6. Sophia #2
“Personal feelings.” I laughed, and it came out brittle. “You mean because I’m your wife. Because being married to you somehow makes my concerns less credible than if I were just another department head bringing you a security issue.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? Because from where I’m standing, you just told me to leave our marriage at the door so you could take my problem seriously. Which suggests you weren’t taking it seriously when you thought it was your wife talking instead of your creative director.”
He flinched. Finally. “Sophia…”
“No.” I held up my hand. “You wanted professional. You have it.”
I straightened my spine. Smoothed my expression. Let every ounce of warmth drain out of my voice until a stranger was speaking, because only a stranger could say this without her voice breaking in front of him.
“Jean-Marc has known me for eight years,” I said. “He caught the fake because he knows how I write, how I sign my name, the way I say things. He knew it wasn’t me in a single glance.” I let that land. “The person who sent it didn’t know me nearly as well. But they knew me well enough to try.”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “Sophia…”
“The request would have sent our stones somewhere they’d never come back from, and my name would have been the one on it when they vanished.
Not yours. Mine.” My voice didn’t waver.
“Whoever is doing this doesn’t just want to embarrass me.
They want me gone, and they want it to look like I did it to myself. ”
“I understand that…”
“It’s the second time in ten days, Alexander.
First my designs, now my name signed to things I never wrote.
Two attacks, the same careful hand, the same person clearly enjoying it.
I’m not being careless and I’m not losing my mind.
Someone close to us is doing this to me, and every day we spend pretending otherwise is another day they get to do it again. ”
I delivered it all without a single personal word. Without a “please.” Without an “I need you to hear me.” Just facts, delivered to a CEO by a department head, exactly as professional as he’d asked me to be.
He hated it. I watched him hate it, the muscle in his jaw tightening as he realized what he’d asked for and what it actually meant.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. Whatever it takes. I’ll start today.”
“Thank you for your time.” I turned toward the door.
“Sophia, wait.”
I paused but didn’t turn around.
“I shouldn’t have said that. About keeping our marriage out of it. I was frustrated, and I…” He exhaled. “I know how that sounded.”
“It sounded like you wanted a professional conversation. I gave you one.”
“That’s not what I wanted.”
“Then you should be clearer about what you want, Monsieur Whitmore. In the future.”
I heard him move, heard the soft creak of his expensive shoes on the hardwood. “Don’t do that. Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“You know what I mean.”
I turned then, finally, and found him closer than I expected. Close enough that I could see the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands hung at his sides like he wanted to reach for me but didn’t know if he was allowed.
“I’m not asking for the CEO right now, Alexander.”
His voice was rough. “Then what are you asking for?”
“My husband.”
The word hung between us. Husband. As if the title still carried weight. As if the man standing in front of me was the same one who’d promised me forever in a garden in Provence, who’d held me through my father’s funeral, who’d once known my thoughts before I spoke them.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “I’m right here.”
“Are you?” I searched his face for the man I used to find easily and came up empty.
“Because my husband would have believed me. My husband would have asked what I needed instead of telling me what I couldn’t have.
My husband would have noticed that someone is trying to destroy my credibility and been angry about it instead of asking me to produce evidence like I’m on trial. ”
“I am angry. I’m furious. But I can’t just…”
“You can’t just trust me. I know.” I stepped back, creating distance he didn’t try to close. “That’s the part I keep getting stuck on.”
His hand came up, almost reaching for me, then dropped. “I trust you. I’ve always trusted you.”
“Then act like it.”
I left before he could answer. Before he could find the right words to make this feel like less than it was. Before I could let myself believe that anything had actually changed.
The hallway was empty. Camille’s desk was visible through the glass wall of the outer office, and she glanced up as I passed, that same pleasant half-smile on her face. I didn’t acknowledge her. Didn’t trust myself to look at her without letting the hurt show.
Back in the workshop, Pierre was polishing a setting for the earrings that would complement the cascade necklace.
He took one look at my face and wordlessly set a cup of tea beside my drafting table, then returned to his work without comment.
This was why I loved the workshop. Things here made sense.
Gold was gold. Stones were stones. Nothing pretended to be more than it was.
I stared at the necklace sketches without seeing them.
Forty-seven stones, arranged in a cascade meant to evoke light falling through water.
The most ambitious piece I’d ever designed.
The culmination of everything I’d built at Whitmore Maison, everything I’d proved over eight years of working my way from the polishing bench to the creative director’s chair.
Someone wanted to take that from me. Someone with access and patience and the skill to leave no fingerprints.
Alexander would look into it his way. Quiet questions, careful conversations, nobody made uncomfortable until there was proof no one could argue with.
Maybe it would turn up a name. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Either way, I’d spend the next two weeks waiting for permission to trust my own instincts about a threat I could feel but couldn’t prove.
Be professional, he’d said.
As if my composure was the problem. As if I hadn’t spent years being twice as careful as anyone else in the room just to be taken half as seriously. And as though being his wife was a thing that had to be set aside before I could be believed.
The worst part was, he’d meant it as protection. I knew him well enough to see that. He’d been trying to create a space where we could discuss the problem without the weight of everything else pressing down on us. Trying to fix a problem by separating it into manageable pieces.
But you couldn’t separate us from the company.
The company was us. It was late nights in this workshop, fighting over design choices until one of us laughed and the other admitted defeat.
It was investor dinners where we’d perfected the art of the silent communication, a glance across the table that meant rescue me or watch this or I love you even when we’re exhausted.
It was the act of building, together, what neither of us could have built alone.
If he couldn’t see that, if he could stand in his office and ask me to leave our marriage at the door like it was a coat I could hang on a hook and retrieve later, then maybe the building wasn’t as sound as I’d believed.
Maybe we’d been decorating the ruins for years and calling it a renovation.
I picked up my pencil. Set it down again. Picked up my tea and let the warmth seep into my palms without drinking.
Somewhere in this building, someone was working against me. And somewhere in this marriage, my husband had decided that protecting the institution mattered more than protecting us.
I used to know which battles were worth fighting. Used to know when to push and when to wait, when to speak and when to let silence do the work. But lately every conversation had become a minefield navigated in the dark, and I was running out of faith that the ground I was standing on was solid.
The tea went cold in my hands. The sketches stared back at me, forty-seven stones waiting to be made beautiful.
I’d build the necklace and survive the launch. I’d smile for the cameras and shake the right hands and pretend that Whitmore Maison was exactly what it appeared to be from the outside: a legacy house helmed by a power couple who had it all figured out.
But for the first time in eight years, I let myself wonder what would be left when the gala was over. When the collection was done. When there were no more launches to hide behind and no more excuses to make.
Would there still be an us to come home to? Or had we already lost that somewhere between the guest bedroom door and the conference room table, so gradually that neither of us noticed until it was too late to find our way back?
I didn’t have an answer. And the silence where my husband’s voice should have been told me he didn’t either.