Chapter 2
I stared at his palm covering the phone and couldn't remember how to breathe.
Just moments ago, guests were laughing in the living room, Marta—smeared with frosting—was reaching for her father with sticky fingers, Tim was holding my hand under the table, and the world was still pretending to be whole, warm, festive, familial.
And then the screen lit up, and on it appeared words that had no right to exist in my house: "She almost figured it out today.
Don't be so cruel to her in front of me.
" I read them once. Then again. Then they seemed to sear themselves onto the inside of my eyelids, and no matter where I looked, all I could see was this: she almost figured it out.
Don't be. So cruel. To her. In front of me.
In front of whom? In front of what woman?
What invisible, clever, careful woman who knew how cruel he could be with me and still wrote to him as if she had the right to correct him?
It felt as though someone had slowly taken me by the throat with two fingers.
Not squeezing—not yet. Just pressing, testing how much air I still needed to keep smiling.
"Niki," Damien said.
His voice was even. Low. Almost lazy. That was the voice he used with people he intended to calm—not out of tenderness, but because panic got in the way of business.
"What is that?" I asked.
The words came out quiet. Not even a question, really—a small plea not to kill me right away.
"A phone."
I blinked.
"Damien."
"You asked, I answered."
He picked the phone off the table and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. One short, precise movement. The way you put away a weapon after a demonstration: everyone saw, everyone understood, discussion over.
"There was a message."
"I noticed."
"From who?"
"None of your business."
It felt like someone had slapped me with an open hand. Not hard, not enough to draw blood, but enough to burn my cheek and make me decide on my own that I was at fault for standing too close.
"None of my business?"
"Exactly."
"It was about me."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the living room.
At Marta, who was trying to feed her teddy bear a piece of cake.
At Tim, who wasn't eating but crumbling the sponge with his fork, stealing glances at us.
At my mother, at Lara by the fireplace, at the business partners, at the white flowers, at our expensive picture of a flawless family. Then back at me.
"Go back to the guests."
"I asked you a question."
"And I said: go back to the guests."
He didn't shout. Didn't raise his voice. Only in his eyes appeared that dark stillness—the kind that made even grown men in his office start speaking in shorter sentences. I knew that look. It meant: one more step, and I'll hurt you worse than you're ready to bear.
I could have made a scene. Could have snatched the phone, demanded the passcode, thrown a plate in his face, screamed in front of everyone: "Who is she?
" Women in novels do that. Beautifully. Loudly.
With shattered glass and pride on the shards.
But I stood before my husband in a tight dress, with a dry throat, with a son watching from behind the table too seriously for his six years, and I understood that if everything fell apart right now, somehow the blame would be mine.
Because I lost control. Because I ruined Tim's day.
Because I went through the phone. Because I saw.
"Niki," Damien tilted his head slightly. "Don't make me repeat myself."
And I went.
Of course I went. Like a dog that hasn't been hit but has already been shown the leash.
I returned to the table, picked up the cake knife, though my hands shook so badly the frosting smeared across the blade.
Guests said something cheerful, someone asked for seconds, my mother whispered that we needed to pour tea for Aunt Jean, Lara laughed softly, beautifully, perfectly innocently.
Everything was as usual. Only inside me, there was no floor anymore.
I walked on air, smiled on air, lived on air, and every breath cut through my chest like thin wire.
"Mom," Tim tugged at my sleeve. "You cut yourself?"
I looked at my finger. A drop of blood had appeared on the pad. Small, bright, indecently real among the white porcelain and sugar flowers.
"No, sweetheart. It's nothing."
"Don't lie," he said in almost a whisper.
And that was more terrifying than any scream. My six-year-old son could already detect lies better than I could defend myself.
"Go to Daddy," I said, because I didn't know how to hold my face together.
Tim didn't move.
"He's busy."
Damien was indeed busy. He stood at the panoramic window, talking on the phone half-turned from the room.
Spine straight, shoulders wide, voice low, face composed.
My husband could look as though he were managing a fire, even if he'd started it himself.
I couldn't hear the words, only broken fragments: "not now," "I'll handle it," "no freelancing. " They made my fingers go cold.
Lara came over with a napkin.
"Niki, give me your hand."
"I'm fine."
"Come on, don't be silly. It's bleeding."
She took my finger and pressed the napkin to it. Carefully, lovingly. From the outside, we surely looked very sweet: a sister helping a sister at a children's party. Only her thumb lingered on my wrist, right where the bracelet had slipped down again.
"See?" she said quietly. "I told you—it should be higher. The wrist looks neater that way."
"Thank you," I whispered.
"Don't mention it. You're not yourself today."
"Just tired."
"Of course. You carry everything on your own. The house, the kids, this whole party. Plus Damien and his personality. If I were you, I'd have learned to tune it out long ago."
She said it like support. Probably. I wanted to believe it was support.
"Does it work for you?"
Lara smiled.
"What?"
"Tuning Damien out."
She raised her eyebrows slightly. Just for an instant. Then softness again, sisterly pity, a warm hand over mine.
"Niki, I don't live with him."
"Right. Sorry."
I'd apologized again. Didn't even know what for. For the question. For the tone. For thinking something ugly about the sister who'd come to my son's birthday and helped me with my bracelet. I was nauseous with myself. With this perpetual readiness to retreat before things got worse.
Damien returned ten minutes later. His face was normal. Too normal.
"Tim, want to see your present?" he asked.
His son raised his head.
"Now?"
"Now."
He snapped his fingers at one of his men by the door, and within a minute a large black box with a silver ribbon was carried into the living room.
Tim forgot his resentment instantly. He was six.
God, only six. He jumped up, eyes blazing, cheeks flushed.
Damien crouched beside him, helped untie the ribbon, and for a second I saw the two of them apart from all the horror: a big man with rough hands and a small boy who still wanted to believe his father was all-powerful.
Inside the box was a massive building set with a remote-control car—the very one Tim had been whispering to me about for a month.
"Dad!" he breathed.
"Happy birthday, Commander."
"I'm not a commander."
"You will be."
"Will you build it with me?"
"I will."
"Tonight?"
Damien glanced at his watch.
"Tonight we'll start."
Tim threw his arms around his neck. Damien held his son tightly, truly, with that unconditional strength that tore something inside me in half.
Because how do you hate a man who makes your child this happy?
How do you ask him about another woman when your son is smiling for the first time all evening without wariness?
How do you shatter that happiness and not die of guilt?
"See?" Lara said quietly beside me. "He's trying."
I nodded.
"Yes."
"Don't overthink it, Niki. Damien is complicated, but he's yours."
Yours. Not mine. For some reason that word scratched harder than it should have.
The party wound down around ten. Guests departed, the children—drowsy and overstimulated—argued over who would brush their teeth first. My mother kissed my cheek and told me to be "wiser," because men of his caliber don't tolerate female tantrums. And Lara hugged me goodbye longer than usual.
"Call me tomorrow, okay?" she said. "You're scaring me."
"I am?"
"Your eyes look like someone who's invented the end of the world all by herself."
"Maybe I just saw the forecast."
Lara smiled sadly.
"Just don't destroy everything over fantasies."
She left, trailing perfume and the sensation of having been carefully tucked under a blanket soaked in poison.
I closed the door behind her and pressed my forehead against the wood.
The house went quiet. Too quiet. After a party, there was always this strange emptiness—balloons still hanging, cake still in the fridge, wrapping paper crinkling underfoot—but happiness had already taken off its shoes and left without so much as a goodbye.
Upstairs, Damien was putting the children to bed. I could hear his voice from Marta's room: low, soft, patient.
"I'm right here."
Pause.
"I'm right here."
Another pause.
"I'm right here, princess. Sleep."
Three times. The way she liked it.
I sat on the bottom step of the staircase and covered my mouth with my hand so no sound would escape.
The tears finally came. Not the pretty, quiet kind—angry, hot, humiliating.
I was wrenched to the bone by the fact that one and the same man could so tenderly tell his daughter "I'm right here" and so coldly tell me "none of your business.
" I was his wife. Not a neighbor. Not a mistake.
Not a piece of furniture shoved into a dark corner because it no longer matched the décor. His wife.
Damien came out of Tim's room twenty minutes later. He saw me on the staircase and stopped.
"Are you crying?"
I wiped my face quickly.
"No."
"Not convincing."
"Then why ask?"