1. Marianne #2
“Leave the corporate files on the entry console, Genevieve,” she finished.
The heiress offered a patronizing smile. She tilted her chin, raking a dismissive look over Marianne’s practical shoes before meeting her eyes.
“Don’t bristle, Marianne,” Genevieve said. “I’m simply ensuring the ambiance actually aligns with what Tristan prefers. We all know managing this tier of high-society protocol exhausts you.”
A young caterer wearing a starched white uniform stepped out from the dining room archway. He carried a metal clipboard tucked under his arm. He halted a few paces from the rolling cart, his dress shoes scuffing against the marble. The noise interrupted the standoff between the two women.
Marianne broke eye contact with the heiress, turning her attention to the new arrival. The caterer pulled the clipboard free and held it out, glancing between them.
“Apologies for the interruption, Mrs. Hawthorne,” he said. “The service team is stalled.”
He tapped a ballpoint pen against the carbon-copy paper clipped to the board.
“Do we proceed with your original seating chart, or the revised floor plan Ms. Harrington submitted directly to the kitchen?” he asked.
The rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock echoed in the sudden silence of the foyer. The ambient clatter of dishes from the adjacent dining room grew louder. Other hired staff lingered nearby, watching the exchange.
Marianne stared at the paper on the board.
The heiress had bypassed her and submitted alternative logistics to the kitchen staff.
It was a perfectly executed trap. If Marianne escalated this confrontation into a screaming match right here on the floor, the caterers would feed the gossip to Eleanor before the first appetizer cleared.
Her mother-in-law would weaponize the outburst, branding Marianne as hysterically unstable. It would provide Eleanor with the exact leverage required to humiliate her and ruin the gender reveal. Protecting the fragile peace for her baby meant swallowing her pride and staying quiet.
Genevieve took a step forward, closing the gap. She tipped her head, ensuring her voice carried across the open foyer to the listening staff.
“Go ahead and clarify the directive, Marianne,” Genevieve said. “We certainly can’t risk the waitstaff colliding with the elder Hawthornes simply because you lack basic spatial awareness.”
The insult was wrapped in corporate jargon and faux concern. Genevieve baited her, waiting for the inevitable working-class explosion.
Marianne stepped away from the metal cart, letting the foreman pass. She walked up to the caterer. She snatched the clipboard from his grasp.
The sharp edge of the metal board dug into her palm. She ignored the sting. She unhooked the pen attached to the top rim. She did not ask the caterer to hold the board. She braced the back against her own forearm.
She pressed the ballpoint tip down onto the authorization line. She dragged the ink across the page, bearing down hard enough to gouge the carbon paper. The nib snagged on the top sheet, tearing a ragged line through the triplicate forms.
She lifted the pen and snapped the cap shut. She shoved the board back against the caterer’s chest, forcing him to grab the edges to keep it from hitting the floor.
“Use Ms. Harrington’s floor plan for the dining room,” Marianne said. “Our absolute priority is keeping the timeline on track, so make the switch and finish setting the tables.”
Genevieve retreated down the corridor, her sharp footsteps echoing until she disappeared from view.
Marianne turned her back on the foyer and marched toward the terrace doors.
She stepped past the idle waitstaff and gripped the brass handles of the French doors.
She twisted them until the latches clicked, shoving the doors outward to let the estate’s stifling heat spill out into the night.
She stepped over the threshold onto the stone terrace and pulled the doors shut behind her, sealing the noise inside.
The December frost cut across her bare cheeks.
The biting draft cut through her thin dress, raising goosebumps along her arms. She breathed in the freezing air, letting the sharp cold burn the suffocating scent of tuberose from her lungs.
She dug into her pocket and retrieved the smartphone she had snatched from the console.
Her thumb swiped across the screen, navigating to Tristan’s private executive line. She pressed the device to her ear, the steady digital ringing cutting through the rushing winter wind.
“Pick up, pick up,” she whispered, pressing the phone tighter.
The line connected with a sharp digital click. The muted snapping of briefcases and the low hum of the Hawthorne boardroom filtered through the line.
“I’m in the middle of a board meeting, Marianne,” Tristan said, his voice echoing over an open microphone. “What is the emergency?”
“Tristan, Genevieve just barged into the foyer and hijacked the floral deliveries,” Marianne said, pacing the length of the stone balustrade.
“The deliveries?” Tristan asked, an annoyed sigh bleeding through the line.
“She commanded the staff to return the arrangements to the loading dock,” Marianne replied. “You have to tell her to back off. This is my event, Tristan.”
A booming baritone cut through the connection before her husband could answer.
“We are finalizing a ten-figure buyout, Tristan!” Winston shouted in the background. “Muzzle your wife and focus on the actual assets.”
He put me on speaker.
The realization settled over her, chilling her far more than the winter air.
Dozens of junior executives were sitting around that conference table right now.
They were listening to the patriarch reduce her to a noisy pet.
She stopped pacing and tightened her grip on the phone, waiting for Tristan to shut his father down.
“Marianne, for God’s sake, drop the attitude,” Tristan said. “Genevieve is indispensable to this merger, so stop taking a simple logistical adjustment so personally and let me work.”
“You’re letting him talk to me like that?” she asked the phone.
“I am hanging up now,” Tristan said.
The line went dead, and the call timer vanished from the screen. Marianne lowered the phone from her ear. He tossed her to the wolves just to save himself a minor inconvenience during a meeting.
She stared at the lifeless device for a long moment before shoving it back into her pocket. The dropping temperature forced her to tuck her elbows against her ribs to preserve her body heat. Reaching into the opposite pocket of her dress, she felt for the folded medical printout.
The winter air numbed her fingertips, making them clumsy. She fumbled against the tight fabric until she finally tugged the stiff, glossy photo free.
She held the sonogram printout up against the fading twilight.
The grainy image of her twenty-week scan caught the faint glow of the estate’s exterior lanterns.
She traced her thumb over the curved outline of the baby.
A bitter gust of wind whipped her hair across her face, stinging her skin, but she couldn’t look away.
“Promise me we are a unified front, Tristan,” she had told him on their wedding night. “Promise me our family comes before theirs.”
“It is just the two of us holding the line right now, little one,” Marianne whispered to the ultrasound. “But tonight, he’ll finally have to choose us.”
Tristan’s blatant refusal to defend her on the phone stung, but she would not surrender.
She stubbornly pinned all her hope on the upcoming dinner.
Seeing the reality of their child would wake him up.
He would look at the colored icing, realize what was at stake, and finally draw a boundary to shield them.