Chapter Two #2
“Where are you taking him?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“He is safe with me.”
Her eyes did not even blink.
“Say that again,” she said. “Slowly.”
I looked away first.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that like it fixes anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You needed to talk to me before you touched her.”
My hand closed around the ring in my pocket.
“I know.”
“You needed to talk to me before you brought her to my table. Before you let her stand behind me and fix my hair. Before you renewed your vows with her body still between us.”
“Madeleine.”
Her name came out broken.
She stepped closer.
For one mad second, I thought she might touch me.
She did not.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
The question cut through the cameras, the noise, the guards, the whole lobby.
“No,” I said.
“Did she know that?”
I opened my mouth.
No words came.
Madeleine gave a small nod, as if my silence had signed something.
“That is what I thought.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I never promised her a future.”
“But you gave her enough to think she could steal mine.”
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Caleb was watching me.
“Stay out of this,” I said to him.
Madeleine’s face changed.
“Do not speak to him like that.”
Jealousy moved through me, hot and stupid.
“Madeleine, you barely left the ballroom and he is already here.”
“He answered the phone.”
The words hit me clean in the chest.
“I called you,” she said. “In that elevator. I called you because Theo was shaking and cameras were waiting downstairs and I needed help. Your phone went to voicemail.”
I looked down at the phone in my hand.
Unknown number.
I had rejected it.
The lobby tilted.
“I didn’t know it was you,” I said.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
She turned toward the car.
I reached for her, then stopped before I touched her.
“Please tell me where you’re going.”
She looked at my hand hanging in the air.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“For nineteen years, I always told you where I was going. Even when you forgot to ask.”
I could not breathe.
She got into the car.
Caleb closed the door.
I stepped forward.
The car pulled away.
I followed it for three steps like a fool.
Reporters surged around me.
“Mr. Rourke, who was the man with your wife?”
“Is Madeleine leaving you for Caleb Renner?”
“Was this a love triangle before tonight?”
I turned on them.
“Do not print one word about my son,” I said.
“Did your wife call Caleb before she called you?”
I froze.
That was enough for them.
They saw it. They fed on it.
Another flash hit my face.
I pushed through them and walked back into the hotel.
My father waited near the lobby pillars.
“You are bleeding in public,” he said.
I looked down.
My hand was bleeding.
I had closed my fist so hard around Madeleine’s ring that the diamond had cut my palm.
Victor saw the ring and his mouth tightened.
“Give it to me,” he said.
I laughed softly. “You must be insane.”
“That ring belongs in the family vault.”
“That ring belongs to my wife.”
“She took it off.”
“And I will keep it until she asks for it back.”
“She will ask for half your company first.”
I looked at him then.
Really looked.
“Is that what you are worried about?”
He stepped closer. “I am worried about the empire you are risking because you could not control your appetite.”
“My wife and son just left me.”
“And your board is upstairs deciding if you are too unstable to lead.”
“Let them.”
His eyes hardened. “Do not be dramatic.”
“I am not being dramatic. I am being honest.”
“Honesty is not strategy.”
“No,” I said. “But lies did not work well for me tonight.”
My phone rang again.
Peter Langley.
This time I answered.
“Bennett,” Peter said. “Where are you?”
“In the lobby.”
“We need you upstairs.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Excuse me?”
“I said no.”
“The board is gathered in the private room. Victor says we need a statement before the market opens.”
“My marriage is not a market event.”
Peter sighed. “Tonight, it became one.”
I looked toward the doors where Madeleine’s car had vanished.
“Say nothing about her,” I said.
“Bennett—”
“I mean it. No statement that blames her. No statement that says we were separated. No statement that calls this private pain or a family misunderstanding. I cheated. That is the statement.”
Another pause.
“You understand what that will do to you?”
“Yes.”
“To the company?”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The old chain around my neck.
The company.
The name.
The stock price.
The empire.
Madeleine had carried that chain too. Quietly. For years. Every dinner. Every gala. Every smile she gave men who only respected me because she made me look human.
“I understand,” I said.
“Then come upstairs and help us manage this.”
“No. I’m going to find my wife.”
“She left with Caleb Renner,” Peter said carefully.
My jaw locked.
“I know.”
“That will become part of the story.”
“Only if cowards make it part of the story.”
“Bennett—”
“Tell the board I will speak in one hour.”
“From where?”
I looked at the ring in my bloody hand.
“From home.”
I ended the call.
Victor watched me with disgust.
“You are making a mistake.”
“No,” I said. “I made the mistake already.”
I walked past him.
“Bennett,” he called. “If you chase her now, you lose control.”
I stopped at the doors and looked back.
For the first time in my life, I saw my father clearly.
A man who had never loved anything he could not own.
“I already lost her,” I said. “Now I have to become someone she can stand to look at.”
I stepped outside into the cold Seattle night.
The cameras came again.
Lights.
Questions.
Noise.
I ignored all of it and got into the first black hotel car waiting near the curb.
The driver turned. “Where to, Mr. Rourke?”
I looked at my phone.
No message from Madeleine.
No missed call from Theo.
One unknown text still burned on the screen.
This was only the first video.
My hand throbbed around her ring.
“Home,” I said.
Then I leaned back, closed my eyes, and heard my son’s voice again.
You loved us six minutes ago too. Remember?
Yes.
I remembered.
That was the hell of it.
I had loved them.
And I had still destroyed them.