Please what?” He turns to face me, and there’s nothing in his eyes. No guilt. No shame. Nothing. “Did you need something, Amanda? I believe you have two hundred guests to attend to.”

“I - you-” The words won’t form. “In our bed. My sister. In our-”

“Your sister.” Julian’s mouth curves. Not quite a smile. “Interesting way to phrase it. Vivienne, sweetheart, would you say Amanda’s been much of a sister to you?”

Vivienne stretches on the bed. She doesn’t cover herself. She lets me look. Lets me see all the places he’s touched her, marked her, chosen her.

“Amanda’s been very useful,” Vivienne says. “She kept the seat warm.”

“I don’t - I don’t understand-”

“Of course you don’t.” Julian picks a piece of lint off his cuff. “You never understood the arrangement. You were a placeholder, Amanda. A competent assistant who happened to be available when I needed a wife on my arm. That’s all you were ever meant to be.”

The words hit me like physical blows. Placeholder. Competent. Available.

“Three years,” I whisper. “Three years of marriage-”

“Three years of you fetching my dry cleaning and planning my parties and pretending that made you my equal.” He finally looks at me - really looks at me - and what I see there makes my stomach turn. Contempt. Pure, undiluted contempt. “You were always the help, Amanda. You just forgot your place.”

“Oh, don’t be too hard on her.” Vivienne swings her legs off the bed, reaching for her dress with a lazy grace I’ve envied my whole life.

“She tried so hard. All those etiquette classes. The voice coach. The personal stylist.” She laughs, soft and cruel.

“You can take the girl out of the trailer park-”

“Stop.”

“-but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.

Mom always said that about you, remember?

You were the one who worked three jobs to help pay rent while I got to focus on school.

You were the one who learned to scrub and schedule and serve.

” She laughs again. “I got to be the pretty one. The one Mom protected from all that. And you got to be... useful.”

She steps closer.

“Right before Mom’s surgery, she looked at you in that wedding dress and she said, ‘Vivienne, make sure your sister doesn’t embarrass herself. She doesn’t know how to be anything but help.’”

“That’s not - Mom never said-”

“She said it to me.” Vivienne zips up her dress. The red dress that cost more than our childhood apartment. The red dress she wore to seduce my husband. “Because she knew. Everyone knew. You were never going to be enough for a man like Julian. You were just... practice.”

She crosses the room. Stops in front of me. She smells like sex and his cologne.

“I’m going to live in this house,” she says softly.

“I’m going to redecorate your bedroom. My children are going to grow up in your nursery - the one you designed, with the hand-painted mural and the antique crib.

And when they ask about Aunt Amanda, I’ll tell them...

” She tilts her head. “Actually, I won’t tell them anything.

Because no one’s going to remember you existed. ”

“Get out.” My voice shakes. “Get out of my house.”

“Your house?” Julian laughs. Actual laughter - bright and cold. “Nothing here is yours. Nothing here has ever been yours. The clothes on your back belong to me. The ring on your finger is mine. You came to me with nothing, Amanda, and that’s exactly what you’ll leave with.”

Something snaps.

I lunge for her - for him - I don’t even know anymore. I just need to hurt something, someone, I need-

Julian catches my wrist. His grip is crushing. His smile never wavers.

“Careful,” he says quietly. “Don’t give me a reason to have you committed.”

“Let go of me-”

“You’re going to walk downstairs. You’re going to smile. And you’re going to let security escort you off my property. Do you understand?”

“I’ll tell everyone-”

“Tell them what? That you walked into a room and imagined something that didn’t happen? That you had a psychotic break at your husband’s birthday party?” His grip tightens until I gasp. “Who do you think they’ll believe? The billionaire, or the assistant who got above herself?”

He walks me downstairs with his hand on the small of my back.

To anyone watching, it looks like tenderness. It looks like a concerned husband guiding his unwell wife.

“My poor darling hasn’t been sleeping,” he announces to the first cluster of guests we pass. His voice carries. He wants it to carry. “The stress of planning this party - I told her to delegate more, but she’s so determined to do everything herself.”

Sympathetic murmurs. Pitying glances.

“I found her upstairs crying,” he continues. “I think she just needs some air.”

I open my mouth to scream the truth, and his fingers dig into my spine hard enough to bruise.

“Don’t,” he breathes in my ear. “Unless you want me to tell them about the pills you’ve been taking. The ones you steal from my medicine cabinet. The ones that explain why you’ve been so paranoid, so delusional, so unfit to manage your own affairs.”

I don’t take pills. There are no pills.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll produce bottles with my fingerprints. Prescriptions from doctors I’ve never met. A paper trail that proves whatever he needs it to prove.

Dell appears at my elbow. The security team flanks us.

“Mrs. Vance isn’t feeling well,” Julian says loudly. “Please make sure she gets some fresh air.”

The room watches me go. The whispers start before I even reach the door.

Vivienne appears at the top of the staircase. She’s fixed her hair, touched up her lipstick. She looks down at me with a small, satisfied smile.

And mouths: Goodbye.

The November air slams into me like a wall.

Thirty-eight degrees. Silk dress. No coat, no phone, no purse. My keys are inside - somewhere - along with everything I own, everything I was, everything I thought I’d built.

“Your car, Mrs. Vance?” the valet asks.

I can’t speak. I shake my head. I need to move. I need to get away from the golden light and the music and the sound of my life ending to a jazz quartet.

The gravel driveway cuts into my feet - I’m still wearing the heels, the ridiculous four-inch stilettos with ankle straps that took ten minutes to buckle, designed to make me look elegant and keep me from running.

I’m running anyway.

The flashbulb catches me on the front steps.

A society photographer materializes from the darkness - there’s always someone watching outside Julian Vance’s parties - and his camera captures me mid-stumble. Mascara running. Dress askew. Wild-eyed and wrecked and utterly destroyed.

“Mrs. Vance! Amanda! Can you give us a comment?”

Flash. Flash. Flash.

The timestamp will read 10:47 PM. The photo will show a woman in a ruined gown and high, ankle-locking heels, fleeing her own home like a ghost.

I push past him. Past the gates. Past the property line.

Into the dark.

I walk. I don’t know for how long. The cold seeps through my silk dress and settles into my bones, and my ruined heels threaten to snap with every step, and I keep walking because stopping means feeling all of it at once.

Then headlights cut through the darkness behind me.

A battered black truck pulls to the curb. The window rolls down.

Roman Vance leans across the passenger seat, and his dark eyes find mine.

“Get in the truck, Amanda.”