Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
SEBASTIAN
The call goes straight to voicemail again.
Not ringing first. Not hesitating, not giving me the small mercy of imagining Chloe standing somewhere with the phone in her hand, deciding whether to answer. It goes straight to the flat, automated voice that tells me exactly what I already know: blocked.
I lower the phone from my ear and stare at the sitting room table where her ring still sits.
I haven't touched it. That feels important in a way I can't explain to anyone who hasn't watched his wife set down her ring and walk out.
It feels like an accusation. If I move it, I'll be pretending the choice was less deliberate than it was.
My shirt is still wrinkled from last night. There's a faint smear of blood on my knuckle where I hit the edge of the doorframe after she left. It wasn't hard enough to break anything, but it was hard enough to make the pain honest.
After Chloe had left, I'd had the task of throwing Katrina out of Chloe's home. She'd gone too willingly. Almost as if she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do and was going home after a job well done.
I try Jessica again. Voicemail. Of course. Jessica Pennington has never liked me enough to lie politely when violence is an available language. The fact that she isn't answering means she's either protecting Chloe or sharpening something. Possibly both.
Chloe told me not to follow her. Don’t come to Jessica’s. Don’t call.
So I don’t go to Jessica’s house. That's the only part of this I can give her right now.
I can obey the boundary she gave me, even if every part of me wants to get in the car, drive there, and beg through the front door until my voice is gone.
I don't get to make my panic her burden.
Not after last night. Not after she stood on our porch with her face destroyed and told me she never wanted me to hold her through anything devastating again.
The memory folds me forward in the chair.
For years, I've believed the worst sound in the world was Chloe’s silence in a hospital room.
Not crying, not speaking, just staring at the ceiling while I held her hand and understood that there was no amount of money, power, or force of will that could fix what had went wrong.
I was wrong. The worst sound in the world is the way her voice broke when she said, Not now that I know how much you hated doing it.
I drag a hand over my face and stand. I can’t make her answer, and I can’t ambush her at Jessica’s, but Jessica has a bakery. It's a public place and neutral ground, if one ignores the cake knives.
I take a shower because I can hear Jessica already if I show up looking like I slept in a ditch. Then I put on clean clothes, fail to make them look as if they belong on a man with any control over his life, and drive into town.
Pennington Cakes sits on a corner with white brick and black awnings, the front window full of delicate sugar flowers. Chloe used to stop here before we were married and leave with frosting on her thumb.
A bell rings over the door when I step inside.
The bakery smells like vanilla, butter, coffee, and warm sugar.
There are sample cakes displayed behind glass with white tiers, hand-piped pearls, and tiny edible violets.
Jessica designed our wedding cake. And the groom’s cake she designed was so aggressively feminine, I took it as a direct threat against ever hurting her sister.
Jessica comes through the swinging door from the kitchen in a black apron dusted with flour. Her hair is pulled back, and she's holding a long offset spatula in one hand. She stops dead when she sees me, and her eyes narrow.
“You have some nerve showing up here,” she says. “And perhaps a death wish because I keep my cake knives sharp.”
The young woman behind the counter looks from Jessica to me and quietly disappears into the kitchen. Sensible.
“Jessica,” I say.
“No.”
“I need five minutes.”
“You're going to need a priest, a publicist, and maybe someone who specializes in facial reconstruction if you don’t leave in the next ten seconds.”
I deserve that. More than that.
“Please,” I say, the word scraping out of me. “Jessica, I just need to find a way to prove to her that none of this is what it looks like.”
Her expression changes. It doesn't soften, but the anger shifts, and underneath it is something raw enough that it stops me where I stand.
“She cried,” Jessica says. The words come out low.
Then she stops, swallowing hard, like the next ones are lodged somewhere painful.
“No. My sister sobbed for an hour before she finally just gave out. You didn’t just make her think you’re having an affair, which you’ve yet to prove your innocence on.
You made her relive the worst days of her life.
Hell, you didn’t just make her relive the worst days of her life.
You made her think that you regretted being her soft place to fall then. "
The bakery tilts slightly. I grip the back of a chair near one of the tasting tables.
Jessica’s eyes are bright now, furious and wet. “Do you know how many times she told me that the fact you were there holding her was the only thing that got her through? Do you? And now she hears you tell that hussy that you hated doing that?”
My chest locks.
“Jessica, that’s not what I meant.” My voice is rough. “I didn’t hate holding her. I hated that it happened. I hated that she hurt, and I hated that we lost the babies we so desperately wanted.”
I've said it aloud now in every form except the one that matters, to the one person who needed to hear it before I ever let another woman provoke it from me.
Jessica gives a short, humorless laugh. “Well, great. Good to know. Because now my little sister believes that not only did you hate being the one to help her get through that, she also believes that maybe you’d rather play house and try again with Little Miss Pop Princess.”
“That’s absurd.” It comes out too sharp, too offended, as if my dignity has any business standing upright in this room. I force my hands to unclench. “I love Chloe. I have no desire to be with anyone other than her.”
“Tell that to everyone who saw those photos of you looking so damned comfortable coming out of Katrina Haviland’s hotel suite at two in the morning with your tie askew and her hand on your chest.” Her voice shakes now, but she doesn’t look away.
“Tell it to Chloe, if she ever decides she can stand the sound of you again.”
That lands cleanly. No defense, no angle. Just a blade between the ribs.
“I didn’t touch Katrina,” I say. “Not like that. Nothing happened.”
Jessica stares at me as if she's deciding whether the law would consider a cake stand a weapon. “I believe you believe that’s the central issue. That might be your first problem.”
I go still.
“She didn’t leave only because of the photos, Sebastian.
Those were gasoline. You had already built the fire.
” Her mouth twists. “Your mother moving her out of photos. Katrina standing next to you like a replacement wife with better lighting. You promising private islands while letting Chloe be humiliated in public. You missed it. All of it. And then somehow you let Katrina Haviland stand in my sister’s house and talk about her body. ”
The shame is not hot; it's cold. It moves through me slowly, freezing every excuse before it can form.
“I know,” I say.
Jessica looks surprised enough to hate me for it.
“I know,” I repeat, because I need someone in this world to hear me say it even if Chloe cannot. “I didn’t know all of it when it was happening, or I told myself I didn’t. That doesn't make it less my fault.”
“No,” she says. “It doesn’t.”
I nod once.
“What do you want from me?” she asks.
The honest answer is ugly. I want you to let me see her. I want you to make her listen because she listens to you. I want to use her sister’s love as a door back into a room Chloe locked for a reason.
I close my eyes briefly. “Tell her I’m looking for proof. Not excuses. Proof. Tell her I won’t come to your house. Tell her I heard her.”
Jessica folds her arms.
“And tell her…” I stop, because there is no sentence large enough. “Tell her I know she doesn’t owe me anything. Not a conversation, not belief, and not forgiveness.”
For one second, something like grief moves over Jessica’s face. Then she picks up the spatula again.
“Get out of my bakery before I call every photographer on the east coast to get a photo of you looking like the absolute shit show you look like right now.”
A laugh almost leaves me, but it dies before it becomes sound. “Fair.”
I turn toward the door.
“Sebastian.” I look back. Jessica’s voice drops. “If you hurt her worse trying to make yourself feel better, I won’t need the knives.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says. “You don’t. But you’d better learn fast.”
I leave with the bell ringing overhead and the smell of sugar following me into the street like a memory of a better life.
My mother is waiting in my foyer when I get home. Janine Austen doesn't arrive anywhere by accident. She stages entrances the way generals stage invasions. Today she's in pale gray, her hair immaculate and pearls at her throat.
The front door closes behind me. I look at her and feel something in me go very quiet.
“I’m getting tired,” I say, “of being ambushed by ambitious women in my house.”
Her brows lift. “Good morning to you too, Sebastian.”
“It isn’t.”
“No. I can see that.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on my son.”
“No. Try again.”
Her mouth tightens. “Fine. I came because half the board has seen the coverage, Katrina’s team is anxious, and you haven't returned calls.
Starlight Court is still in a delicate launch window.
Whatever domestic unpleasantness is happening here can't be allowed to damage the largest expansion this family has undertaken in twenty years.”
Domestic unpleasantness. My wife leaving our house without her wedding ring has become domestic unpleasantness.
“You need to leave,” I say.
Janine exhales through her nose. “Sebastian.”
The tone is familiar, patient, and disappointed.
It's the voice she used when I was ten and crying in a bathroom because my father had missed another school event.
The voice she used when I was twenty-three and told her I wanted more creative control.
The voice she used the first time I brought Chloe to dinner and she looked at my future wife as if I had arrived with something on my shoe.
“You are exhausted,” she says. “You are humiliated, and I suspect you are not thinking clearly.”
“I am thinking more clearly than I have in months.”
“Are you?” She takes one step into the foyer. “Because from where I stand, you are on the verge of risking the launch, the brand, and your father’s legacy over a woman who has always struggled to understand what this life requires.”
My hands curl at my sides. “Don’t.”
“She is sweet,” Janine says, as if the word is charitable. “Pretty. Charming in small rooms. I understand the appeal, Sebastian. I've never denied that. But perhaps Chloe is not the princess you need standing beside you now.”
The old me would have heard the business beneath the insult: the optics, the brand alignment, the way Katrina’s face moves product and press in ways Chloe never wanted to. The old me might have answered like a chief executive first and a husband second. That man cost me my wife.
“You never wanted me to marry her,” I say.
Janine’s gaze sharpens.
“You always treated her like an interloper,” I continue. “Like she didn’t belong. Like loving her was some indulgence I would eventually outgrow if you waited long enough.”
“She didn’t belong,” Janine snaps.
There it is. No polish, no silk over the blade. Just the blade.
“She was a bargain basement princess,” my mother says, her voice cold enough to burn. “You should have had your fling and moved on. Maybe if you had, you’d have the family you so wanted by now.”
For a moment, there's no sound in the house. Not the air system, not distant traffic, and not my own breathing. I look at the woman who gave birth to me and see, with sudden brutal clarity, what I've excused for years.
I called it standards, pressure, family politics, or my mother’s difficult nature. I told myself Chloe was strong enough to withstand it because Chloe kept smiling, because Chloe made jokes, and because Chloe always found a way to make pain look manageable so the rest of us could keep moving.
“Get out,” I say.
Janine blinks once. “Excuse me?”
“Get out of my house.”
Her spine straightens. “You will not speak to me that way.”
“I will speak to you any way I choose when you stand in my home and insult my wife.”
“Your wife has left you.”
The words hit, but they don't move me.
“Yes,” I say. “Now, get out.”
Color rises in her cheeks. “You are emotional.”
“I am.”
“That is not leadership.”
“No, it’s marriage. Something you’ve never understood.”
Her face hardens. “Be careful.”
I step toward her. “For once in your life, you should take your own advice.”
For a second, I think she might slap me. The possibility sits between us, almost elegant in its absurdity. Then she smiles, small, smug, and familiar.
“You’ll get over this,” she says. “You always do. You’ll calm down, and then you’ll remember what matters. The launch isn’t finished, the board is watching, and the press is hungry. Whether you admit it or not, you still have that burning desire to step out of your father’s shadow.”
I open the door. Janine stares at me.
“I said get out.”
She walks past me with her chin lifted, pausing on the threshold. “One day,” she says, “you will see the error of your ways.”
I think of Chloe behind flowers, Chloe at the edge of a dais, and Chloe on our porch, looking at me like I had become another room where she wasn’t safe.
“No,” I say. “I’m seeing it now.”
My mother leaves. I shut the door behind her and stand there until the silence settles. Then I cross to the sitting room table. Chloe’s ring catches the light, but I still don’t touch it.
Instead, I take out my phone and call Curtis Strong, the head of my security team. He answers on the second ring. “Mr. Austen.”
“I want everything,” I say.
A beat. “Sir?”
“Access logs, gate records, interior camera gaps, staff entries, and contractor badges. I want every code used in this house for the past month. I want to know exactly how Katrina Haviland got into my home.”
Curtis's voice changes. “Understood.”
“And Curtis?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I also want every file, message, tip, staffing note, and security report tied to Katrina’s hotel suite the night of the launch. I want to know who knew I would be coming out of that suite at two in the morning, and how.”