3. Noelle
— ? —
Noelle
I wake up in a guest suite at the Sterling estate, and for three blissful seconds, I don’t remember.
Soft sheets. High ceilings. Morning light filtering through curtains the color of clotted cream. The kind of luxury that’s supposed to feel like safety.
Then it hits me.
Celeste. Theo. Daddy.
The vow renewal. The red dress. The look on Dorian’s face when his son ran down the aisle.
My eyes close again as the wave crashes over me.
It isn’t the scandal that hollows me out.
It’s the small things. The coffee he used to bring me in bed.
The way he’d reach for my hand in the back of a car without looking up from his phone.
All of it real to me and theater to him, performed over the top of a whole other life, a whole other family, while I thanked him for loving me.
How do you look at someone every morning for five years and feel nothing.
How do you do that and call it a marriage.
You’re still here. You’re still breathing. That’s something.
The estate is already buzzing when I make my way downstairs. Voices drift from the study, low and urgent, the rhythm of people in crisis mode. But something about the way they go quiet when I pass the door makes my skin prickle.
They’re talking about me.
Everyone’s talking about me.
Fragments of conversation float through the house as I walk. The housekeeper whispering to the cook. Two lawyers huddled in the hallway, their words dropping to murmurs the second they spot me. A maid who won’t meet my eyes when she offers me coffee.
They speak about me in low voices, like I’m a patient who might hear. Like I’m already gone and they’re just waiting for the body to realize it.
Through the window, the front gates come into view.
Press vans, lined up along the road, engines idling, waiting.
You’re the roadkill, I remind myself. Smile. It makes them uncomfortable.
A maid intercepts me in the hallway with a silver tray, coffee, toast, a single perfect orchid in a crystal vase. As if breakfast presentation can fix the fact that my life imploded on camera yesterday.
“Mrs. Sterling.” She still won’t quite meet my eyes. “The family is meeting in the study. They’ve asked that you join them when you’re ready.”
Mrs. Sterling.
The name lands wrong. I’m not sure I’m still a Mrs. anything. I’m not sure what I am.
“Thank you,” I say, because I was raised to be polite even when I’m dying inside. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
The study is a battlefield.
Lawyers in expensive suits line one wall. Cordelia presides from the head of the table, flanked by her assistant and what looks like a PR specialist. Dorian is nowhere to be seen, probably hiding, and Sebastian sits in the corner, silent, watching everything with those cold, calculating eyes.
They’re at war, I realize. Just not with the right enemy.
Not over the scandal or the betrayal or the fact that Dorian has been living a double life for half a decade.
The optics.
That’s what they’re fighting about. How it looks. How to spin it. How to make the Sterling name come out of this smelling like roses instead of garbage.
No one asks how I’m doing. No one even looks at me when I walk in.
“The statement needs to go out by noon,” the PR specialist is saying. “We frame it as a mutual decision to separate. Irreconcilable differences. No mention of the child, no mention of the sister-”
“And what about Noelle?”
Sebastian’s voice cuts through the chatter. He’s not looking at me, but somehow I feel the weight of his attention anyway.
“What about her?” Cordelia’s voice is dismissive.
“She’s in the middle of this. She needs to be part of the strategy.”
“She is part of the strategy.” Cordelia slides a folder across the table. “This is what we’ve drafted. Standard NDA, generous severance, a statement that frames the separation as mutual and amicable. She signs it, she disappears, and we all move on.”
The folder sits in front of me, and I don’t want to touch it.
Vanish gracefully. Exactly what Sebastian told me yesterday, standing in that hallway while the scandal burned in the next room. There will be a number. An NDA. You’ll sign it and disappear.
They’d already decided. Before I even walked in here, before I even woke up this morning, they’d already decided what to do with me.
The folder remains untouched.
“This is what you were telling me yesterday,” I say, looking at Sebastian. “In the hallway. After the ceremony. You already knew what they were going to offer.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t respond.
“You already had the paperwork ready.” My gaze shifts to Cordelia. “Before the vow renewal even happened. You were planning to get rid of me either way.”
“Don’t be dramatic, dear. This is simply-”
“Damage control. Yes. I’ve heard.”
The room goes quiet.
The smart play would be to open the folder, read the number, take the check, and walk away with whatever shreds of dignity I have left. That’s what a reasonable person would do.
But I’m so tired of being reasonable.
“I want to know what’s in there,” I say, “before I sign anything.”
Cordelia’s smile tightens. “It’s quite generous. Far more than you’re entitled to, legally speaking.”
“I’m entitled to an explanation.” My voice is steady. Calm. I’ve already lost everything, so there’s nothing left to be afraid of. “I’m entitled to know why my husband had a secret family with my sister for five years while I was playing house in his apartment.”
“These things happen-”
“Stop saying that.”
The words land sharper than I mean them to, but I don’t take them back.
Before Cordelia can respond, footsteps echo in the hallway.
Dorian appears in the doorway.
He looks like hell. Rumpled shirt, dark circles under his eyes. He’s been up all night trying to figure out how to save himself, and it shows on every inch of him.
Good, I think viciously. I hope you haven’t slept in days.
“We need to talk,” he says, his eyes finding mine. “Alone.”
The room holds its breath.
The smart thing would be to say no. To tell him to go fuck himself. To refuse to give him another second of my time.
But some part of me still wants answers. Still needs to understand how the man I married could do this.
“Fine.”
The hallway is quiet when we step out, the door clicking shut behind us. Suddenly we’re alone for the first time since everything fell apart.
“Noelle-”
“You have a five-year-old son.” The words come out flat, dead, like they’re being spoken by someone who’s already stopped caring. “With my sister. And you married me anyway.”
He opens his mouth, but I’m not finished.
“What else is there to talk about?”
He runs a hand through his hair, that familiar gesture that used to make my chest ache. Now it just makes me feel hollow.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he says. “Celeste and I, we were together before. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
“I know you dated her before the scandal. I didn’t know you got her pregnant.”
“I didn’t know either. Not at first.” He starts pacing, that restless energy he gets when he’s cornered.
“She told me right before everything blew up. The thing with the senator, the breakdown, she was spiraling, and I panicked. I told her to go somewhere quiet. Get her head together. I said I’d handle it. ”
“Handle it.”
“I was going to tell my parents. I was going to-” He stops, swallows hard. “But then she disappeared. And my mother said it was better this way. A clean break. And you were there, and you were-”
“Convenient?”
“No.” He looks at me, and for a second something almost like guilt flickers across his face. “You were good, Noelle. You were kind and patient and you didn’t ask questions. You were everything Celeste wasn’t.”
“So you married me as a placeholder.”
“I married you because my family told me to.” His voice sharpens. “You think I had a choice? You think any of us have choices? My mother picked you. Sebastian approved it. I did what I was told, just like you did.”
“But you kept seeing her.” My voice cracks despite my best efforts. “All those business trips. All those late nights. You were with her. With them. You had a whole other family, Dorian, and you never-”
“It wasn’t like that. Celeste was... it was complicated. I was trying to do the right thing for everyone.”
“The right thing?” A sound jerks out of me, hollow and bitter. “Was the right thing lying to me for five years? Was it sleeping in our bed and then going home to her? Was it telling me I was crazy every time I noticed something wrong?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“No.” One step toward him, and he actually backs up like I’m the threat here. “You kept everything down for five years. You kept secrets and lies and a whole entire child down, and I’m done being quiet. I’m done pretending everything is fine when it’s not. I’m done-”
He grabs my arm.
“Listen to me.” His grip is tight and desperate.
He’s watching his perfect life crumble and he can’t figure out how to stop it.
“We can fix this. We can tell people Celeste is unstable. An obsessive ex who won’t let go.
She’s got a history, everyone knows it. The kid could be anyone’s.
Hell, you’re twins. If we spin it right, people might even think-”
“That Theo is mine?” The words come out disbelieving. “You want me to claim my sister’s child as my own to save your reputation?”
“It’s not about my reputation. It’s about the family. The company. Everything we’ve built-”
“You didn’t build anything.” My arm yanks free from his grip. “Your family built it. You just inherited it. And now you want me to lie so you can keep coasting on their money?”
“Noelle-”
“He’s her kid, Dorian. Everyone saw that. Everyone saw him run down the aisle and call you Daddy. There’s no spinning that.”
“It doesn’t matter what’s true.” His voice goes cold, and this is the real Dorian, the one who’s been hiding behind charm and excuses for five years. “It matters what people believe.”
One step back. Then another.