11. Adriana #2
The next member shakes my hand with a nod and the other offers a card, saying he’ll be in touch about the spring portfolio. The way he says it tells me he’s already made his bet.
William doesn’t shake anyone’s hand. He gathers his papers with the mechanical precision of a man holding himself together by the thinnest margin, and when the last board member clears the doorway, he crosses the room in three strides and slams the door so hard the partition glass rattles.
The sound echoes down the hallway. Nobody flinches but everyone hears.
Oh, it’s a lovely day today.
I gather my own things slowly, letting the room settle back to quiet. My bag on my shoulder, my coat over my arm, the emerald catching the overhead light as I button my collar.
The elevator carries me down from the executive floor and the doors open onto the lobby. My hands are still buzzing from the boardroom, the adrenaline running its course through my fingers as I cross the marble toward the front doors.
A few staff members linger at the security desk, the receptionist from earlier pretending to sort mail, two associates waiting for the other elevator. The ordinary end-of-meeting foot traffic.
Behind me, the elevator chimes again. Heels on the marble, moving fast. Too fast for casual.
“Please… Adriana, wait.”
Blythe’s voice rings across the lobby, trembling. Pitched high, pitched for every person in this room to hear the wounded girl chasing down the woman who just hurt her.
Well, here she goes as expected.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me.
” She’s crossing the floor with her hand pressed to her stomach, protective, her eyes already glistening.
“I’ve never done anything to you. You were my mentor, you were the person I looked up to more than anyone, and now you’re trying to destroy me in front of…
” Her voice breaks on cue. “In front of everyone.”
The lobby watches. A woman at the security desk puts her hand over her heart. One of the associates looks at me with the beginning of judgment forming on his face.
This is what she came down here for. The audience.
The narrative of the cruel, privileged wife publicly savaging the vulnerable pregnant woman.
The same play William made at the gala, the same victim construction, and if I match her volume, if I react, she wins the room the way he won it that night.
So I stop. And I turn. I wait for her to close the distance.
She stops three feet from me, her face a portrait of hurt.
Then the distance between us swallows the audience, and her face changes.
The tears stay wet on her cheeks but the mouth beneath them goes flat as the trembling stops. The hand on her stomach stays for show, but the eyes that find mine are dry underneath the shine, and the voice that comes out next is pitched for me alone.
“You walk in there and play queen in front of the whole board.” Low, steady without a trace of the quiver she wore three seconds ago. “But you’re a fraud. You were simply lucky to be born into all of this, Adriana. You didn’t earn a thing.”
At this point, I am no longer surprised seeing who she is behind the mask.
“And now you want to stand here and act like you’re better than me?
” Her jaw is set, the whisper carrying venom the tears never did.
“You couldn’t even keep your own husband.
A real wife holds her home together. A real wife doesn’t drive her man away because she’s too cold to love him properly. You had it coming. Every bit of it.”
Anyone watching from across the lobby sees a tearful woman speaking quietly to the person who upset her, sympathetic from a distance. The performance still running on the outside while the real conversation happens underneath.
I step closer. Close enough that what I say stays between us, and anyone watching only sees a woman speaking gently to someone who’s upset.
“And who does deserve it, Blythe? You?”
The practiced hurt falters and I almost chuckle. Up close, the two-faced act can’t hold.
“The sad part is I genuinely wanted us to be fine.” I hold her eyes. “Even after everything, some part of me still hoped there was a version of you worth keeping.”
Her mouth tightens. The performance tears have stopped falling.
“I would have been the best friend you ever had. Instead, you made me your worst enemy. That’s a lesson you’re about to learn.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” Through her teeth, the victim act abandoned.
“You should be.” I take another half-step in. “Because this whole routine, the crying, the wounded girl who just wants everyone to see how mean I am… You’re good at it. I’ll give you that. You’ve almost convinced yourself. But it’s getting old.”
Her jaw works. The wet eyes have dried to a glare.
“And you can’t be me, Blythe. That’s the part you haven’t figured out.
” My voice stays low, private, just us. “You can wear my husband’s ring, sit in my chair, walk through my building in the shoes I helped you buy, and you will still be a copy.
The original is standing right in front of you, and a cheap imitation doesn’t get to replace the real thing. It never has.”
Her chest rises on a breath she can’t quite steady.
“You’re in over your head in this fight. You want what I have but you don’t have the skill to hold it. You never did. You just had my kindness, and you mistook it for weakness.” I tilt my head, studying her. “That was your first mistake.”
She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. The composure she wore into this lobby is gone, both versions of it, the fake tears and the real fury, peeled back to the raw thing underneath.
“Here’s the truth you can take home with you.” I straighten up. “You can’t take what’s mine. But it wouldn’t take much for me to take everything you’ve ever wanted.” I let that land. “And I wouldn’t even have to try.”
Her eyes search my face for a crack, a flinch, anything. She finds nothing.
“If you want to enter my world, Blythe.” My voice drops to the quietest register I own. “Learn your place in it.”
I turn my back on her and walk toward the front doors. My heels on the marble, steady, unhurried, the rhythm of a woman who just ended a conversation and doesn’t need to look back to know she won it.
The glass doors swing open ahead of me into the late afternoon sun.
At the bottom of the steps, a car sits at the curb. The kind that makes people slow down. Leaning against it, aviators on and arms crossed, looking for all the world as if he’s been there for hours and enjoying every second of it, is Knox Beaufort.
A cluster of women from the building have already found reasons to linger. Knox hasn’t noticed, or he has and doesn’t care.
He spots me coming down the steps and pulls the glasses off. The grin arrives, warm and unhurried, aimed entirely at me.
“Productive afternoon, babe?” He pushes off the car, aviators dangling from two fingers, the grin already in place. “Make anyone cry yet?”
“Not yet.” I come down the last step and the grin I give him back is real, still warm from the boardroom. “Getting there.”
“That’s my girl.” He holds out a bouquet.
Violets. Because he remembered, and he pays attention. The quietly devastating thing about Knox Beaufort that nobody warns you about.
My eyebrows lift. “You bought me flowers?”
“Don’t read into it.” His grin widens. “Just wanted to give you a little extra motivation. In case the hostile takeover wasn’t enough for one afternoon.”
“You’re ridiculous.” But I’m laughing as I take them, and the scent reaches me. Soft and clean, as the laugh loosens a thing in my chest that’s been wound tight since the elevator. “Thank you, Knox.”
“Anytime, Rosewood.”
I step into him. My free hand presses flat against his chest, the violets held off to the side in the other, and I tip my chin up to find his eyes.
His hand finds my waist on instinct, fingers spreading across the small of my back, drawing me in until my body fits against his and the grin on his face softens.
Around us, the sidewalk notices. A woman from the building nudges the one beside her. Two men passing on the pavement slow their stride. A low murmur of giggles and whispers ripples through the cluster of women who’ve been finding reasons to linger since Knox parked at the curb.
He leans down. His mouth stops an inch from my ear.
“Gotta say, Rosewood.” His mouth hovers near my ear, voice dropping to the register that’s just for me. “Your confidence is a serious turn-on.”
My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down that last inch. “Then come here and prove it.”
His eyes darken. The hand at my waist tightens.
We lean in at the same time and his mouth meets mine.
A gasp goes up from the cluster on the steps, and then the sidewalk falls away. His hand slides up my back, pulling me closer, and I let him. My fingers move from his chest to his jaw, holding him there as our kiss deepens.
His mouth is warm and unhurried, and the feel of it unwinds every coiled nerve the afternoon left behind. My chest opens and my shoulders drop. His thumb traces a slow line along my jaw and I melt into it in a way I didn’t know I was capable of on a public sidewalk.
For a few seconds the only thing in the world is his mouth and his hands.
Then I shift against him, just enough, my face turning a fraction without breaking the kiss.
And through the glass doors of the lobby, twenty feet away, I find her.
Blythe.
Pressed close to the glass. Her face stripped of every performance, every mask, every version of the girl she built to fool me. Her hand at her throat, fingers closing around the place where the scarf used to sit and finding nothing.
My lips curve against Knox’s mouth. A smile she can see from twenty feet away through a pane of glass. My eyes hold hers, steady, unblinking, and I don’t look away.
His hand tightens at my waist. His mouth moves to the corner of mine, trailing warmth across my skin, and I let the smile widen as Blythe watches.
You wanted my life, Blythe. Take a good look at it.