Chapter 10 Aiden
Aiden
Irun after her.
My feet pound the hardwood floor.
I go through the heavy front door, across the icy front steps.
My chest burns as the cold night air slices through my lungs.
I catch her sliding into the passenger seat of a black SUV, like she’s walking away from the ashes of a life she doesn’t want anymore.
“Mia!” I shout.
She doesn’t even look at me.
The car door shuts. The tires crunch over snow. And just like that…she’s gone.
I stand there, breathless, fists clenched at my sides, staring at the space she just occupied.
I lost her.
I fucking lost her!
The cold forces me back inside—a place I don’t want to be.
I want to go to my wife, to run after her and beg her to give us a chance.
To give me a chance to make this right. But the way she stood in that room and ripped off every Band-Aid this family ever slapped over their wounds… that was her message.
There’s no going back.
She didn’t just leave—she burned the bridge behind her. Not just so I couldn’t reach her…but so she couldn’t come back.
The living room is not Christmassy any longer.
A part of me is amused at what Mia achieved—at how she paid them all back for every ugly comment they made about her, for every time they made her feel like she didn’t fit in. Another is horrified at what I did to her, that she became this person who could do what she did.
A lump forms in my throat as I watch the debacle she left behind. I don’t care that my family is fighting, that they’re hurt. They deserve it. Each one of them. The only person who didn’t deserve the pain I caused her is Mia.
And despite the chaos in the living room—my mother crying, my father yelling at Gianna for losing her job, my brother telling a sobbing Betty that it’s all a lie—I know they’ll all get over it soon enough.
Evil is resilient.
My sweet Mia will never get over my betrayal. She’ll carry that scar inside her forever, and so will I.
“Your wife is out of line,” Dad yells at me.
Silence falls in the room, broken by a sob, a sniffle, here and there.
“Is she?”
“What she said is—”
“All true,” I cut him off. “Tristan is sleeping with the nanny. Even I know this. But I did what we always do in this family: look away when things are unpleasant. And come on, Betty, stop behaving like your life is over, you’ve also known.”
My brother and his wife look at me like I kicked their puppy.
“I’m not sleeping—”
“Save it.” I wave my hand so he’ll shut the fuck up about the lies.
“Son,” Dad begins, but I shake my head.
“Not your first mistress, Dad.” I look at my mother, whose eyes are red-rimmed. A part of me feels bad for her because I genuinely think she didn’t know about my father’s many dalliances, but that was her intentionally being blind.
And she thinks she’s better than Mia? She, who once told me that having Mia as my wife lowers the family’s aesthetic?
The second Mia knew I cheated on her, she slapped me with divorce papers despite knowing that she wouldn’t get a dime if she left. But she doesn’t care about money. I know that. They don’t. Can’t because everything in their lives revolves around keeping up appearances.
This is the family I’ve been protecting? The one I made Mia twist herself into knots to please?
“She revealed some very personal things, Aiden,” Gianna flings at me.
“Not so personal if the gossip is making the rounds at Little Luminaries, Gianna. But it does explain why you asked to borrow money from me.” I feel ashamed of my sister, not because she lost her job, but because of how she acts like she’s royalty and treats Mia as the maid who dared sit on the throne.
“She’s never allowed back here again,” Mom bites out.
I laugh without humor. “I doubt she’s interested in anything to do with any of us, Mom.”
“Well, I for one am happy you’ll be divorcing her,” Diana announces and comes to stand next to me, like she’s occupying the space that Mia left.
She’s a little breathless, like we’re about to plan the afterparty.
“Well,” she begins, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I guess it’s finally out. It’s for the best, Aiden. Now we can move forward.”
I look at her like I’m seeing her for the first time.
She smiles tentatively, as if not sure what my perusal of her means. “I’m just saying…now that she’s left, we don’t have to hide how we feel.” She turns to the family. “I know this was…terrible, but we have some good news.”
She holds my hand. I pull it away and frown. “We?”
She gives me that soft, sympathetic look I used to mistake for affection.
“You’ve been halfway out of that marriage for years.
We both know it. She just needed to wake up to it, and now she has.
I wish she’d been more dignified about it, but it is what it is.
At least it’s all contained within the family. ”
My parents nod. My siblings and their spouses do as well, like they can see the sense in what Diana is saying.
I taste what she just said, roll her words through me, and the world goes silent around me as epiphany strikes like a bomb.
“She just needed to wake up to it, and now she has.”
“Diana.”
“Yes, darling.”
“Did you know Mia was outside the gazebo that night?”
Diana freezes and then titters. “What?”
“Did you know Mia was there when you planted your mouth on mine?” I pick one of the photographs. She used a vintage filter on this one.
I shove it under Diana’s nose. “Did you stage this?”
She says nothing. But her eyes speak volumes.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “You kissed me on purpose, knowing she’d see it.”
“Son, she did it for you,” Mom says, chin lifting.
“You knew?”
Mom looks sheepish, and when she feels my shock, she turns away.
Dad clenches his jaw. “We all know that you’re both right for each other and the whole office knows….”
“That you both are having an affair,” Tristan finishes.
At the word affair, Betty sobs, her hand on her mouth as if she’s trying to hold it in. She won’t leave Tristan. She’ll just fire Lulu and get a new nanny, this time someone unattractive.
“I did it for you,” Diana puts her hands on my shoulder, forcing me to look at her, like she can convince me out of sheer will. “You’ve been miserable for years. She made you small. You needed someone who understands you.”
“And you think you do? Understand me?” I huff out a laugh. “God, Diana, you have no idea who I am.”
“I know,” she counters. “I’ve grown up with you, and the past two years—”
“You know Aiden, the CEO. You have no clue who Aiden the man is, mostly because you’re so in love with yourself and focused on what you want, you can’t give a crap about anyone else.”
She recoils like I slapped her. “Aiden, we’re meant to be. Ask your family. No one wants Mia.”
Except me.
A wave of weariness claims me. It all falls into place.
My father hiring Diana right as I took over.
My insecurities as a CEO making me depend upon Diana more and more, until I all but left my wife.
My family whispering, nudging, pushing me further and further away from the woman I love.
And I let them.
I chose my family’s approval over Mia’s peace. Over her heart. Over the life we promised each other.
I run a hand through my hair, my chest tight, my voice hollow. “I’m going to bed and then I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“It’s Christmas Day,” Mom protests.
Now, I do laugh, but this time it’s an uncontrollable roar. “Mom, the marriages of everyone in this family have just been under the spotlight, and they’re ugly as hell, and you want to celebrate Christmas? This family doesn’t need a chef cooking a gourmet meal; it needs a team of shrinks.”
Gianna scoffs. “Oh, come on, Aiden, all this for Mia? She was never one of us—”
“Gianna, she shouldn’t have had to be one of us. Her being married to me should have been enough.”
I look around at the people I’ve spent my whole life trying to make proud. All I see now are sharp teeth and vapid smiles.
Mia stood in this room alone for two years as my girlfriend and six years as my wife, and not one of them ever met her halfway.
And I stood with them.
I feel sick.
“What are you going to do now?” Diana asks, her voice still soft. Hopeful.
I meet her gaze and feel nothing. “None of your business.”
She steps toward me. “You love me, Aiden.” Her eyes are gentle. Before that kiss, I’d have fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. “And I love you.”
“You told me your husband cheated on you; that’s why you got divorced.”
People like her, I’ve just realized, don’t love anyone but themselves.
She shrugs. “We both…there were mistakes made on both sides.”
I smirk. “Is that what your ex would say if I called him?”
She looks stricken.
An argument between Betty and Tristan distracts us. She pushes him and runs. But not away like Mia, but toward their suite.
“Betty, come on,” Tristan yells, and chases his wife up the stairs.
Patrick is slumped on a couch, snoring softly. Gianna is trying to get him up.
Good luck, sis.
Gianna came to me last week and asked for $100,000 for a business idea she had. I’d given it to her, too. She’s my sister. Didn’t think she’d lie to me.
“Get rid of the bitch,” Dad says before leaving the room and the wreckage. Mom follows him. She’s a good wife.
Mine is better. Mine has a backbone.
“Which one?” I muse under my breath.
“Aiden….” Diana draws me back to her.
“Consider yourself on notice at Winter Financial. I’m giving you six months to find another job. It’s generous. If you make an issue out of it, I’ll use these damn photographs to claim sexual assault.”
She takes a step back at the viciousness in my voice. “Aiden, I’m family.”
“No, darling, you fucked up my marriage, hurt my wife on purpose. That makes you enemy number one. Have a good night and start looking for a new job.”
“You can’t fire me. Nelson is chairman.” She gives me a withering look, her arms crossed.
“Wanna bet?” My lips tip up in amusement. “Dad has that role because I let him. I run this company. I own that board. The investors are with us because of me. If I leave—”
“You can’t. This is your family business,” she gasps.
“If I leave,” I continue, “the fortune that my family seems to think is going to last forever, while everyone dicks around, will be gone.”
“All this because of her?” Diana demands.
“Yeah, Diana. You know why? Because I love her. I screwed up, no doubt about that, but I love her and I’m going to win her back. I can’t do that if the woman who’s been throwing herself at me is still working for me. Which is why you’re going to quietly resign and get the fuck out of my life.”
“I’m still going to be family,” she retorts smugly.
“Maybe theirs. But not mine.”
And just like that, I know what I’m going to have to do. To be Mia’s husband, I have to give up being a member of this toxic family.