5. Lily
— ? —
Lily
The Jade Garden is packed for lunch.
Society wives in designer everything, picking at salads they won’t finish while discussing charity galas and summer homes like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Business partners making deals over dim sum, their laughter too loud and too practiced, performing success for anyone watching.
The see-and-be-seen crowd photographing their plates for social media, curating lives that look nothing like reality.
I used to be one of them.
Used to sit in restaurants like this with a practiced smile, pretending to enjoy food I couldn’t taste while Victoria corrected my fork placement and Edward ignored me in favor of his phone.
Used to nod along to conversations I wasn’t really part of, laughing at jokes I didn’t understand, existing in a space I was never truly welcome in.
Not anymore.
I pause at the hostess stand, scanning the room. My heart is pounding, a war drum beating against my ribs, but my face is calm. Serene. Three years of Burton training finally working in my favor.
Find her. Face her. Don’t flinch.
Elena has chosen the most visible table in the restaurant.
Center of the room, bathed in afternoon light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, positioned so everyone present can watch our conversation.
A power move dressed up as lunch preference.
She wants witnesses. She wants attention.
She wants me to feel exposed, vulnerable, outnumbered by the weight of watching eyes.
Calculated. Deliberate. Exactly like a Burton.
Takes one to know one, I think grimly. I learned from the best.
She’s already seated when I arrive, and my stomach clenches at the sight of her.
Beautiful. I hate that she’s beautiful.
Long dark hair cascading over her shoulders in perfect waves. Flawless makeup that somehow looks effortless. Designer maternity wear that probably cost more than my first apartment, the soft cashmere hugging her curves in a way that screams money and taste and everything you’re not.
One manicured hand rests on her pregnant belly in a protective gesture that makes something twist in my chest. The baby. Edward’s baby. Another child I didn’t know existed until forty-eight hours ago.
And on her left hand, catching the light like a deliberate taunt, a wedding ring.
A ring Edward never gave me.
Because you were never his wife, I remind myself savagely. You were never anything to him but a convenient lie.
“So you’re the wife.”
Elena’s voice cuts through my thoughts like a blade. She’s smiling - a knife wrapped in silk, sharp enough to draw blood if I’m not careful.
“I always wondered what you looked like.” She tilts her head, studying me with open curiosity. “Edward only ever described you as ‘manageable.’”
Manageable.
The word lands exactly where she intended it to.
A precision strike to the part of me that still believes I deserved what they did. I feel my spine stiffen, my jaw tighten, the old impulse to shrink and apologize rising like bile in the back of my throat.
Say sorry. Make yourself smaller. Don’t cause a scene.
Then I remember: I’m not that person anymore.
The woman who would have crumbled at that insult died on a stranger’s porch at midnight, screaming the truth at her husband while another woman’s wine ran red down the wall.
She died in a hotel suite, learning she had a family who’d been searching for her.
She died in Lucas’s arms, discovering what it felt like to be wanted.
I sit across from Elena, my movements deliberate and unhurried. Signal to the hovering waiter with a casual gesture that says I belong here even though my heart is hammering.
“Green tea, please. And whatever she’s not having.”
Elena’s smile flickers. Just a fraction, barely noticeable if you’re not looking for it.
She expected tears. Begging. The Lily she’s heard about - the meek, grateful orphan who didn’t deserve a man like Edward Burton. The woman who should be easy to intimidate, easy to dismiss, easy to destroy.
That Lily is dead.
And I’m what’s left.
“I have to say, you’re not what I expected.” Elena leans back in her chair, one hand still resting on her belly. “The way Edward talked about you, I thought you’d be... smaller, somehow. More pathetic.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh, I’m not disappointed.” Her smile sharpens. “I’m intrigued. Three years of playing the perfect Burton wife, and you never once suspected? Never once questioned why your husband flinched when you touched him? Never wondered why he spent so many nights ‘working late’?”
Each word is a needle, finding the soft spots I’ve tried to armor over.
“I wondered,” I say evenly. “I just made the mistake of believing his lies. Won’t happen again.”
“Won’t it?” Elena laughs - a light, musical sound that probably charms everyone she meets.
“Because from where I’m sitting, you seem like exactly the kind of woman who falls for pretty lies.
The orphan who couldn’t believe her luck.
The nobody who got swept off her feet by a handsome prince.
” She leans forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Did you really think a man like Edward Burton married you for love?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
Three years ago, it would have devastated me. Even yesterday, it might have landed. But now - now I see it for what it is.
Desperation dressed up as cruelty.
“What do you want, Elena?” I keep my voice pleasant, conversational. Just two women having lunch in an expensive restaurant while their designer bags sit beside them like well-trained pets. “You didn’t threaten me into meeting just to rehash my failures.”
“I want you to disappear.”
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t soften. Just states it like a simple fact, like she’s ordering off the menu.
“Take whatever scraps you’ve scraped together and leave my family alone. Go back to wherever you came from. Pretend the last three years never happened.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of woman you are.
” Elena’s smile turns vicious. “The gold-digger who trapped Edward into a fake marriage. The social climber who used his family’s name to claw her way into society.
The pathetic little nobody who thought she could play with the big girls and got burned. ”
“That’s your threat? You’ll tell people lies about me?”
“They’re not lies if everyone believes them.
” She shrugs elegantly. “Victoria has already started laying the groundwork. By next week, you’ll be persona non grata in every drawing room in Manhattan.
No one will hire you. No one will rent to you.
You’ll be exactly what you were before Edward found you - alone, broke, and invisible. ”
I should be scared. Some part of me is scared - the orphan girl who remembers what it felt like to have nothing, to be nothing, to exist in a world that didn’t see her.
But a bigger part of me is furious.
“Your family.” I let the words sit there, watching them land. “You mean the married man who’s been lying to both of us for three years?”
Elena’s composure cracks. Just slightly, a hairline fracture in the perfect facade.
“He loves me.” The certainty in her voice wavers. “He’s always loved me. You were just-”
“A prop. I know.” My tea arrives, and I take a deliberate sip, savoring the heat against my tongue, letting the pause stretch uncomfortably.
“He needed a clean wife for his mother’s approval.
Someone without connections who wouldn’t ask questions.
Someone grateful enough to be chosen that she wouldn’t notice she was never really wanted. ”
“Exactly.” Elena seems pleased that I understand, nodding like we’re finally on the same page. “So you see why you need to-”
“But here’s what you don’t know, Elena.”
I set down my cup with a soft click. Let my grandmother’s steel flow into my voice, the steel that’s been building since I first saw Eleanor’s eyes light up at the sight of me.
“I’m not the nobody Edward told you I was.”
Her smile freezes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My name is Lily Maxwell.” The words feel like armor, like a declaration of war.
“Not Lily Burton - the marriage was never real, as I’m sure you know.
My grandmother is Eleanor Maxwell. Every door in this city that’s ever been closed in your face opens for her name.
She’s my blood. And she has spent twenty years waiting to find out exactly who buried her family. ”
I watch the information land.
Watch her recalculate, her eyes flickering as she reassesses the woman sitting across from her. Watch the color drain from her face as she realizes she’s been threatening someone who could buy and sell her family a hundred times over.
“That’s not possible,” she breathes. “Eleanor Maxwell doesn’t have - the family line ended-”
“Surprise.” I smile, and it’s not a nice smile. “My grandmother has been searching for me for twenty years. The Burtons made sure she couldn’t find me. But she found me anyway. And now I have resources, Elena. Family. A legacy.”
I lean forward, close enough to see the panic flickering in her eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere. So if you came here to threaten me into silence, you should know, the woman you thought you were meeting doesn’t exist anymore.”
Elena’s hand tightens on her belly. A protective gesture, or maybe a nervous one.
“You can’t prove any of this,” she says, but her voice has lost its edge. “You can’t-”
“I can prove all of it. And I will, when the time is right.” I stand, dropping enough cash on the table to cover both our meals with a generous tip. A power move, petty and satisfying. “But right now, I have better things to do than listen to threats from my husband’s pregnant mistress.”
“I’m not his mistress!” Elena’s voice rises, loud enough that heads turn at nearby tables. “I’m his wife. I’m the mother of his children. You’re the-”