13. Ursula
— ? —
Ursula
I refuse to let one alleyway ambush keep me from the crown jewel of the society season.
My dress is midnight blue, backless, long-sleeved, cut to kill.
Matteo helped me cover the faint bruises on my arm with concealer, his touch gentle, his jaw tight with barely contained rage.
He hasn’t said anything about what happened since we left the alley, but I can feel it simmering beneath his surface.
Every time he looks at me, I see the calculation in his eyes, the weighing of consequences against satisfaction.
“If he comes near you,” Matteo says in the car, “I’m not stepping back this time.”
“You might have to.”
“I won’t.”
“Matteo.” I take his hand, thread my fingers through his. “I need you to trust me tonight. If something happens, I need you to let me handle it. Can you do that?”
He goes still for a moment. Then he brings my hand to his lips, kisses my knuckles. “I’ll try.”
***
The Plaza’s grand ballroom is even more spectacular than the Vanderbilt was.
White orchids cascade from the ceiling in waterfalls of petals.
Crystal chandeliers cast everything in warm golden light.
The city’s finest, drinking champagne and pretending they’re not all here to watch the latest act of the Rothwell divorce drama.
I spot Bennett immediately.
He’s standing near the bar with Renata on his arm, both of them dressed to impress, both of them watching the entrance like they’ve been waiting for me.
His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, the eyes of a man who hasn’t slept in days.
But he’s smiling. That cruel, confident smile I used to find charming and now recognize as a warning sign.
“He looks like hell,” Matteo murmurs.
“Good.”
This time I don’t slip in along the edges. I walk the room on Matteo’s arm, unhurried, and let every head turn, letting the crowd see us together. Matteo’s hand rests on my lower back, warm and possessive. I lean into him just enough to be noticed, just enough to make a statement.
The whispers follow us like a tide.
“...did you hear what happened at the Vanderbilt...”
“...licked wine off her neck, can you imagine...”
“...Bennett’s absolutely furious...”
Good. Let him be furious. Let him stew in his fury while his whole world crumbles around him.
We’re near the champagne fountain when Bennett makes his move.
He drifts through the crowd like a shark, casual, unhurried, until he’s standing right beside me. Matteo tenses, but I put a hand on his arm. Wait.
“You look tired, Ursula.” Bennett’s voice is a whisper, pitched for my ears only. “Not sleeping well? Still thinking about our little conversation this afternoon?”
“I don’t think about you at all, Bennett.”
“Liar.” He leans closer, his breath hot on my ear.
“I can still feel your pulse under my fingers. The way you trembled. The way your eyes got big and scared. You remember what real power feels like now, don’t you?
Not this...” he gestures at Matteo, “this pantomime. Real power. The kind that can squeeze.”
My pulse is a war drum. I won’t let him see it. I won’t give him that.
“Is that supposed to frighten me?”
“It should.” His smile is a razor. “Because this isn’t over. Not by a long shot. You think you’ve won something? You’ve won nothing. When I’m done with you, you won’t have a friend in this city. You won’t have a name. You won’t have anything except the memory of what you threw away.”
“Don’t you fucking talk to my woman.”
Matteo’s voice cuts through the whisper, low and lethal, a voice that makes men step back.
Bennett doesn’t step back. He turns, slowly, and faces Matteo with that same cruel smile.
“Your woman? She was my woman for thirteen years, Salazar. You think a few weeks of revenge sex makes her yours?”
“I think she chose me. I think she looked at everything you had to offer and decided it wasn’t worth having. I think that kills you more than anything else.”
Bennett’s smile flickers. Just for a second. But it’s enough.
“Trouble in paradise?”
Renata appears at Bennett’s elbow, champagne in hand, her smile sharp as glass. She’s wearing red tonight, a deliberate echo of my dress at the Vanderbilt, and her eyes sweep over me with undisguised contempt.
“The ice queen graces us with her presence. How brave, how pathetic.”
“Renata.” I keep my voice cool. Bored. “I see you’re still dressing from my closet. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Though I suppose literally too, given how comfortable you were in my robe.”
Her smile tightens. “At least I look good in it.”
“You look like what you are. A woman who spent years pretending to be a friend so she could steal a life she wasn’t capable of building herself.”
“Steal?” She laughs, high and bright. “I didn’t steal anything. Bennett was mine long before he was yours. You were just a placeholder. A warm body with a cold heart and a useful family name.”
“And yet here you are, at my society’s gala, wearing my husband’s ring, and everyone in this room is still looking at me.”
“They’re looking at a train wreck. They’re waiting to see you fall.”
“Then they’ll be waiting a long time.”
Renata steps closer. Her champagne sloshes in her glass, and I wonder if she’s drunk, or just reckless. “You know what I hate most about you? That you actually believed he loved you. Thirteen years, and you never saw what was right in front of your face. Pathetic, naive, stupid.”
“I may have been naive.” My voice is ice. “But I was never cruel. I never pretended to be a friend while plotting to destroy someone’s life. I never watched my supposed friend walk in on an affair and did nothing to stop it. I never was a betrayer.”
Renata’s face goes red.
“You want to talk about cruel? Cruel is naming a seventy-million-dollar ship after me. Cruel is parading your new boyfriend in front of my partner. Cruel is acting like you’re the victim when everyone knows you drove Bennett to me with your coldness, your rigidity, your absolute inability to be a real woman. ”
“A real woman.” I laugh, and it sounds brittle even to my own ears. “You mean a woman who spreads her legs for a married man and calls it love? That kind of real?”
The slap comes fast.
Her palm cracks across my face so hard my head snaps to the side. The sound echoes through the ballroom, sharp as a gunshot. The whole room stops talking at once.
My cheek is on fire. My ears are ringing.
Matteo surges forward, and I feel his rage like a physical force, but I hold up my hand. Stop.
He looks at me. Really looks. Sees whatever is in my eyes.
And he steps back.
He clears the runway.
I turn to face Renata. She’s standing there with her hand still raised, her chest heaving, her eyes bright with triumph. She thinks she’s won something. She thinks a slap is victory.
She doesn’t know me at all.
I close my fist.
Twenty years of her smile and her sweetness and her “you’re like a sister to me.” I think about her hands on my shoulders, pushing me to the floor. I think about my mother’s ring on her finger and my robe on her body and my husband inside her while she looked at me in the mirror and didn’t stop.
I punch her.
No slap, no shove. A real punch, closed fist, all the weight of my body behind it. My knuckles connect with her cheekbone and the impact travels up my arm and she goes down like a felled tree, sprawling on the marble floor in her red dress with blood already streaming from her nose.
The ballroom is absolutely silent.
I crouch down beside her. She’s staring up at me with shock and fear and something that might be the beginning of tears.
“Stay down.” My voice is calm. Pleasant. Not a crack in it anywhere. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my friends. Stay away from anything that has my name on it. And if you ever touch me again, I will do worse. Do you understand?”
She doesn’t answer. She just lies there, bleeding, broken, while a room full of Manhattan’s finest watches.
I straighten. Smooth my dress. Turn to Matteo and take his arm.
We walk away.
The applause starts slow. One person, somewhere in the back. Then another. Then another. It builds like a wave, cresting and rolling through the ballroom, until the entire room is clapping for the ice queen who finally broke.
I don’t look back.
I don’t need to.