Chapter 20
“No… it… can’t… be…”
The phone slips from Seraphina’s fingers and hits the living room carpet with a muffled thud that barely manages to cut through the intense ringing invading her ears.
For a moment, she can only make out the reflection of the lights outside, in the garden.
Lights that bathe the room’s ivory walls in a cold, merciless glow.
The whole world seems to have shrunk to that frozen image in her mind: she and Nerissa walking along the walls of Chester, hands clasped beneath the glow of the old streetlamps, oblivious to the rest of the universe.
Elliot stands motionless in front of the window, his chest heaving with uneven breaths.
There is no trace left of the impeccable lawyer who smiles at dinner parties or the calm man who avoids raising his voice in front of the children.
Now he seems like a stranger, someone who has just discovered that his entire existence was built on a carefully crafted lie.
Seraphina tries to catch her breath, but her lungs refuse to cooperate. She feels a metallic taste building on her tongue as she stares at the enlarged photographs on the screen.
Everything she had experienced as something intimate, vulnerable, and deeply human has now been transformed into irrefutable evidence. Into ammunition ready to be fired. Into a public and merciless execution.
“Elliot…” Seraphina manages to murmur, though her own voice sounds foreign to her, as if it belonged to someone else. “I was going to tell you. I swear.”
He lets out a short, broken laugh that makes the hair on her arms stand on end, then runs his free hand over the back of his neck in a gesture laden with disbelief and pain.
“Tell me?” he repeats slowly, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time in his life.
“And when exactly were you planning to do that, Seraphina? After your face appears in every newspaper in the city tomorrow? After our children have to hear at school that their mother is having an affair with a surgeon from her own clinic while pretending everything is fine at home?”
Seraphina feels the ground seeming to open up beneath her feet.
“The children. Good God, the children.” The image of Oliver coming down the stairs in his school uniform, his hair still tousled, and Ivy falling asleep the night before, clinging to her arm, pierce her chest with a violence that takes her breath away.
Her whole body reacts with a delay: her hands begin to shake visibly, and her heart pounds against her ribs so hard that the pain becomes almost physical.
“I didn’t want it to happen like this,” she whispers. “I never wanted you to find out this horrible way.”
“Like this?” Elliot takes a step toward her, his shoulders tense and his jaw clenched. “Is there a right way to find out that your wife has been cheating on you for so long? Tell me, Seraphina, when would the ideal moment have been for you?”
She opens her mouth, but the words get stuck in her throat.
Any explanation she tries to offer sounds pathetic even inside her own head.
There are no longer any possible nuances when the evidence glows starkly on an eighty-inch screen in the middle of the family living room, where they’ve celebrated birthdays, Christmases, and moments that now seem fake.
Elliot picks up the phone from the floor and shoves it right under her nose, displaying another image that makes Seraphina’s heart freeze. He clenches his jaw so tightly that the muscle visibly trembles beneath his skin.
“How long have you been with her?” Elliot growls.
Seraphina closes her eyes for a second. She could lie, downplay it, try to soften the blow. But there’s nothing left to protect.
“Longer than I allowed myself to admit…”
Elliot looks away for a moment and runs a weary hand across his face. When he looks back at her, his eyes reflect something far worse than anger: a deep, heart-wrenching humiliation.
“Everyone has called me. Everyone. The chairman of the board, the general counsel, Premier’s major investors… Even Malcolm Reed from London, asking if it was true before the news hits Bloomberg tomorrow. Do you realize the magnitude of this?”
She feels the ice breaking inside her chest. “Damn Adrian.” The bastard has made his move too soon.
“The communications director has warned me that the Manchester Evening News already has the photos,” Elliot continues, his voice growing increasingly hoarse.
“There are reporters putting together a full story on ‘the sexual scandal behind the year’s most important healthcare merger.’ Do you understand what that means for us? ”
Seraphina looks down at the floor. Not because she doesn’t understand the consequences, but because she understands them all too well.
The merger is off. Investors will pull their capital immediately.
The stock will plummet as soon as the markets open.
The board will need a figurehead to save the company, and that figurehead will be her.
Nausea rises in her throat. Not because of the money or her career. But because of Nerissa. Because Adrian has exposed her too.
“This has nothing to do with work,” Seraphina says, trying to cling to a last shred of dignity. “A personal mistake shouldn’t affect the deal.”
Elliot looks at her with utter disbelief, almost horrified.
“Are you still speaking like the CFO?” he asks, deeply disappointed. “Are you really serious?”
Seraphina looks up at him and, for the first time since she entered the room, allows fear to show clearly on her face.
“I’m just thinking about everything that’s just blown to smithereens, Elliot. You, me, the kids… everything.”
“No,” he replies, shaking his head as he takes a few steps back. “You’ve been thinking only of her for months. Of that woman who’s taken the place I no longer had.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. The wall clock ticks away the seconds with cruel precision. Outside, the wind gently sways the branches of the trees in the perfectly manicured garden of the housing development. The normality of the house makes the disaster seem even more ruthless.
Elliot looks back at the photos on the screen and swallows hard.
“Are you in love with her?” her husband asks suddenly.
The question pierces Seraphina like a spear. There is no strategy left. She can no longer hide behind work fatigue, pressure, or a vague emotional crisis. Everything has been torn out by the roots.
She swallows hard.
“Yes,” she admits, and the word burns on her lips. “I love her.”
Elliot closes his eyes. The confession seems to hit him hard in the chest. When he opens them again, there are restrained tears glistening in them, but also a deep resentment that Seraphina had never seen directed at her before.
“So all this time…” Elliot murmurs bitterly, “while I was trying to fix our marriage, while I was taking you to hotels to reconnect, while I was looking for therapists and wondering what the hell I was doing wrong… you were already in love with someone else. How could you?”
Seraphina feels a thick pain rising in her throat, making it hard to breathe.
“I never meant to hurt you, Elliot. I promise. I tried to resist, but…”
“Well, you did,” he cuts her off flatly. “And in the worst possible way.”
The answer comes clean, irrefutable, and laden with pain.
Elliot walks over to the minibar and pours himself a whiskey.
The liquid spills over the rim of the glass and splashes onto the wood, but he doesn’t even notice.
He takes a long swallow and rests his hands on the counter, as if he needs to steady himself.
“Who else knows?” he asks without looking at her.
Seraphina takes too long to answer. She thinks of Maeve, of Nerissa’s brother, of Daphne. And, of course, of Adrian. Too many people. Too many eyes on something she thought was protected in the privacy of dimly lit rooms and messages she carefully deleted.
“I don’t know exactly,” she confesses. “But more people than I imagined.”
Elliot lets out another broken, bitter laugh.
“My God, Seraphina. How naive and stupid I’ve been.”
Seraphina feels the tears finally welling up in her eyes, but she forces herself to stay upright. She no longer has the right to break down before he does.
“I wanted to tell you,” she insists. “I’d decided it was time.”
“And would that have fixed anything?” Elliot retorts, turning toward her with reddened eyes. “Would it have erased the months of lies? Would it have restored our trust?”
Seraphina doesn’t answer. Because no, it wouldn’t have fixed anything. It would only have turned the destruction into her own decision rather than a public and humiliating explosion.
Elliot sets his glass down on the table and looks back at his phone.
“Her career is over, too.”
She brings a hand to her mouth, horrified. She can already picture the scene the next day; the image of Nerissa walking through a crowd of flashing cameras triggers a genuine, visceral panic in her.
“This was Adrian Beckett’s doing,” she blurts out suddenly, unable to hold it in any longer. “Your dear friend blackmailed me a few days ago.”
Elliot frowns and crosses his arms.
“What are you saying?”
Seraphina takes a deep breath. She feels exhausted, as if she hasn’t slept properly in weeks.
“He found out about Chester. He wanted me to rig the merger audit and then resign. He threatened to send you the photos if I didn’t cooperate. I tried to distance myself from Nerissa to protect you and the children, but… I’m sure he has some hidden plan.”
The confession comes out broken and full of regret. Now she understands the monstrous irony of what has happened: she destroyed the woman she loved to save a life that, in the end, has been ruined anyway.
Elliot slumps onto the sofa, as if he’s suddenly aged ten years. Then he rubs his eyes with his palms.
“I don’t know who you are right now,” he says, almost to himself. “The woman I married wouldn’t have done this.”
Seraphina looks around the living room: the family photographs on the mantelpiece, the piano Ivy started learning last year, the blankets neatly folded on the sofa. Everything she has tried to keep intact surrounds her. And yet, none of it has been enough to extinguish what she feels for Nerissa.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m truly sorry.”
Elliot looks up, and for the first time, contempt is clearly visible in his eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that. First thing tomorrow, the news will be on the front page of every newspaper in Manchester. You’ve destroyed the fifty-million-pound merger. You’ve destroyed our reputation, our family, our children’s future…”
His voice breaks completely.
“I hope that fucking surgeon was worth it.”
The verbal blow pierces her like a knife.
Seraphina feels the urge to defend Nerissa, to stop him from reducing her to an insult, but the words die in her throat.
Elliot has every right to hate her. He has just discovered the most brutal humiliation of his life.
And, in the darkest depths of her soul, she knows she would fall in love with Nerissa all over again, even if the price were exactly this.
But the worst comes a few minutes later.
First, a brief flash cuts through the living room windows. Then another. And yet another. Elliot slowly turns his head toward the front yard.
Several cars pull up beside the gated community’s fence.
Then comes another flash, illuminating the trees in the garden like a blinding, artificial bolt of lightning.
The press is already there. And Seraphina’s heart begins to pound so hard she can barely remain standing.
She instinctively moves toward the large window and makes out silhouettes moving behind the security gates, cameras being raised, and lenses pointed directly at the house.
Another flash bursts through the darkness. And another. The hunt has begun.
Behind her, Elliot stands motionless beside the sofa, completely devastated, his shoulders slumped and his gaze unfocused.
Seraphina remains frozen in the center of the living room, caught between two worlds, finally realizing that there is absolutely nothing left of the universe she spent years trying to hold together with her bare hands.
The weight of her decisions crushes her, and in that moment, as the flashes continue to illuminate the night, she can think only of Nerissa and the terrible price they will both pay for daring to love.