Epilogue
Dale Danton-Taft
One Week Later
The air in the ballroom is honey-thick with perfume and laughter.
Everywhere I look, it’s gold sconces and cigarette smoke, champagne fizzing over the rims of crystal flutes, and the glossy sheen of wealth.
There’s something primitive and powerful in the air tonight, and it’s suffocating.
I gulp down a gasping breath, trying to avoid being sick on the ballroom floor.
A haunting feeling rests in my gut, difficult to choke down. The champagne in my hand offers no reprieve from the gnawing, churning feeling I can’t escape at this spectacle of commitment.
Hayden threw this party in Martine's honor. With a hasty marriage and a less-than-easy induction into the Brotherhood, Martine deserved a celebration for all she’s gone through these past two years.
And while we’ve suffered similarly at the hands of the Brotherhood, it’s only one of us emerging dripping in emeralds, unscathed.
I stand at the edge of it all, the picture of composure, champagne flute balanced between my fingers, my black bob sharp against the pale gleam of my shoulders.
The sparkling mini Chanel dress I chose hugs my body like a vice.
My small metallic stilettos, which pair perfectly with the dress, are squeezing my feet, adding to the discomfort of an already devastating night.
So many eyes rest on my skin, but none belong to the man that I truly want. I wanted Ford to see me tonight and find me irresistible in this tiny dress. I wanted him to look and see me. But of course, desire always leaves me wanting as I stand here without his consideration.
He’s across the room, a haunting silhouette in sharp tailoring, his jaw carved by the kind of cruelty that comes from privilege.
His eyebrows are slightly darker than his hair, and his cheeks have hollowed somewhat from his time away.
He looks far sharper and more threatening than ever before.
He’s speaking to Archie—about something I’ll never have the advantage of being privy to.
Both men are nearly the tallest in the room, aside from Hayden and Hudson, the largest of the four. And it’s Hudson who walks up to Ford, shaking his hand and giving him a clap on the back, greeting each other as old friends, as I stand here alone in a sea of people, not really belonging anywhere.
I look at them, smartly clad in devastatingly handsome suits. Hudson's green eyes shine in the room, but they’re no match for Ford’s icy grey.
The gnawing feeling worsens when I begin to compare Ford to his twin Dex, whose blue eyes could make the sky rage in jealousy.
No, these are ghosts I won't dig up.
I swallow the burn in my throat and lift the glass again, pretending not to care as I swallow down an uncomfortably large gulp of champagne.
I’ve been pretending my entire life. That’s what we do best—Tafts, Dantons, all of us.
We pretend. Pretend we’re still Legacies as if we have anything left other than our titles.
We pretend to be the faultless example of excellence. Dripping in superiority, the Tafts are founding members of the Brotherhood, and yet here I stand, the firstborn of a legacy founder, with about as much power as a footstool.
Laughter catches my attention, and I could recognize that exquisite example of purity anywhere.
Martine Huntington-Russell, now Herron, glides through the crowd, the emeralds on her choker shining in the sconce light almost as obnoxiously as the fat emerald encased in diamonds on her ring finger.
And next to her—of course—Hayden Herron.
Always impossibly composed, head bent toward her as if anything in the world would be at her disposal.
When she laughs, there’s a crack in his terrifying demeanor.
He no longer looks one second away from snuffing out a life.
No. He looks at her like she’s something divine.
It makes my stomach twist.
Everywhere they go, the crowd parts—out of respect, but also because the intensity of their love is something that makes people uncomfortable. It’s too raw, too consuming. I hate them for it. I envy them for it.
My eyes flick back to Ford. He’s watching them too. His face is unreadable, but I know him—or I thought I did. There’s a storm under that calm I’m desperate to know. Would it still drag me under the tides like it did all those months ago?
Once, I thought Ford would have looked at me that way. Maybe he still could, if he’d stop pretending I was anything other than the woman standing in front of him. If he could see how hard it is to stay still when I’m near him. How painful it is to be without his consideration.
His hatred for me isn’t sudden. It’s built from months and months of tension.
Of late nights, rough fucks, and degradation beyond human comprehension.
Hands wrapped around throats, moans swallowed with bites on lips, and being dragged everywhere, even through the mud.
Going from being his outlet for every dark, unholy frustration to becoming something less than the dirt beneath his shoe twists in my stomach with a sick kind of disgust.
At one point, my body was the altar on which he worshiped, and today, he can barely stand to be in the same room as me.
Martine leans in to whisper something to Hayden; he smiles—that slow, devastating Herron smile—and presses his hand to the small of her back to press her body closer to his. It’s such a small gesture, and yet it feels like being stabbed with a pearl-handled blade.
Like the one I know is tucked inside of Ford's noxiously perfect suit.
Watching them makes me sick.
I want to be happy for my friends. To raise a glass to their cataclysmic connection, impossible to miss. I want to rush to them with congratulations and celebrations, and instead I stand here frozen, moments away from being ill at the spectacle.
Because all I can think about is Ford. Watch him sip from his crystal tumbler of vodka and smoke a cigar with Hudson. Hanging on every move as though it’s a lifeline. I'm desperate for the connection. And no matter how long I stare, how deeply my eyes bore into him, he never looks up.
The chandeliers glitter like a thousand eyes watching my humiliation as I can hardly catch my breath. Rejection curling painfully in my belly under the too-tight weave of my cheekily short couture dress. I feel myself fading, crumbling under the mortification of his refusal.
He ignores me, and when Hudson looks up, his eyes land on mine. I suck in a dejected breath.
Unable to handle Hudson’s curious gaze and turning quickly on my heel, I force a smile, the click of my stilettos sharp and loud against the marble as I head toward the terrace.
Outside, the night air is colder than I expected, a welcome shock against my flushed skin. I breathe a few times deeply, trying to calm the curling anxiety and nausea that fill my belly.
Shivering, and not from the cold, I wrap my arms around myself, pathetically wishing they were someone else's.
I should have a coat on out here against the harsh East Coast cold, but the cool is helping me swallow down the sickness that has been threatening to leave my stomach all day. Could I be sick in rejection? Is it possible to be driven so mad that I can hardly keep even champagne down?
I know I’ve hardly eaten in days, too destroyed to stomach something as normal as a meal when my heart is in pieces. How can broken pieces stomach a meal when they can hardly hold themselves together?
I gag slightly at the idea of food and set my champagne glass down at the small table next to me, wiping my clammy hands on the glorious weave of my mini dress.
Below, the gardens stretch out in moonlight—manicured, flawless, precisely as they should be. Everything is perfect here. And yet standing in perfection, nearly a spectacle of it myself, all I can do is force the tears down that threaten to spill over my lower lashes.
I will not be weak. I will not break down. Dismissal is no desertion to me, as a woman with a reputation of fire in her belly and strength in her voice.
I hear Martine’s laughter again, faint, from inside, and then Hayden’s deeper rumble, and I hate myself for how my heart twists itself tighter.
Unexpectedly—and with a rush of excitement my heart has no right to feel—Ford steps out a moment later onto the terrace, the door clicking shut behind him, and for an instant, hope flares, wild and foolish.
Standing next to me, I drink him in, trying not to fall on my knees like he’s made me do so many times. How can he train me to be the perfect little pet, just to decline me as though I'm less than the trash your servants take out?
But he doesn’t even look at me. He simply comes to stand next to me to look out into the night, hardly recognizing that I’m less than an arm's length away. He lights a cigarette, his gaze fixed somewhere past the hedges. Smoke curls upward, and the smell mingles with my perfume.
I shiver from something much darker and colder than the wind chill, and he doesn’t bother offering me his coat.
“Enjoying yourself?” I ask, trying for indifference. My voice comes out smaller than I intended.
He exhales, slow and deliberate. “You always ask questions you already know the answers to.”
I swallow down the hopeful flutter that spreads across my chest. “I just thought—”
He cuts me off cruelly, with a tone that could wound. “Don’t.”
That single word feels like being dismissed from my own life.
And within seconds, he turns back toward the ballroom, where Hayden and Martine are dancing now, bodies close, the world around them blurring to nothing.
Ford flicks the cigarette into the night, the ember falling like a dying star, and then he’s gone—swallowed by the golden glow of the party.
I stay outside, watching their silhouettes through the window, my reflection ghosting in the glass—a perfect, polished apparition only moments away from ruin.
Finally, the tears spill down my cheeks, not from pain or devastation, nor from any wistful admiration for Martine and Hayden’s love. No, they fall for a reason far crueler, and infinitely more complex to swallow.
And I think, not for the first time, that love in our world isn’t meant to be tender. It’s intended to destroy.