3. Lucas
— ? —
Lucas
Three years.
I’ve watched Lily disappear for three years.
I remember the first time I saw her, really saw her, at Edward’s engagement announcement.
The Ritz ballroom, champagne towers and string quartets, Victoria holding court like the queen she imagined herself to be.
The cream of Manhattan’s elite, all there to witness the Burton golden boy claim his prize.
And there, standing slightly apart from the crowd, was a woman in a dress that didn’t fit right.
She’d borrowed it from a friend, I learned later. A friend who was two sizes smaller and three inches taller. The seams strained at her hips. The hem dragged on the floor. She kept tugging at the neckline like she wasn’t sure she deserved to be there.
But her smile.
God, her smile.
It was so bright it hurt to look at, full of hope and disbelief at her own luck. She looked at my brother like he’d hung the moon. Like she couldn’t believe someone like Edward Burton wanted someone like her.
I wanted to cross that room and tell her to run.
I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she understood.
Until she saw what I saw - the calculation behind Edward’s charm, the predatory gleam in Victoria’s approval, the way this whole engagement felt less like a love story and more like a transaction - a girl with no family to ask questions, handed over to a family that collected pretty, disposable things.
I wanted to pull her aside and explain that my brother collected beautiful things only to break them. That Victoria would spend the next decade dismantling her personality piece by piece.
That the warmth she thought she’d found was just the glow of a trap snapping shut around her throat.
I didn’t.
I told myself it wasn’t my place. Told myself she was an adult making her own choices. Told myself a lot of things that let me sleep at night while I watched her light go out.
Coward. That’s what I was. What I still am, maybe.
The first thing to go was the laughter.
Within six months of the wedding, I stopped hearing that bright, unguarded sound that used to fill any room she was in. The laugh that made strangers smile, that made me look up every single time just to see her face when she made it.
She learned to laugh the way Victoria approved of - soft, measured, never drawing attention. A society laugh. A nothing laugh. A laugh that said I know my place and please don’t notice me and I’ve forgotten what joy feels like.
I noticed.
Then the colors disappeared.
The bright blues and sunny yellows she wore when I first met her, traded for the beige-and-cream palette Victoria deemed “appropriate for a Burton wife.” I watched her closet transform into a mausoleum of muted tones.
Watched the woman who once wore a sunflower-yellow cardigan to a family brunch - and endured Victoria’s icy disapproval with cheerful obliviousness - learn to dress like a ghost.
I noticed that too.
Then her voice went quiet.
She stopped speaking unless spoken to. Stopped offering opinions.
Stopped being a person and started being a piece of furniture - decorative when necessary, invisible when not.
I’d watch her at family dinners, sitting perfectly still, perfectly silent, while conversation flowed around her like she wasn’t even there.
Sometimes I’d catch her eye across the table. Sometimes I’d see a flicker of something underneath the careful blankness - anger, maybe, or despair, or just exhaustion so profound it made my chest ache.
I never said anything.
I watched my brother treat her like an inconvenient accessory while running back to Elena every night.
Watched Victoria correct her posture, her speech, her very existence.
Watched the woman I’d glimpsed at that engagement party, the one with the crooked smile and the borrowed dress and all that impossible hope, vanish like morning fog burning off under a cruel sun.
I hated Edward for it.
I hated myself more for staying silent.
Tonight, at the gala, a mutual friend let something slip.
Bruce Holland, three glasses of champagne past discretion, mentioned seeing Edward at a school play last week.
“Cute kids,” he said, oblivious to the bomb he was dropping.
“Didn’t know your brother was so involved.
He was sitting right in the front row, introducing himself to other parents as Sophie’s father. ”
Sophie.
The daughter Lily doesn’t know exists.
I excused myself before I could put my fist through Bruce’s face. Found a quiet corner. Tried to breathe through the rage building in my chest like a pressure cooker about to blow.
Three years. Three years of lies. Three years of watching Lily shrink and fade while my brother played house with another woman, another family, another life she knew nothing about.
I couldn’t stomach it anymore.
So I came to the penthouse at 3 a.m., rehearsing a speech the whole way over. Practicing the words in my head like lines from a play I’d never auditioned for.
Lily, there’s something you need to know.
Lily, I should have told you this years ago.
Lily, my brother is a monster and I’m complicit and I’m so goddamn sorry.
I was going to tell her everything. About Elena. About the children. About the marriage that was never real - that was always just a convenient arrangement designed to give Edward a presentable wife while he lived his actual life somewhere else.
But she’s already holding the proof.
She looks up at me with devastation written across her face, and something in my chest cracks open.
The certificate is clutched in her hands like a lifeline.
Or maybe like evidence. Her face is pale, her eyes red-rimmed, and she’s still wearing that champagne gown from the gala - the one that made her look like moonlight, the one I couldn’t stop staring at all evening even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“Don’t.”
Her voice is glass, beautiful and sharp and ready to shatter into a thousand pieces. She holds up a hand when I step toward her, stopping me cold.
“Don’t you dare pity me.”
“I’m not here to pity you.” I keep my voice steady, though my heart is pounding hard enough to crack ribs. “I’m here because you deserve the truth, and my brother is too much of a coward to give it to you.”
“The truth.” She laughs, and it’s the most terrible sound I’ve ever heard. Like crystal breaking. Like hope dying. Like every horrible thing I’ve witnessed in this family condensed into a single, awful noise. “Right. Which truth would that be, Lucas?”
She takes a step toward me, and I realize she’s shaking. Not with fear, with fury.
“The truth about his real family? The truth about this?” She waves the certificate like a weapon, like evidence at a trial where she’s both the victim and the prosecutor. “The truth about whatever the hell my life has been for the past three years?”
“All of it.”
“All of it,” she repeats flatly. “Just like that. You show up at 3 a.m. and suddenly you’re ready to tell me all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Why now?” Her voice cracks on the question. “Why tonight? Why not a year ago? Two years ago? Why not before I wasted three years of my life on a man who never wanted me in the first place?”
The accusation hits like a physical blow. Because she’s right. She’s absolutely right, and I have no defense.
“Because I was a coward,” I say quietly. “Because I told myself it wasn’t my place. Because I watched you disappear and I hated myself for it, but I never hated myself enough to actually do something.”
Her eyes widen slightly. Whatever she expected me to say, it wasn’t that.
“Until tonight,” I continue. “Until I heard Bruce Holland talking about Sophie’s school play like it was common knowledge. Until I realized Edward wasn’t even bothering to hide it anymore. Until I understood that my silence made me complicit in every single lie he’s told you.”
“Sophie.” She says the name like it still tastes of betrayal. “I heard him say it on the phone tonight, right before I followed him home.”
“Sophie. James. And one on the way - though I think you already know that much.” I hate every word. “What you don’t know is that Elena’s been in the picture since before you existed in Edward’s world.”
I watch her process this. Watch the color drain from her face, then flood back in a rush of rage.
“Three children,” she whispers. “I stood on their porch tonight and screamed it at him.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
It’s not a question. The accusation in her voice makes me want to disappear.
“I knew.”
“Since when?”
“Since before the wedding.”
The silence that follows is devastating.
She stares at me like I’m a stranger. Like I’m worse than Edward, somehow, because at least Edward never pretended to be anything other than what he was. At least Edward’s cruelty was consistent.
“You knew,” she says again, slowly, like she’s trying to make the words make sense. “You knew my husband had another family. You knew my entire marriage was a lie. And you said nothing.”
“Lily-”
“For three years, Lucas. Three years of me thinking I was going crazy. Three years of wondering why he didn’t love me, why I wasn’t enough, why every time I tried to get close he pulled away. Three years of thinking there was something wrong with me.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and I feel something shatter inside my chest.
“There was never anything wrong with you.” I step closer despite her warning hand, despite the fury radiating off her like heat. “Do you understand me? There was never anything wrong with you. Edward is broken. Our whole family is broken. But you-”
“Don’t.” She backs away, shaking her head. “Don’t you dare try to comfort me right now. You don’t get to be the good guy in this story, Lucas. You stood there for three years and watched me drown.”
“I know.”
“You came to family dinners and made small talk while I sat there like a ghost, and you never said a word.”
“I know.”
“You watched Victoria tear me apart piece by piece, and you just-”