10. Sophia #2
“Then let’s keep it clean.” I stripped my voice down to the register I used with difficult vendors, flat and impossible to read, because polite distance was the only thing standing between me and breaking down in front of him.
“No wife in the room. Just the woman who designs your collections and the man who runs them. That’s what you’d prefer, isn’t it? ”
He flinched. A crack in the careful composure he’d been maintaining since I walked in.
“Sophia…”
“No.” I held up my hand, and to my horror it was shaking.
“Someone is going into my designs and ruining them, Alexander. Someone who knows my work well enough to make the changes look like mine. And instead of asking who would do that to me, instead of standing next to me, you’re taking my badge and looking at me like I’m the one who can’t be trusted. ”
“I’m not saying you did anything.”
“You don’t have to say it. You’re doing it.
” The tears were right there, hot behind my eyes, and I hated them, hated that my body wanted to cry in front of him when I needed so badly to stay standing.
“Ask yourself one question. In eight years, have you ever once known me to be careless with my work? Have you ever seen me put my name on work I hadn’t bled over? ”
“No.”
“Then why is it easier for you to believe I fell apart than to believe someone did this to me on purpose?” My voice cracked on the last word and I pressed my lips together, furious at myself.
“That’s the part I can’t survive. Not the sabotage.
You. Wondering, even for a second, if the woman you married is the problem. ”
He said nothing. And his silence was the loudest answer he could have given me.
“I’ll be in the workshop,” I said.
I walked out without looking back. My heels clicked against the floor, precise and measured, and I kept my spine straight until I’d turned the corner and entered the hallway where no one could see me.
Then I leaned against the wall and let myself breathe.
It had lasted only a few minutes, but I’d aged a decade inside it.
My husband had looked at me and seen a suspect instead of a partner.
He’d taken my badge, cut me off from the work that was mine, and he’d done it while I stood in front of him begging him to believe me.
He’d held out his hand as if my heartbreak were a liability instead of the only sane response to being treated like a criminal in my own home.
I pushed off the wall and made my way toward the workshop. Pierre was there when I arrived, and he saw my face and set down his tools without a word.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They think I did it.” My voice came out hoarse, scratched raw by the tears I was refusing to shed. “Someone ruined my designs, made the changes in my own hand, and now everyone in that room thinks I sabotaged my own collection and lied about it.”
“That is absurd.”
“Is it? Because Alexander looked at me like he wasn’t sure anymore. Like eight years of marriage meant less than a few ruined drawings.”
Pierre crossed the workshop and pulled out the stool beside my drafting table. “Sit. Tell me everything.”
I sat. I told him. The meeting, the questions, Alexander’s hesitation, the badge that was now in his pocket instead of mine. Pierre listened without interrupting, his weathered face growing darker with each detail.
“This is sabotage,” he said when I finished. “Not by you. Against you. Someone is working very hard to make you look guilty.”
“I know that. You know that. But Alexander…”
“Alexander is afraid.” Pierre’s voice was gentle but firm. “The company is his father’s legacy. The launch is everything he has been working toward. Fear makes people stupid, even people who love you.”
“He should trust me more than the evidence.”
“Yes. He should.” Pierre reached over and covered my hand with his.
“But, Sophia, I have known Alexander since he was a boy. He was taught that emotion is weakness, that decisions must be rational, that the company survives because the Whitmores put it first. He is wrong, but he believes he’s being fair. ”
“Being fair is supposed to feel better than this.”
“Fairness is a cold comfort.” He squeezed my hand. “The question is whether he will realize what he has done before the damage becomes permanent.”
I looked at the cascade necklace, still on its stand, still incomplete. Forty-seven stones waiting to become light falling through water. My vision, my work, my proof that I belonged here regardless of whose name was on the building.
“I’m not going to let them take this from me,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to find out who’s doing this. And when I do, Alexander is going to have to face exactly how wrong he was to doubt me.”
Pierre nodded slowly. “Good. Hold onto that anger. You will need it.”
The workshop fell silent around us, but my mind was racing. Someone had studied me. Someone knew my hand, my habits, the exact way I drew a clasp, and was patient enough to take me apart one design at a time, careful enough to leave nothing behind but my own name.
I had suspicions. I wasn’t ready to voice them again, not after the last time I’d suggested Camille might be involved and watched Alexander dismiss the possibility without consideration.
But I was going to find the truth, with or without my husband’s help.
And when I did, he was going to have to choose whose side he was really on.