24. Ford
— ? —
Ford
I couldn’t stop smiling.
One way or another, whatever it took, I was going to win her back. I was going to prove to her that I could be the man she needed. The man I should have been all along.
I adjusted my sport jacket as I walked through the club corridor, still feeling the phantom press of her body against mine. My skin smelled like eucalyptus and her. I’d shower when I got home, but part of me didn’t want to wash her off just yet.
Then I heard my mother’s voice.
I stopped outside a half-open door, my hand still reaching for the exit.
“You moved too fast.” Cordelia’s voice was ice-cold, clipped with disappointment. “If you’d waited he’d have married you by summer and that bastard girl would be back in whatever gutter Richard Ellsworth found her in.”
My blood went cold.
“I did everything you told me.” Valerie’s voice. “The phone calls, the moving in, the performance at the gala. All of it. It should have worked.”
“But it didn’t work, did it? Because you got greedy.” A pause. The clink of ice in a glass. “The three a.m. call was perfect. Moving into the house was perfect. But the boat? Throwing yourself overboard like some cheap actress? That was amateur theatrics, Valerie. You made my son choose sides.”
“He was supposed to choose me. You said he would. You said once she was gone, he’d see what was right in front of him.”
“I said he would if you played it correctly. Which you didn’t.”
I stood frozen in the corridor, my hand still raised, my whole body rigid. Every word was a knife sliding between my ribs.
All of it. Every single moment that had driven Madison away from me had been my mother’s design, executed by a woman I’d trusted since childhood.
“What do we do now?” Valerie asked. “He won’t even look at me. He told me to stay away from both of them.”
“We wait. Madison will slip up eventually. She always does. She doesn’t have the breeding to sustain this kind of performance. Sooner or later she’ll embarrass him publicly, and when she does, we’ll be there to remind him what he could have had instead.”
“And if she doesn’t slip up?”
“Then we help her along.” The smile in my mother’s voice was audible. “I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”
My hand curled into a fist at my side.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to push through that door. To confront them. To let them see exactly how much I’d heard and watch the color drain from their faces.
But I didn’t move.
I stood in that corridor and let them keep talking, banking every word, cataloging every confession.
Then I turned and walked away, silent, my footsteps absorbed by the thick carpet. My face was calm. My hands were steady.
I had handed her to them.
I’d given them the ammunition. I’d loaded the gun. All they’d had to do was aim.
The guilt was staggering. It pressed down on my chest like a physical weight, making it hard to breathe. I’d failed Madison so completely, so thoroughly, that my own mother had been able to orchestrate her replacement without me even noticing.
I pulled out my phone as I walked to my car and dialed my assistant.
“Mr. Harrington. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you tonight.”
“The Cove project. The hotel renovation Madison’s been working on. I want to finalize the transfer.”
“Sir?”
“Full ownership. Her name on everything. I want the paperwork ready by end of week.”
“That’s… that’s a significant asset, Mr. Harrington. Are you certain you want to…”
“I’m certain. And I want it done quietly. She doesn’t find out until the reveal. Understood?”
“Understood, sir. I’ll have the documents prepared.”
I hung up and stood beside my car, looking out at the harbor.
The harbor deal had closed without me three days after I walked out of it. My partners had been furious, then quiet once the numbers held. A month ago it would have been the only thing on my mind. Now I could barely remember the terms.
She didn’t know that the project she’d poured her heart into, the renovation that was going to establish her as the best designer in Newport, was mine. That I’d bought it for her. I’d been planning this since before she even knew what she wanted.
She would know soon.
And so would my mother.