Chapter 2 #2
The rest of the night was an exercise in slow, agonizing torture.
I refused to retreat to the master bedroom and hide like a scolded child, so I sat in a high-backed chair in the far corner of the loft, a silent spectator of the organized business chaos.
I watched as Victoria expertly managed the room, pouring wine for the executives, anticipating Reid's requests before he even vocalized them, and speaking with an authoritative grasp of clean-energy infrastructure that I simply did not possess.
She was brilliant, ruthless, and entirely indispensable to his vision.
And every time Reid looked at her, his eyes alight with the shared adrenaline of solving an impossible problem, another crack formed in the foundation of my marriage.
She wasn't just taking over my living room; she was occupying the space in his life that used to belong to me.
By one in the morning, the negotiations were complete. The executives packed up their briefcases, exhausted but victorious. The caterers had vanished hours ago, leaving behind a pristine kitchen and a staggering bill I was sure the company would quietly absorb.
Victoria was the last to leave. She paused by the elevator, slipping her designer coat over her shoulders. "Brilliant work tonight, Reid. We have them exactly where we want them."
"Couldn't have done it without you ," Reid replied, rubbing the back of his neck, his voice rough with fatigue.
She smiled, a genuine, intimate expression that made my stomach churn, before stepping into the elevator and disappearing behind the sliding steel doors.
The loft fell silent, the sudden absence of noise leaving behind a ringing in my ears that I hadn’t known was there.
The dining table was buried under empty wine glasses and rolled-up paper.
Reid stood by the window, looking out at the darkened city, his shoulders slumped as the adrenaline finally left his system.
I stood up from my chair. My legs felt stiff, my entire body humming with a cold, contained fury. I walked over to the side table and picked up the cold, forgotten cardboard boxes of Thai food, dropping them into the trash can with a hollow thud.
The sound made Reid turn around. He leaned back against the glass, crossing his arms. "I know it wasn't the weekend you planned. But the crisis is handled. The Tacoma factory should be ours."
"She moved my things," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Reid sighed, his brow furrowing in instant irritation. "Gwen. Not right now."
"She walked into my home, threw away the dinner I bought for us, ordered hired staff to take over my kitchen, and then lectured me on my interior decor," I continued, the volume of my voice rising steadily with every word, the dam finally breaking.
"She treated me like an incompetent secretary, Reid. Right in front of you."
Reid pushed off the window, his posture instantly aggressive.
"She was trying to facilitate a crucial meeting under extreme time pressure.
She brought catering because we had to work through dinner.
She moved some chairs because we needed space for the blueprints.
You are taking this and twisting it into a personal attack. "
"It was a personal attack!" I practically shouted, closing the distance between us.
"She doesn't respect me because you don't demand that she respects me.
You let her walk in here and play the hostess.
You took the wine she handed you and you ignored the fact that she was insulting your wife to her face. "
"She didn't insult you!" Reid fired back, his voice booming through the empty loft. "She offered a suggestion about the furniture because the space isn't optimized for what we needed to do. You are manufacturing drama because you are furious that my company requires my attention."
"I am furious because you are letting her replace me!" I yelled, the ugly, desperate truth finally tearing its way out of my throat. "Look at her, Reid! She bulldozes through our marriage, pushing me out of the way. If you’d talked to me about tonight, I could have made things happen. But you didn’t. You let Victoria do it all instead.”
"Enough."
Reid’s voice was lethal, dropping an octave and stripping away any remaining heat in the room. He stared down at me, his eyes dark, hard, and entirely devoid of affection. The man standing in front of me was a stranger, a ruthless billionaire who viewed emotion as an inefficiency to be eradicated.
"I am not going to stand here and listen to you malign a woman who just saved my manufacturing expansion,” Reid stated, his words clipped and precise. "Victoria is a highly effective, deeply connected professional. Her only agenda is the success of this company.”
He took a slow, deliberate step toward me, towering over my smaller frame.
"You need to get a grip on yourself, Gwen," he continued, the sheer coldness of his tone cutting me straight to the bone.
"This paranoia is embarrassing. You are so deeply insecure about your own lack of contribution to this company that you are projecting a malicious, fictional agenda onto a woman who is simply doing her job. "
I physically recoiled. I couldn't breathe. The air in my lungs turned to ice. This wasn’t the marriage I had imagined when I said my vows. Who was this man in front of me?
"I need you to stop acting like a fragile martyr," Reid continued relentlessly, dismantling my heart.
"The Tacoma expansion is moving forward.
That means Victoria is going to be an active, necessary part of my daily life for the foreseeable future.
I need you to grow up and learn to share this space for the sake of the company.
If you can't handle a simple executive meeting without a hysterical breakdown, then you should have just stayed at the house in Medina. "
He didn't wait for a reply. He didn't wait to see the devastated tears that finally spilled over my lashes, tracking hot and fast down my cheeks. He simply turned his back on me, walked across the loft, and disappeared into the master bedroom, shutting the door behind him with a definitive click.
I stood completely alone in the center of the penthouse, surrounded by the debris of a corporate victory that had cost me everything.
I didn’t understand how this could happen.
We were supposed to be a team. We always had been.
But lately, it had all changed. And it wasn’t one event. It was one person. Victoria Albright.