4. CHAPTER 3 #2
Even my father would say Orion Kade isn’t a man you can just ‘see’. You’d have to make appointments months in advance to get an audience with him.
People feared the son, as much as they feared the father.
“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Isolde chimed.
Maybe they’re both right. Our families agreed to this truce. He should at least be willing to see me.
But again, what would I say?
What do I want out of this?
The truth remains that I don’t want this marriage.
I looked at both Isolde and Céleste and nodded in agreement. I wasn’t sure I was going to do it, but agreeing seemed fair at the moment.
By evening, Céleste and I had finished working on the new sketches for Paris Fashion Week. Isolde had left for ballet practice.
“I should start heading home,” I said to Céleste, who was still busy comparing swatches. “It's almost 9PM. Don’t stay out late.”
She looked up at me and smiled before nodding.
"Get home safe," she called after me.
I waved her goodbye and walked into the cold night.
Paris had that skin-piercing wind that winter saved just for night time; it slid under my sweater, and cleaned out the noise in my head.
I walked fast, with my coat draped over my arm, and my breath making ghosts from the cold invading my nostrils.
There was something about thinking in the cold.
It was numbing and bracing all at once, like rinsing a wound and pretending it didn’t sting.
I felt my phone buzz as I crossed the next street.
Yves: Meet at the Parvis du Sacré-C?ur at 6:30am tomorrow. I’ll have everything ready.
I stopped under a shop awning and read it twice. My pulse thudded with the implication of what he was really asking.
I’d thought we were going to take days to plan this well. I’d hoped to summon enough courage to request that audience with Orion Kade, just to see what kind of man they wanted me to staple my life to.
What was I thinking?
And why was I overthinking at all?
Yves loved me. He’d told me countless times how much he adores me. He was acting, not dithering.
Why would I disappoint him?
I closed my eyes, and I could still see the hurt in the lines of his beautiful face when I told him about the impending marriage agreement. I understand desperation made him plan quickly. He didn’t want to lose me to another man. I wasn’t sure I could blame him.
I slid the phone back into my pocket, as I felt the chill pick up all of a sudden and hurried on, promising myself I would decide at home, with tea and heat and a door between me and the cold night.
The Fernández mansion stood in the 8th arrondissement, one of those marble-fronted relics my father refused to modernize. Every inch of it smelled like inherited wealth. Proof of the Fernandez and Moreaux ties—two fortunes folded into one.
Family portraits on the walls, everything curated to suggest the power both families wielded without trying too hard. I’d grown up inside that suggestion. It was a heavy burden.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” Francois, the estate manager, murmured as he opened the door. He took my coat with the warm courtesy he always showed me, and I gave his forearm an appreciative squeeze.
I’d always gotten along with the staff. They were one of the few things that made the estate feel less suffocating.
I climbed the grand staircase, my hand trailing the cold iron balustrade.
Second left, third door. My room faced the garden.
I’d stripped it of the house’s golds and blues a few months ago.
My mother had reluctantly agreed to the makeover, after my brothers had hired an interior decorator to redo their side of the house.
I could see from her expression how she wrestled to say yes to me.
“So you don’t think I’m giving your brothers any preferential treatment.”
Like that had ever stopped her before.
I finally gave the room the befitting face lift it needed: wheat linen for curtains, ivory walls, and a cream rug to match the aesthetic. Nude tones all over.
It irritated my mother, but all I felt was immense joy. Total satisfaction at having something that was solely mine. Something I had a say in around here… finally.
I’d just stepped out from the shower when a two-tap knock came through the door.
“Come in,” I said in a sing-song voice.
“Mademoiselle Léonie. Dinner has been served,” Annette, one of the housekeepers, informed me with her never-withering warm smile on her face.
I’d known Annette since I was a little girl. She’s currently in her forties but doesn’t look a day past twenty-five. Maybe it was one of the reasons we got along so well. We could spend an entire evening talking about books, flowers, baking, gossiping… we had so much in common.
“You should make it down on time. Your father seems to be in one of his moods this evening,” she said in a playful tone.
“Did something happen?” I asked, picking up a bottle of lotion.
“Your big brother might have said something to upset him. I don’t have the details,” she whispered, and I nodded, smiling.
She signaled she had to get back to work, and I nodded again, waving her off.
The door slid shut and I picked out the first thing I could find in my closet and headed down to the dining room.
Everyone was already seated in the ridiculously large room that could fit over twenty people… well, except for Debo who I assume was avoiding being in the same space as our father.
Demola Fernández sat at the head, his whiskey glass in front of him. My mother sat at his side, in all her perfection. She was talking to him about something in a low voice, as she scrolled through her phone.
My brothers—the twins—just two years older than I was, sat on opposite sides. Blaise, sharp-eyed and expression barely readable; Laurent, always uninterested in anything, but already smirking at my damp hair.
“Why are you back so late?” Blaise murmured towards me.
“You should be thankful I came back alive,” I murmured back.
“Alive?”
He sat up straight. Always in his superhero brother form. Blaise and Laurent were both trouble but unlike Laurent who always liked to tease me, Blaise was mostly protective of me. Just like Debo, our eldest brother.
“Sit,” our father’s voice directed me, without warmth or unkindness, polite enough to pass as a request. I took my place and let the heat of the dining room wash whatever was left of the cold off me.
Debo walked in just right before the soups arrived. He didn’t look our father’s way. I could tell whatever they argued about was intense enough to suck the energy out of the room.
“Would you try explaining?” Blaise leaned closer to me, whispering, waiting for me to explain what I meant. He never lets anything go.
“Nothing happened,” I nudged his elbow, and watched his face ease into a slow smile. “I promise.”
He studied my face for a second, deciding whether to believe me.
“Salt, Blaise,” Laurent called out like a king feasting with peasants. Typical of him. No please or courtesy in sight.
Blaise passed him the pepper instead, his face expressionless.
Laurent stared at it. Then back at Blaise. Blaise didn’t look up from his plate. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. If our father wasn’t at the table, I was certain they’d have started bickering and carried it through the rest of the night.
I looked down the table and noticed Debo, head down, focused on his plate like the table didn’t exist.
“I had no idea we were in mourning,” our mother’s voice enveloped the space, her eyes scanning my outfit with disapproval. I was surprised it took her that long to notice the black jumpsuit I wore to dinner.
My mother never wore black for any reason. She’d always associated black with death. I was certain it was purely superstitious.
“Who died?” Laurent quipped. Steady on a roll to play mother’s favorite.
“My freewill,” I replied without missing a beat.
Blaise stifled a laugh. Laurent chuckled, and my mother looked like she was about to pop a vein.
Our father didn’t stop eating. He was busy cutting into his steak and chewing away. He was always that way at the dinner table, utterly unbothered by whatever chaos was building around him.
My eyes met Debo’s finally. He shook his head and smirked at me.
Minutes later, Demola Fernández set his cutlery down in a clank that made everyone at the table look his way.
“There’s business,” he said, and everyone at the table turned their attention to him.
“Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting Orion Kade and counsel. We’ll be finalizing the terms on the truce.”
I heard myself breathe in; that was all.
“Can I sit in?” I asked. My voice sounded reasonably steady, but my heartbeat had already started to pick up.
I knew better than to ask. Not because it was wrong, but because I wasn’t allowed into business spaces.
“No,” he said immediately, the way one swats a fly. “Your brothers will be there.”
“We’ll make sure it’s favorable for you,” Laurent drawled, like he was doing me a favor.
“Favorable for me,” I repeated, and tasted how false it sounded in my mouth. “Am I allowed to know what favorable means?”
Our mother’s smile arrived with the efficiency of a light switch. “Léonie, please. This isn’t a meeting room.”
“It is for me,” I said, before I could soften it. “It’s my life.”
Father’s gaze cut over. “It is your duty. There is a difference.”
I’m surprised at how well I’m able to hide the hurt brewing in my chest.
Blaise cleared his throat and reached for bread he had no intention of eating. He avoided carbs, mostly.
Laurent looked down as if the china had become interesting. Mother refolded her napkin, already tired of my tone, and my behavior.
I could see Debo seething and his struggle to hold back whatever he wanted to say.
Was this what he argued with our father about? Orion Kade?
I knew better than to dwell on it. You can’t win a fight in a room built to prove you wrong.
“Of course,” I said, willed my hand not to shake as I reached for my glass of water. “I only thought to ask.”