65
For one terrible second, Dorothy believed her.
Not completely.
Not rationally.
Not with the part of herself that knew Vanessa Werner's voice had always been most dangerous when it became soft.
Dorothy knew manipulation when it entered a room wearing silk.
She knew the careful arrangement of implication, the pause placed before a sentence so the listener could finish it with her own fear, the small laugh designed to make an accusation feel intimate rather than shouted.
Vanessa had built entire catastrophes out of suggestion.
She had taken a necklace, a fainting spell, a phone call, a hospital record, a pregnancy claim, a forged contract, and turned each into a weapon by understanding that people often feared what was implied more than what was said.
Dorothy knew all of that.
Still, when Vanessa said, Because he is with me, something inside Dorothy moved before reason could stop it.
A flash of heat. Sharp, humiliating, immediate.
Jealousy.
The recognition struck so quickly she almost missed the fear beneath it.
Not fear that Sebastian had chosen Vanessa, no.
Even in the shock of hearing Vanessa's voice through his phone, Dorothy did not believe Sebastian would move from standing beside her to standing with the woman who had tried to ruin her life, not willingly, not in any way that matched Vanessa's poisonous implication.
But jealousy did not always require belief.
Sometimes it required only a wound and an image.
Sebastian's phone in Vanessa's hand.
Vanessa saying his name without needing to.
Sebastian somewhere out of reach at the exact moment Dorothy had finally understood she missed him.
The cruelty was too precise to be accidental.
Dorothy stood in the side corridor of the conference hall, one hand gripping the phone, while applause rolled faintly through the closed doors behind her.
She could see her reflection in the tall window beside her, pale face, steady posture, eyes too bright.
From a distance, she looked composed. Up close, her fingers had gone white around the phone.
"Where is Sebastian?" Dorothy asked.
Her voice did not shake.
That, at least, she could still give herself.
Vanessa laughed again, softly enough that the sound seemed designed for Dorothy alone. "You sound tense."
"Where is he?"
"Do you care?"
The question entered with a needle's delicacy.
Dorothy closed her eyes for half a second.
Do not answer the trap.
That was what Hale would say. That was what Victor would order. That was what Sebastian himself might advise, with one brow lifted and some dry remark about never volunteering emotion to a woman who collected it like blackmail.
But Sebastian was not the one on the line.
Vanessa was.
And Dorothy, who had spent years pretending not to care because caring gave Vanessa more to cut, found herself violently tired of pretending in the wrong direction.
"Yes," Dorothy said.
The silence that followed was worth the admission and cost too much at the same time.
Vanessa had not expected honesty.
Dorothy heard the adjustment happen in that tiny pause, the way Vanessa recalculated when an old door did not open where she thought it would. Then her voice returned, sweeter.
"How interesting."
"Not for you."
"Oh, Dorothy." Vanessa sighed her name as if they were old friends discussing a disappointing man over tea. "Everything about you becomes interesting when you finally stop pretending you are above wanting."
Dorothy opened her eyes.
The reflection in the window looked back at her, cold and clear.
"I am not above wanting," she said. "I am above explaining it to you."
Vanessa's breath shifted. Irritation, quickly covered.
"You should be careful," she said. "Men like Sebastian Hood enjoy rescuing women until the rescue becomes inconvenient."
"Your advice on men has not recently performed well."
The words came quietly.
Vanessa's laugh sharpened. "Do you think that makes you clever?"
"No. Only accurate."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Vanessa lowered her voice. "He came to me."
Dorothy's pulse tightened despite herself.
There it was again. Not proof. Not detail. A sentence built with space inside it, large enough for imagination to enter and begin destroying furniture.
"Did he?" Dorothy asked.
"He wanted to know what else I had."
That, Dorothy believed.
And because she believed it, jealousy twisted into something uglier.
Sebastian was a strategist. He would confront a threat if he thought doing so might protect the partnership, the foundation, or Dorothy herself.
He might have gone to intercept Vanessa's next lie, especially after pulling back emotionally.
He might have decided action was safer than intimacy. None of that meant he had betrayed her.
But he had gone to Vanessa.
If Vanessa was telling the truth.
If Sebastian had not told Dorothy first.
If he had walked into the orbit of a woman who knew exactly how to poison every unexplained distance between them.
Dorothy hated the heat that rose in her chest.
She hated, more, the realization that Vanessa could still make her feel like the wife at the top of the staircase, listening to another woman call and wondering whether the man she loved would leave.
No.
Not again.
Dorothy's eyes hardened.
"Put Sebastian on the phone."
"He is occupied."
The answer was too pleased with itself.
Dorothy's grip tightened. "Then give him a message."
Vanessa hummed softly. "How formal."
"Tell him I called."
"Oh, he knows."
The jealousy flared again before Dorothy could discipline it.
Vanessa heard the silence and stepped into it with a smile in her voice. "You thought you were different from me."
Dorothy's breath slowed.
"You thought you were the dignified one," Vanessa continued.
"The wife who suffered prettily. The heiress who rose above. The woman who could take Sebastian Hood's hand in public and pretend that made you healed. But listen to yourself now. One phone call, one woman's voice, and suddenly you understand what it feels like."
Dorothy's stomach turned.
Not because Vanessa was right.
Because she was trying to make pain into equivalence.
Dorothy had been jealous, yes. She would not deny it to herself.
But jealousy was not the sin Vanessa wanted it to be.
Jealousy was a feeling. What a person did with it made the shape of them.
Dorothy had once been jealous and swallowed it until it became illness.
Vanessa had been jealous and turned other people's bodies, reputations, and grief into weapons.
They were not the same.
"You still think jealousy justifies harm," Dorothy said.
Vanessa went quiet.
"That is why you keep losing," Dorothy continued. "Not because you feel too much. Because you make your feelings everyone else's punishment."
The line hit.
Dorothy heard it in the sudden silence, the absence of breath, the tiny break in Vanessa's performance before fury moved to repair it.
"You have no idea what I have lost."
"No," Dorothy said. "But I know what you chose."
The call went still.
Then, from somewhere far away on Vanessa's end, there was a muffled sound. A door closing, perhaps. A man's voice, low and indistinct.
Dorothy's body reacted before she could understand.
Sebastian?
Vanessa returned, too quickly. "I have to go."
"Vanessa."
"Don't worry," she said. "I will take care of him."
The line ended.
Dorothy stood with the phone still pressed to her ear.
For several seconds, the silence after the call sounded louder than the conversation itself.
Then she lowered the phone slowly.
The corridor had not changed. The same window. The same polished wall. The same distant murmur of the forum continuing without her. But Dorothy felt as if the air had been rearranged around one fact she could not yet confirm: Vanessa had answered Sebastian's phone.
She knew it might be manipulation.
She knew Vanessa had wanted precisely this, to make jealousy rise at the worst possible moment, to infect Sebastian's distance with suspicion, to turn Dorothy's first vulnerable call into a wound.
She knew the correct response was to call Hale, preserve the call record, contact Sebastian's counsel, notify security, and refuse to give Vanessa the private emotional collapse she wanted.
Dorothy knew all of that.
Still, her thumb moved back to Sebastian's contact.
She called again.
This time, it went straight to voicemail.
The pain was embarrassingly immediate.
Not heartbreak. Not yet. Something more acute because it was mixed with humiliation. She had called after Trevor told her not to lose someone good. She had called because she missed Sebastian. She had called with her pride half lowered and her heart not ready but trying. And Vanessa had answered.
Dorothy closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Hale was walking quickly toward her from the end of the corridor.
His expression changed the moment he saw her face.
"What happened?"
She handed him the phone. "Vanessa answered Sebastian's phone."
Hale stopped.
For the first time that day, the lawyer's composure cracked into genuine alarm. "What did she say?"
"That he was with her."
Hale's jaw tightened. "Exact wording?"
"Because he is with me."
He swore softly.
Dorothy looked toward the conference hall doors, where applause began again for someone who had said something about consent and institutional trust. The irony was grotesque enough to be funny in a life less tired than hers.
"I need to find him," she said.
"I will contact his counsel."
"No."
Hale looked at her.
Dorothy took her phone back. "You can preserve the call and trace whatever needs tracing. But I am going to ask him myself."
"Dorothy."
She turned toward him.
Hale stopped.
Perhaps he saw that no legal strategy could answer the question that had just opened inside her.