4. Lily
— ? —
Lily
The hotel suite is warm in a way the penthouse never was.
I stand in the doorway, suddenly aware of how I must look.
My champagne dress is torn at the hem and streaked with God knows what.
My feet are bare and filthy - I lost my heels somewhere on Elena’s front walk.
My hair has fallen from its elegant updo into a tangled mess around my shoulders, and I can feel mascara dried in tracks down my cheeks.
I look like a woman who has lost everything.
Maybe I have.
Or maybe - and this thought is so foreign it feels like trying on someone else’s clothes - maybe I’m a woman who’s about to find it.
Lucas stands behind me in the doorway, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body. He hasn’t touched me since we left the penthouse, maintaining a careful distance that feels both respectful and maddening.
I shouldn’t want him to touch me. My marriage - my fake marriage, my elaborate lie of a marriage - ended approximately four hours ago. I should be focused on survival, on answers, on anything except the way Lucas’s jaw tightens when he looks at me.
I want him to touch me anyway.
Stop it, I tell myself firmly. Focus.
The woman who rises to greet us doesn’t seem to notice my dishevelment.
She’s seventy years old with silver hair twisted into an elegant chignon, wearing a burgundy suit that probably cost more than my wedding dress.
Her eyes - sharp, assessing, missing nothing - sweep over me with something that might be recognition.
Then her gaze moves to Lucas, and something flickers across her face. Surprise, maybe. Or calculation.
“Mr. Burton,” she says coolly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m not here as a Burton.” Lucas’s voice is steady, but I can hear the tension underneath. “I’m here for her.”
For her. Two words. They shouldn’t make my stomach flip. They do anyway.
“Interesting.” Mrs. Reid’s eyes move between us, cataloging, assessing. Whatever she sees makes her mouth curve slightly. “Well. This is certainly more complicated than I anticipated.”
“I can leave,” Lucas offers. “If you’d prefer to speak privately-”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intend. Both of them look at me, and I force myself to meet their gazes steadily. “He stays. He’s the only reason I’m here at all.”
Lucas’s jaw works once. His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there a beat too long before he drags them back up, and heat pools low in my belly.
Not now, I tell myself. Not now, not now, not now.
“Very well.” Mrs. Reid gestures toward a pair of velvet armchairs. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to collapse.”
She’s not wrong. My legs are shaking, my hands are trembling, and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears that might be shock or exhaustion or the sound of my entire reality crumbling around me.
I sink into the armchair. Lucas takes the one beside me - close enough that our knees almost touch, close enough that I can smell his cologne, something woodsy and expensive that cuts through the hotel’s generic floral scent.
I shouldn’t notice what he smells like. I notice anyway.
“How did you know?” My voice comes out rusty, unused. “About tonight. About what I’d find.”
“I didn’t.” Mrs. Reid settles across from us, pouring tea from a silver service like we’re having a civilized afternoon chat instead of a 4 a.m. crisis meeting.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for three months.
Letters returned, calls blocked, every attempt at contact intercepted before it could reach you. ”
“Three months?” I stare at her. “That’s not possible. I would have noticed-”
“Would you?” Her eyebrow arches delicately. “When’s the last time you checked your own mail? Answered your own phone? Made a single decision without your husband’s input?”
The words hit like a slap. Because she’s right. Because I can’t remember the last time I did any of those things. Because somewhere in the past three years, I stopped being a person and started being a shadow.
“I assumed your husband was involved when every avenue failed,” Mrs. Reid continues. “So I had someone watching you. I apologize for the invasion of privacy, but it seemed necessary given the circumstances.”
“You had someone watching me?”
“For your protection.” Her voice softens slightly. “When you followed Mr. Burton tonight and confronted them, then drove here at 3 a.m., I thought it was time to make direct contact.”
I feel Lucas shift beside me. When I glance over, his jaw is tight, his hands curled into fists on his thighs.
“You knew someone was watching her,” he says to Mrs. Reid. “You knew she was being controlled. And you waited three months to do anything about it?”
“I did everything I could within legal bounds.” Mrs. Reid’s voice sharpens. “Unlike some people in this room, I don’t have the luxury of ignoring the law when it’s inconvenient.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know exactly what the Burton family has been doing for the past three years, Mr. Burton. And I know exactly how complicit you’ve been in it.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Lucas’s face goes pale. I see the guilt flash across his features, raw and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen from any Burton, before he schools his expression back to neutral.
“You’re right,” he says quietly. “I was complicit. I stood by and watched while my family destroyed her. I have no excuse for that.”
“Lucas-” I start.
“No.” He turns to look at me, and the intensity in his eyes makes my breath catch. “She’s right. I don’t get to pretend I was powerless. I made choices. Bad ones. The only thing I can do now is try to make better ones.”
Something cracks open in my chest. Not forgiveness - not yet, maybe not ever - but something close to it. Understanding, maybe. Recognition of a fellow survivor.
Mrs. Reid watches this exchange with sharp eyes. Whatever she sees makes her nod slowly, like she’s recalculating something.
“Well,” she says finally. “Perhaps you’ll be more useful than I anticipated.”
“Who are you?” I ask, desperate to redirect this conversation before I do something stupid like reach for Lucas’s hand. “Why have you been trying to find me?”
“I was your grandmother’s attorney for forty years.
” She slides a folder across the table between us.
“Eleanor Maxwell. The name every hostess in this city has spent three decades failing to land on a guest list. Old money so old it doesn’t have to announce itself.
The kind that makes the Burtons look like people still trying to be invited. ”
I feel Lucas stiffen beside me.
“Maxwell?” he repeats. “As in Eleanor Maxwell?”
“You know the name.” It’s not a question.
“Everyone knows the name.” Lucas’s voice is strange. “The Maxwell fortune is one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard. Victoria has been trying to get into Eleanor Maxwell’s social circle for decades. She’s never succeeded.”
“Victoria wouldn’t.” Mrs. Reid’s smile is cold. “Eleanor has excellent taste in company.”
I’m not following this conversation. The words wash over me like water, meaningless and overwhelming.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t have a grandfather. I don’t have anyone. I grew up in foster care. My mother died when I was three, and there was no family to take me in.”
“That’s what you were told.” Mrs. Reid’s voice gentles, but her eyes remain sharp. “That’s what certain people wanted you to believe.”
She opens the folder and slides a photograph across the table.
A young woman stares back at me.
Dark hair, bright eyes, a smile that’s achingly familiar because I see it every time I look in a mirror. She’s wearing a sundress - yellow, with white flowers - and she’s standing on a beach somewhere, laughing at whoever is behind the camera.
My throat closes up.
“Who is this?” I whisper, even though I already know.
“Your mother.” Mrs. Reid’s voice is soft.
“Catherine Maxwell. Harold and Eleanor’s daughter, born in secret and given up as an infant to keep her safe from the people circling the Maxwell fortune.
Harold meant to bring her home when it was safe; instead she grew up a stranger to her own name.
He did it for her protection. But he never forgot her. ”
I pick up the photograph with trembling hands. My mother. Not the faded, sad-eyed woman I barely remember from my earliest years - this woman is vibrant. Alive. Happy.
“She looks...” I can’t finish the sentence.
“She looks like you,” Lucas says quietly. “The smile. The way she holds her head. It’s exactly the same.”
I turn to look at him, startled that he noticed. That he paid attention to something so small.
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. Something soft underneath the sharp edges. Something that makes my heart stutter in a way that has nothing to do with the photograph in my hands.
Stop, I tell myself. Focus on what matters.
But he matters. That’s the problem. He shouldn’t, but he does.
“My mother never told me any of this,” I say, forcing my attention back to Mrs. Reid.
“She didn’t know herself until near the end.
Harold was working to bring her into the fold, to publicly acknowledge her and give her the inheritance she deserved.
But before he could complete the legal process...
” Mrs. Reid pauses, and I see genuine sorrow in her eyes.
“There was a car accident. She was only thirty-two. You were three years old.”
The floor tilts beneath me.
My mother - the woman who scraped by on waitressing jobs and second-hand clothes, who died in a drunk driver’s car thinking she had no family in the world - had been an heiress all along.
“Why didn’t anyone find me after she died?”