Chapter 13
Grace
The harsh, generic ringtone shattered the heavy silence of my one bedroom apartment in Queens.
I couldn’t stay in the hotel forever. I couldn’t afford it.
My credit cards still worked. Adrian had not sunken to the level of threatening me with destitution yet, but I wanted to stand on my own feet.
The tiny, furnished sublet was about a thousand rungs down from the penthouse.
But it had two benefits. Joss had found it through a line cook who owed her a favor, and I could pay for it out of my meager paycheck.
It was Saturday morning, and I was scheduled for the evening shift. I had spent the last three hours lying still on the lumpy mattress, staring blankly at a water stain on the peeling ceiling paint.
I rolled over, my back and shoulder muscles screaming in sharp, physical protest from the fifty-hour prep week, and grabbed my phone off the scratched nightstand. The bright caller ID flashed a name that made my heart physically ache in my chest.
Esme.
Adrian’s younger sister. She was seventeen years old, inherently brilliant, fiercely independent, and currently supposed to be safely locked away at an elite, highly secure boarding school in the Swiss Alps.
I adored her. When Adrian and I had first married, Esme was a ten-year-old holy terror who resented her older, impossibly perfect, demanding brother.
I had deliberately, carefully become the bridge between them.
I had snuck her contraband candy when Conrad demanded she diet.
I had listened to her complain for hours about the crushing weight of the Wright family expectations.
I had been the soft, necessary buffer when Adrian’s rigid, corporate management style threatened to suffocate her spirit.
These days, she preferred staying at the penthouse when she returned to New York instead of her father’s brownstone. Conrad didn’t care, and I had allowed her to pick out and decorate her own room in the penthouse for her visits.
I had lost her when I walked out, along with the penthouse, the trust, and the ghost of the baby I thought was mine.
I swiped the screen to answer, my hand shaking slightly. “Esme?”
“Grace,” she gasped. Her voice was thick, wet, and utterly broken by tears.
I shot up in bed, instantly ignoring the stabbing pain in my lower back, the exhaustion evaporating in a rush of pure adrenaline. “Esme, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you in Switzerland?”
“I’m at the penthouse,” she sobbed, the sound muffled and echoed, as if she were hiding on the floor of a closet. “I came home for a school break. Adrian sent a private car to the airport to get me, but he didn’t tell me. Nobody told me.”
My stomach dropped into a sickening free-fall. “Told you what, sweetheart?”
“That you left,” she cried, her voice pitching up into genuine, terrified panic.
“That Adrian is getting a divorce. I walked in this morning, and all your things are gone, and you weren’t here, and there’s this...
this woman making herbal tea in your kitchen like she owns the place.
Grace, please. Where are you? Why did you leave? ”
The absolute desperation in her young voice shattered the fragile, hardened armor I had painstakingly built since Celine cornered me in the alleyway yesterday. Esme was innocent collateral damage in a vicious corporate war she didn’t understand and didn’t ask for.
“I’m in Queens, honey,” I said softly, scrubbing a hand over my tired face, trying to project a calm I didn’t feel. “I’m so sorry nobody called to tell you before you landed.”
“Come get me,” she pleaded, her voice cracking. “Please, Grace. I can’t stay here with her. She’s acting like my sister-in-law, and she keeps trying to touch my arm. Adrian isn’t even here. He’s at the office. Please come.”
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t care about the legal boundaries. I didn’t care that returning to the penthouse meant intentionally crossing heavily fortified enemy lines.
“I’m on my way,” I promised, already kicking the blankets off. “I’ll be there in forty minutes. Pack a bag.”
I threw on a pair of faded denim jeans and a soft, oversized sweater, grabbed my bag, and practically ran the blocks to the subway station.
The long ride into Manhattan was a blurred, agonizing tunnel of anxiety.
The familiar, gold-trimmed lobby of the TriBeCa penthouse building felt distinctly hostile as I pushed through the revolving doors.
The doorman, Thomas, stared at me in absolute, wide-eyed shock as I marched past the mahogany desk without stopping.
“Mrs. Wright—” he started.
“Morning, Thomas.” I breezed by him like I still belonged there, stepping into the private executive elevator. I didn’t wait for him to announce me or check the security list. I knew the override code for the keypad by heart.
The heavy brass doors slid open directly into the sunlit entryway.
The penthouse smelled exactly as I had left it: expensive Casablanca lilies, lemon floor wax, and the subtle, lingering scent of Adrian’s cologne.
I walked quickly past the black Steinway grand piano, the heels of my boots clicking sharply on the hardwood, heading straight for the room Esme occupied whenever she visited.
“Grace?”
I froze halfway down the hall.
Celine emerged from the massive chef’s kitchen, casually wiping her hands on a linen dish towel. She was wearing a flowing, expensive silk caftan, her blonde hair styled. She looked relaxed. She looked at home in the life I had built.
“What are you doing here?” Celine asked. The welcoming, graceful hostess facade dropped instantly, replaced by a sharp, highly defensive annoyance. She crossed her arms defensively over her stomach. “Adrian isn’t home. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not here for Adrian,” I said coldly, my voice dripping with ice, walking right past her without breaking stride.
“You can’t just walk in here,” Celine snapped, turning on her heel and following me rapidly down the hallway. “This is my home now. You don’t live here anymore. You need to leave before I call security.”
“Grace!”
A heavy oak door down the hall flew open, and Esme launched herself at me.
She was a whirlwind of dark hair, oversized vintage band t-shirt, and pure teenage angst. She buried her face in my shoulder, clinging to my sweater with desperate, bruising strength.
I wrapped my arms around her tightly, burying my face in her dark hair, the familiar, comforting scent of her coconut shampoo breaking my heart all over again.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered into her hair, holding her tight, anchoring her. “I’ve got you, Es. It’s okay.”
“Take her away, if you want,” Celine demanded, stopping a few feet away, watching us with a mixture of profound disdain and high-strung irritation. “She’s been throwing an absolute tantrum all morning. It’s stressful for the baby. I can’t have this kind of negative energy in the house.”
Esme pulled back from my shoulder, her dark eyes flashing with pure, undiluted Wright fire. She glared at Celine with a hatred so intense it was almost physical.
“You are not my family,” Esme spat, her voice shaking with rage. “You are a paid incubator. My brother bought you. Do not ever speak to me again.”
Celine gasped, taking a dramatic step back, her face flushing an angry, mottled red. “Excuse me? You spoiled little brat—”
“You heard her,” I said, stepping smoothly between Esme and Celine, physically shielding the teenager with my body.
My voice was low, calm, and lethal. “Go back to the kitchen, Celine. And if you ever, ever speak to her like that again, I will personally drag you out of this penthouse by your hair, and I won’t care who is watching. ”
Celine stared at me, genuinely shocked by the sudden, raw, unapologetic aggression. The pliable, devastated, crying woman she had easily manipulated in the alleyway yesterday was gone, instantly replaced by a fiercely protective sister who had nothing left to lose.
Celine took a quick step back, her hands fluttering protectively to her stomach, and retreated rapidly down the hallway toward the kitchen without saying another word.
I turned back to Esme, my expression softening instantly. “Grab your bag. We’re leaving.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting safely in a quiet, heavily air-conditioned, upscale diner a few blocks away from the penthouse. Esme had systematically demolished a massive plate of French fries and was now clutching a vanilla milkshake, her eyes red but dry.
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly, tracing the ring of condensation on the glass with her thumb. “Why did you leave? Adrian is a total mess. He had already left for work when I got there, but he sounded awful. He sounded dead.”
I sighed, stirring a packet of sugar into my black coffee, watching the dark liquid swirl.
I couldn’t tell a seventeen-year-old girl the brutal, graphic details of her older brother’s supposed infidelity, or the horrifying reality of his manufactured heir.
It was too ugly. It would permanently destroy her perception of the one stable figure in her life.
“Adrian and I...we just want very different things now, Es,” I said carefully, choosing my words like stepping stones across a minefield. “He lied to me about something very important regarding the baby. And I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t trust him.”
Esme frowned, her sharp, analytical mind immediately dissecting the vague statement. “Did he do something bad?”
“Yes,” I said honestly.
“But he’s Adrian,” Esme protested, looking up at me, genuine, profound confusion swimming in her dark eyes. “He fixes things. He doesn’t break them.”
“He broke this,” I told her gently. “He broke us.”
Esme shook her head, leaning forward across the formica table.
“He’s the only one in that family who actually shows up for me.
Do you know he flew to Switzerland in the middle of a massive blizzard last winter because I had a panic attack before my final exams?
He canceled a massive merger meeting in London just to sit in my dorm room for two days and help me study flashcards until I calmed down. ”
I blinked, genuinely surprised. I hadn’t known that. Adrian had called me from Heathrow and told me he was delayed in London for business. He had never mentioned Switzerland.
“And when I got suspended in middle school for fighting that girl who insulted me,” Esme continued, her voice gaining traction and volume.
“My dad wanted to send me to a strict military school in upstate New York to ‘correct my behavior.’ Adrian fought him. Adrian literally stood between me and Dad in the library and said he would empty his own trust fund to pay for my tuition if Conrad cut me off. He protected me. He always protects me.”
I stared at her, a strange, uncomfortable pressure building rapidly in the center of my chest.
“He’s a good man, Grace,” Esme said, her voice dropping to a desperate, pleading whisper. “He’s not a liar. If he lied to you, he must have thought he had a really good reason. He must have been trying to protect you from something.”
I did it to protect you! You wanted a child so badly, Grace. I couldn’t let you lose this too. I couldn’t let you grieve again.
Adrian’s frantic, desperate words in Dr. Saylor’s clinic echoed loudly in my memory, unbidden.
At the time, I had dismissed them as pure, calculated manipulation. A sociopathic excuse designed to cover his tracks, manage the fallout, and secure his billion-dollar inheritance from Conrad.
And then Celine had cornered me in the alley, proving with one devastating, intimate detail about how he kissed that he was a manipulative, adulterous liar who slept with the surrogate.
But sitting across the table, Esme was painting a vivid picture of a different man. A man capable of genuine, selfless, quiet devotion. A man who didn’t brag about his good deeds.
A decent man.
That decent man didn’t fit the sociopathic monster I had firmly decided Adrian was. A monster wouldn’t fly through a dangerous blizzard just to comfort a teenager. A monster wouldn’t risk his billion-dollar inheritance to protect his sister from their father’s wrath.
My absolute, jagged certainty about his guilt cracked down the middle.
If Adrian was truly capable of selfless devotion...then his desperate plea in the clinic—that he lied about the eggs solely to protect my heart from the devastation of another failure—might have actually been the truth. It was flawed, it was controlling, but it was born of love, not malice.
And if that was the truth...what else was true?
What if he really hadn’t touched Celine? What if he really hadn’t slept with her?
He whispers your name against your lips before he kisses you deeply.
The devastating detail slammed back into my consciousness, slamming the heavy iron door shut on the fragile, budding hope.
“He kissed her, Esme,” I whispered, the painful, humiliating truth slipping out before I could stop it, my voice breaking on the words. “He had a physical affair with her.”
Esme stared at me, her dark eyes widening in absolute shock. The diner seemed to go quiet.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she shook her head.
“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe that.”
“Celine told me,” I argued, my voice shaking, desperately needing her to understand why I had to leave. “She knew a detail...something so private, something she couldn’t possibly know unless it was true. Unless she had been the one he was kissing.”
“Celine is a snake,” Esme said bluntly, her sharp teenage intuition cutting cleanly through all the adult complications and corporate maneuvering.
“I spent exactly twenty minutes with her in that penthouse, and I know she’s a manipulative snake.
If Adrian looked you in the eye and said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it.
He doesn’t lie to cover his own ass, Grace.
He only lies to protect the people he loves. ”
I sat back hard against the red vinyl booth, the ambient noise of the diner fading into a dull, rushing roar in my ears.
I was suddenly, profoundly terrified.
Because if Esme was right...if Adrian was actually telling the absolute truth about the physical affair...and if Celine was lying...
Then I had walked away from my husband, thrown my platinum wedding rings into a glass of champagne in front of the board, and burned my entire beautiful life to the absolute ground, all because a highly manipulative surrogate had handed me a calculated lie that I was too devastated to question.
I looked at my cell phone, sitting silently on the Formica table next to my coffee cup.
For the first time since I found out about the baby, I wanted to call him.