CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
T HE TROUBLE WAS my daily life didn’t change after that last time. I went to work. I went home. I went out for drinks with Sarah. I called my mother and listened to her talk about the party she was putting together. She complained that my half brother Rocco wouldn’t come with his new wife. She wanted him to add some class to the place.
I laughed.
My mum was often hilariously self-aware. It was no mystery why she’d managed to wrap so many men around her finger. While the press printed truths about her, they were half-truths. No one would believe she was funny, clever and very dry, because the press made her out to be nothing more than a vacuous socialite. She was a vacuous socialite. She was just also funny, clever and dry.
All of this, though, made it so hard for me to remember some days that my life had changed forever two weeks earlier.
I’d ended things with him.
We weren’t between assignations. We were done.
I would forget sometimes. Then news about his wedding would be on my home page. Jessica Lane was apparently a very popular social media girlie. Which meant every choice she made, from venue to dress to stemware was much discussed.
I hated her.
It wasn’t fair.
It was bad feminism.
I didn’t care. But I didn’t care in the privacy of my own head. Because the consequence of carrying on a secret affair for ten years was that the heartbreak was also secret. My own private hell. Just for me. Hooray.
Maybe what made me hate her most was that she got to be online in ruffles and pastels, with pink lipstick and softness. She got to be feminine and soft in a way I never felt I was allowed to be. When I was with Hades we weren’t pastel. We were bold. Vivid. Sharp. Painful.
Maybe he’d needed soft.
I was so tired of myself.
I flew to Houston for another NASA meeting. Then I went to Cape Canaveral for the next. I didn’t see him there. I’d made sure I wouldn’t.
I went back to my hotel room after the meetings and stretched across the white bedspread with my arms out like I was making a miserable snow angel.
I went back and dived into work like it was my salvation.
He won the contract.
I watched his live stream about it in spite of myself, and then I took my phone and threw it so hard across the room that it cracked against the marble kitchen countertop.
I sat on the floor with my head in my hands, and for the first time I really contemplated the concept of failure.
Clare Heir Can’t Hack It.
Florence Clare, Discarded by Hades Achelleos and NASA in the Same Month!
I could only give thanks the press couldn’t actually write that headline. First of all, because no one knew about Hades and myself, and second of all because I’d discarded him.
It changes nothing...
How dare he?
I decided I needed a break. I called Sarah. “Do you want to work remotely for a few weeks?”
“Where?”
“Lake Como?”
Sarah laughed. “Are you kidding?”
“No. I’m not kidding. My mother has a house there.”
“Well, yes, that would be amazing. You...you want to go stay with your mother?”
I did. Which was weird. I loved my mother, but I loved her with a bit of distance. The idea of being swept up into her sphere felt... It felt like a potential rescue.
Knowing Mom, there would be oiled-up men running around anyway. If I wanted to have a revenge lay, I could certainly find one. That made me feel ghastly.
“She’s having a party. It will be fun. Also her house is so big it’s more like staying in the same town than the same residence. We won’t even see her every day.”
I hadn’t asked her yet, but as soon as Sarah agreed, I called.
“Mom, would you mind if a friend and I came to stay for a while?”
“Ooh, a friend, Flo?”
I grimaced. “No. Not like that. She is my actual friend.”
It made me think of Hades. We’d never been friends.
I stared out my apartment windows, down at all the lights below. I couldn’t remember why I loved the city.
I didn’t tell my mother I’d lost the contract—she wouldn’t have any idea I’d been competing for one. She saw the success of the company, that I had status, and that was really—not all she cared about—but it spoke of success to her so the details didn’t matter.
The next day I overpacked everything floaty and feminine that I owned. I packed makeup I never wore and face creams I forgot to apply, and Sarah and I took the private corporate jet to Italy.
The flight attendant offered champagne but I didn’t have the stomach for it. I didn’t have the stomach for much of anything.
“It’s all going to work out,” Sarah said, gently as we descended.
“I don’t see how.”
I said that before I realized she meant for the company. After not getting the contract. Because she didn’t know about Hades.
Both felt equally hopeless to me.
“What if it doesn’t?” I asked. “I always thought it would if I just figured out how to be enough. But I haven’t.”
“It was one contract, Florence. It isn’t the end of anything. You didn’t need it to keep the company financially solvent.”
“It feels like the end,” I said.
I couldn’t explain it. Not because I didn’t have the words. Because I genuinely couldn’t explain it.
I was temporarily distracted from my misery by the beauty of Lake Como. Apparently even in the depths of this...this despair that was entirely foreign to me, I could still pause to appreciate the beauty of Italy. I was glad of that. Maybe I wasn’t going to need to see a therapist after all.
It shouldn’t be like this. The end of whatever we had.
It was the contract on top of it. I knew that. Perhaps, it was even the bigger issue. It had to be. Because I was acting like my heart had been broken by someone I was in love with. I had been foolish in a whole lot of different ways when it came to Hades. But I wasn’t that foolish.
My mother’s house on the lake was gorgeous. The crowning achievement of one of her divorces.
She often said that, then laughed and said she supposed she would actually have to give that title to Rocco. He was her son, after all.
The house was a stunning yellow, with broad stone decks that extended out from the hill where it sat nestled over the lake.
When we arrived, my mother sent staff. She was on her way out to dinner and too busy to chat overmuch. She floated through like a butterfly, kissed my cheek and met Sarah enthusiastically. Then she was gone.
Her staff graciously allowed Sarah and I to take over a quadrant at one end of the house, and we were able to establish office space as well as our own bedrooms. I kept all of my focus on the company’s internal network. I did not look at the broader internet. I refused to check any progress on Hades’ upcoming wedding. I told myself that I definitely didn’t know how many days away it was every time I woke up.
But I also did my best to ignore how increasingly tired and awful I felt every morning.
Because it felt like a weakness.
Not only had I failed, but I was allowing that failure to change me.
We were sitting out on the terrace one glorious morning, with a massive spread of food in front of us, jams and cream, croissants. Espresso, lattes and sipping chocolate. Cured meats, a selection of cheeses and olives. Because my mother did not care what time of day it was. It was always time for a charcuterie in her opinion.
One of the things I enjoyed about her.
“You seem heartbroken,” she said, leaning back in her chair, wearing large sunglasses that covered half of her face.
Sarah had taken an instant liking to my mother, which was handy. Though I think my mother interpreted Sarah’s desire to speak with her as frequently as possible as admiration, and I suspected Sarah was fascinated by her, like a specimen she was examining for research purposes.
Which was fair enough. My mother was eminently examinable.
“It’s the contract,” Sarah said. “Florence loves the company more than she loves anything.”
“Flo needs to get more of a personal life,” my mother said.
“Florence is sitting right here,” I said. “Why did you name me Florence if you insist on shortening it.”
“Your father named you,” she said. “I wanted to name you Trixie.”
Well. Then I never would’ve been CEO.
“It’s the contract,” I said.
My mother lowered her sunglasses. She was supernaturally smooth, her lips extending beyond the boundary of their natural line thanks to years of fillers. She was a beautiful woman, my mother, though natural beauty was not, and had never been, her priority. She made me feel dull. I could tell myself that I found her to be gaudy and over-the-top, but it didn’t change the fact that next to her I felt like a pale, less vibrant photocopy.
“No,” my mother said. “It is not the contract.”
“It is,” I insisted, standing up and grabbing a plate, determined to fill it. Determined to stop acting like I was heartbroken, because it was stupid.
Hades’ wedding was tomorrow. That was just fine, and I wasn’t thinking about it, because I wasn’t looking at the news.
Just then, one of my mother’s staff came out with a tray of pastries to add to the collection, along with a stack of newspapers.
I reached out and grabbed a piece of cheese off my plate and bit into it. Just as my mother grabbed hold of the newspaper and set it down on the table. And there it was. Front-page news on her favorite scandal sheet.
Achelleos Nuptials More Expensive Than Two Royal Weddings Combined!
Just then, the cheese that I was attempting to swallow decided it wasn’t going down without a fight. My stomach lurched, and I ran from the balcony, stumbling into the nearest bathroom—thankfully they were all over the house—and found myself falling to my knees in front of the actual gold toilet. Where I did indeed lose the battle with the cheese.
I sat there for a moment, completely humiliated.
Hopefully no one had guessed what had made me react that way.
Maybe I could claim exhaustion. Overwork. A stomach bug.
Anything other than a headline about my supposed enemy’s wedding.
I stood up and splashed water on my face before walking back out to the terrace, trying to look like I was fine. I was not fine.
Sarah looked worried. My mother had a small smile on her face.
“Oh, finally, Flo. I can see that you’re my daughter.”
“What?”
“You’re like me after all!”
“In what way? Lactose intolerant?”
She laughed. “No. You’ve made a bad decision, haven’t you?”
If only it was one bad decision. If only. It was so many bad decisions so many different times over the course of so many years. And I had convinced myself that by partitioning them off, separating them into a different part of my life, that I wouldn’t be affected by them. Not seriously.
I had been in denial all this time.
Because the decisions that I had made in private could no longer be contained behind the door.
They were bursting through into the regular part of my life, and it was just so terrible.
“I’m just not very well.”
“You’re not pregnant?”
I froze.
“No,” I said.
Sarah was staring at me now, and it wasn’t concern on her face exclusively anymore. It was curiosity.
“I can’t be pregnant,” I said.
“Like you don’t think you’re pregnant? Or you can’t be pregnant,” Sarah asked. “Because those are two different things.”
“It’s...”
I was beginning to feel dizzy again. I closed my eyes.
“I can’t be ,” I said.
Because there was nothing worse, nothing worse in the entire world that I could think of happening at this moment.
But I couldn’t ignore the evidence that was flooding into my mind now. Very logical things that I had been ignoring for a good long while.
My period was late.
I was exhausted.
I was emotional.
I was nauseous in the morning.
I had just vomited up a piece of cheese like it was poison.
Most damning of all, I knew full well that we had not used protection in his office. I had wanted to think about it, I had wanted to acknowledge it. The entire encounter had been so painful that I hadn’t wanted to play it over in my head. But I knew that he hadn’t used a condom. I hadn’t been aware of it so much right at the time. I wouldn’t have remembered it then if a giant neon sign had flashed on reminding me to have safe sex. Later, when I’d started to try and gather myself again at home, it had become apparent to me.
But I pushed it to the side. Like I had pushed all of it to the side.
He and I were usually so careful. We couldn’t afford to be anything else.
But we hadn’t been careful that day. We had been dangerous.
“Oh, Florence,” said Sarah, wincing. “You are pregnant, aren’t you?”
“Is he rich?” This was of course my mother’s first question.
That snapped me out of my momentary catatonia.
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “ I’m already rich.”
“So was I,” said my mother, waving her hand. “I wasn’t estate in Lake Como rich, though. And now I am.”
“Money is not my concern,” I said.
I sat there for a long moment. And I tried to decide what I was going to do.
There was no use denying it, not to myself or anyone. As much as I wanted to.
It wasn’t only my mum and Sarah I had to face. It wasn’t only the board of the company and the public.
If I appeared suddenly, pregnant, he was going to know. Unless he could somehow be convinced that it was a rebound... Unless I could make him believe that I’d always had other lovers, and maybe I didn’t even know who the baby belonged to. He wouldn’t believe it. That was the problem. On some level, I was convinced that he had always known the degree to which he had me ensnared.
Also, he would be well aware at this point that he hadn’t used a condom with me. The timing would be far too coincidental, he would make inquiries and demands about it. He was that sort of man.
But I couldn’t wait until after he was married.
I really was trying to not care about his fiancée. After I had embraced my own selfishness, after I had decided to make love with him one last time, I thought it seemed a little bit hypocritical. But she should know. Before she married him, she needed to know that he was expecting a baby with another woman.
It was entirely possible Hades would want nothing to do with the child. Except...
I thought of the way he looked whenever the subject of his father came up. I thought of the way it affected him. And somehow, I knew the subject of children would be a thorny one, but also one he would not shy away from, because he was not a man to shy away from anything.
I couldn’t hide it. Eventually, the media would find out, and they would take control of the story. We had a very short space of time where we could control the narrative. If he wanted to give up parental rights, to give up any claim on the baby, then I could simply say that it was artificial insemination and I had chosen to have a baby by myself.
That would be a great story. One that would make me sound like I was taking control of my life.
I did not let myself think about what a baby that belonged to both me and Hades would look like. I didn’t let myself imagine a little boy with his dark eyes or little girl with glossy black hair.
No. I couldn’t be sentimental about this. There was no sentiment. He was marrying somebody else. He didn’t care about me. But everything would have to be entirely clear, entirely out in the open between us before it became public fodder.
That much I knew.
“I have to go. Right now.”
“Why?” Sarah asked. “You could see a doctor, you could get a test...”
“We’ll get one when we get back to New York. We don’t have any time to waste.”
“Why?” Sarah asked.
“Because we have to get there before the wedding.”