Chapter 2
Chapter Two
SEBASTIAN
I stand beneath the lit archway of Starlight Court with camera flashes breaking over my face, Katrina Haviland angled at my side, and my mother somewhere to the left directing humanity with a smile sharp enough to cut ribbon. The headline glows on my screen.
Austen Parks Opens the Gates to Its Most Dazzling Era Yet.
Dazzling. Era. Yet.
For once, no one has used legacy like a weight around my neck.
I lock the phone and slide it back into my pocket before anyone sees me looking.
The night is moving exactly as it needs to move.
The press is here in force. The donors are pleased.
The first social numbers are already obscene.
Starlight Court looks expensive, immersive, impossible to dismiss.
Every lantern, every reflection pool, every hidden speaker, scent system, and theatrical cue has done what I paid too much money and lost too much sleep to make it do. It feels alive.
That shouldn't matter to me as much as it does, but it does.
My father built wonder out of pavement, paint, and frightening amounts of borrowed money.
I've spent the last eighteen months trying to prove I can build it without him standing behind me, one hand on my shoulder, pretending I'm already the man everyone else expects me to become.
Tonight, for the first time in longer than I care to admit, the ground under my feet feels solid.
“Sebastian,” a photographer calls. “One more with Katrina looking up toward you. Perfect. Hold there.”
Katrina shifts closer before I can answer.
She's practiced at this in a way most people aren't. There's nothing clumsy in how she moves, no hesitation, no search for where the light might be.
She finds it as if it belongs to her. Her hand lands lightly at the front of my jacket, not gripping, just resting.
Her shoulder leans into my arm. The intimacy of it registers a half second too late.
I keep my expression steady.
A man learns certain things when cameras become part of his life.
Don't flinch. Don't pull away abruptly. Don't give a room full of photographers the movement they're hungry enough to turn into a question.
Katrina is the face of the campaign. I signed the contract.
I approved the marketing strategy. I sat in the meeting where three separate people explained that her audience needed access, warmth, and chemistry with the brand.
Still, her closeness isn't nothing. I'm aware of it. I'm also aware that if I step back, tomorrow’s headline becomes Austen Heir Snubs Starlight Court Star at Opening instead of whatever glowing nonsense we're currently buying with champagne and stage lighting.
Katrina tilts her face toward mine. Her smile stays camera-ready, but her voice drops just enough that it feels personal. “You make this whole enterprise look easy.”
That surprises a laugh out of me. Not the polished one.
Not the one I give when a donor tells me a joke I've heard in four different boardrooms. A real laugh, low and tired, because for a moment the absurdity of it is too much.
Easy. I've spent months negotiating contracts at midnight, arguing over safety clearances before dawn, calming shareholders who wanted results without risk, and keeping my mother from turning every creative meeting into a coronation pageant for herself.
“Hell on wheels,” I say, looking down at her. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
The flashbulbs go rabid. Katrina’s smile widens, and I realize, too late, that the cameras have caught exactly what they wanted: her tucked near my side, me smiling down at her as if the entire night exists for my private amusement.
For a second, I think of Chloe. The thought is immediate and clean, a little break in the noise.
I look beyond the photographers toward the front of the press area, where she was standing earlier in silver.
The dress caught the light beautifully. I remember noticing that, then losing her to a cluster of donors, then to the movement of the event itself.
I told myself I'd find her properly once the main photographs were done.
She's not there now.
My gaze moves over familiar faces. Board members.
Sponsors. Park executives. My mother near the reflecting pool, speaking to a reporter with one hand poised against her pearls.
Katrina’s team gathered near the stage. A knot of media personalities holding champagne flutes they aren't drinking. No Chloe.
I tell myself she's somewhere quieter. Chloe has always known how to find the back edge of a room when it gets too loud.
It's one of the things I loved first, before I understood I loved her at all.
As Princess Tessa, she could hold a crowd of children in the palm of her hand, but when the performance ended, she'd slip into the staff corridor, kick off her shoes, and sit on the floor with a bottle of water like the kingdom could wait.
A producer waves at me from the terrace. “Sebastian, we’re moving to the donor walkthrough.”
“In a minute,” I say. He looks as if the minute might injure him.
I step behind a marble column wound in flowering vines, enough cover to take out my phone without becoming a photograph.
My messages are worse than usual. Operations.
Oliver. Two board members using too many exclamation points.
My mother, somehow texting instructions while standing thirty feet away from me.
I open Chloe’s thread.
Me:
Where did you go?
The answer takes longer than I like.
Chloe:
Home.
Me:
Are you sick?
The three dots appear, vanish, and appear again.
Chloe:
No.
I stare at the word. That word can mean anything.
That can mean she had a headache. It can mean too much champagne, though Chloe barely drank.
It can mean she's tired, which would be fair.
She's had to endure weeks of opening chaos, and tonight has been all noise, light, and strangers saying her name with the polished familiarity of people who don't know her.
It can also mean I missed something. I glance toward my mother.
Janine is laughing softly with a journalist, chin lifted, posture immaculate. She looks pleased. Of course she does. Tonight is going well, and when things go well for the family, she behaves as if she personally invented oxygen.
Still, I think of Chloe’s face earlier by the column. The way she said my mother kept moving her. The way I answered too quickly.
That’s not what this is. The words return with a sour edge.
I meant them when I said them. My mother has been arranging press angles since I was old enough to ruin one by blinking.
She fusses. She positions. She edits rooms in real time because she believes image isn't decoration, but infrastructure.
But Chloe had looked at me as if I'd shut a door.
A second message comes in.
Chloe:
When will you be home?
I check the time. 10:38. The major press pieces are done.
The walkthrough has another hour if people behave, which they won't. The donor dinner has dessert still sitting untouched. Katrina’s team wants one last photo set near the hotel wing, but Oliver can handle most of that.
My mother will object, but my mother can survive disappointment.
She's been practicing on other people for years.
Me:
Before midnight. I promise.
I add the rest before I can think better of it.
Me:
We’ll talk then. I love you.
The dots don't appear for several seconds. When they do, the only answer is:
Chloe:
Okay.
I slide the phone away, dissatisfied in a way I don't have time to examine.
“Trouble?” my mother asks.
I turn. She's approached soundlessly, which is a habit I've always found more useful in lawyers than parents.
“Chloe went home.”
Janine’s expression softens into something that would convince anyone who hasn't spent a lifetime watching her choose masks. “Oh, poor thing. These nights can be overwhelming when one isn’t used to carrying them.”
I look at her. The words are mild. Sympathetic, even. That is how my mother prefers a knife, wrapped in linen, placed beside the correct fork.
“She’s used to events,” I say.
“Of course.” Janine smiles. “Performer events. Guest-facing moments. This level of scrutiny is different. It requires a certain steadiness.”
My jaw tightens. “Did something happen?”
“With Chloe?” Her brows lift. “Not that I know of.”
The answer is too smooth.
“Mother.”
“What?” She gives a small laugh. “Sebastian, darling, don’t look at me as if I shoved her into a fountain. I merely tried to keep the press focused where it belongs tonight. On Starlight Court.”
“And Katrina.”
“And Katrina,” she says, as if I've finally become reasonable. “She is earning every dollar of that contract. The press adores her. You saw the reaction when she stood beside you.”
“I saw.”
“And you looked marvelous together.”
I don't answer immediately. Around us, the garden glows blue and silver, so carefully beautiful that it almost irritates me. I built this place to make people feel as if they'd stepped into a dream. Tonight it feels like I'm standing inside a machine.
“Careful,” I say.
My mother’s smile thins by a fraction. “With what?”
“With whatever you’re implying.”
“I’m implying nothing. I’m saying the campaign is working.” She touches my sleeve, light and proprietary. “Don’t punish success because Chloe had a difficult evening.”
I think again of Chloe behind the flowers. Chloe off the dais. Chloe asking where she was supposed to stand while everyone got their easy headline. Something in me shifts, not enough to become action, but enough to make the night feel less clean.
“I’m going home before midnight,” I say.
Janine’s hand drops from my sleeve. “You have obligations.”
“I know my obligations.”
“To the company.”
The words land exactly where she aims them.
My father’s company. My company now, at least on paper.
Thousands of employees. Millions in debt exposure.
A new expansion that has to perform from its first public breath or the board will start speaking in those careful, regretful tones men use before they sharpen the blade.
“Yes,” I say. “To the company.”
Her expression eases, because she hears agreement. I don't bother correcting her.
My obligation to Chloe has become something I keep promising to honor later.
After the launch. After the interviews. After the first numbers.
After the next crisis. I can feel that tonight more clearly than I want to.
I love my wife. That should be the simplest fact in my life, and somehow I've made it wait its turn behind lighting cues and hotel occupancy projections.
Before midnight, then. I'll go home. I'll take off this suit.
I'll sit beside her on our bed and listen properly this time, even if listening means hearing that I've hurt her.
Especially then. I'll tell her about the island, not as a prize for patience, but as a start.
No calls. No mother. No Katrina. Just Chloe in the morning light, her hair loose, her hand in mine.
The image steadies me.
“Sebastian,” Oliver calls from the path. “Donor walkthrough is moving.”
I nod once and step back into the stream.
The next hour is a study in controlled exhaustion.
I shake hands until my palm feels unfamiliar.
I answer questions about expansion phasing, international licensing, food service capacity, and whether the castle theatre roof can retract in weather.
It can't. No one likes that answer, but physics remains stubborn.
Katrina performs beautifully. She knows how to make people feel seen without giving them anything real.
She compliments a donor’s daughter by name, remembers a journalist’s podcast, and laughs at the right volume.
When she speaks about Starlight Court, she does it with just enough wonder to make the place feel less like commerce and more like destiny. The press eats it alive.
A lifestyle editor posts a video of Katrina walking across the glass bridge, the stars reflected beneath her feet. By the time I see it, it's already climbed past half a million views.
Oliver leans in. “We’re trending number one.”
Relief moves through me so fast it's almost vertigo. Number one means attention. Attention means bookings. Bookings mean the board exhales, at least for a week. It means my father’s portrait in the executive hall can stop looking at me like a question.
“Good,” I say, because there are too many people around for anything larger. Oliver grins anyway. He knows me well enough to hear the rest.
The night stretches. Every time I see a possible exit, another obligation steps into it wearing a badge or carrying a glass.
A hospitality investor needs reassurance.
A reporter wants two minutes. Katrina’s manager wants confirmation on tomorrow’s media schedule.
My mother wants me in one more photograph with a cluster of board members, which I refuse because I can feel the clock moving under my skin.
11:21 comes and goes.
At 11:37, I finally get my coat from the private security office.
The nearest exit is through the staff corridor behind the moon garden.
The same corridor Chloe may have taken, I realize.
The walls still smell faintly of new paint, and the overhead lights are too bright after the curated darkness of the court.
I pause there, hand around my phone. I should've walked her out.
The thought arrives without ceremony, which makes it harder to dismiss.
Not because she's fragile. Chloe isn't fragile, though people often make that mistake because she's kind.
I should've walked her out because she's my wife, and she left the most important night of my career feeling unwell, unhappy, or both.
I should've noticed the absence before the press stopped needing me.
I unlock my phone. No new messages from Chloe. Probably sleeping. Hopefully sleeping.
The screen changes in my hand as a new message comes through. Not from Chloe. Katrina.
Katrina:
Emergency. Need you in my suite now. Hotel wing. Please don’t involve Janine yet.
I read it once, then again.
The suite is on the resort grounds, less than five minutes from where I stand. Katrina has the top floor of the new hotel wing for opening week, a security concession her team insisted on and my mother approved before I could object to the theatrics of it.
Another message appears.
Katrina:
It’s about tomorrow’s launch coverage. Something’s wrong.
I look toward the exit at the end of the corridor. Beyond it, a car can have me home in fifteen minutes. Twenty if the service roads are still clogged. Chloe will be waiting, or not waiting.
My phone buzzes again.
Katrina:
Sebastian, please.
I close my eyes for one brief second. Before midnight. I promised.
When I open them, the corridor is empty, the light cold, and the night on the other side is still roaring with success. And my wife is somewhere beyond it, alone.