Chapter 13
Cornelia
Ibasically had to throw Annabelle and Laurie out.
They didn’t want to leave me alone, but I knew they both had things to do.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled, but it helped that Anthony was returning from his trip early.
Apparently, when I was indisposed (too drunk to talk), he called to inform me he was cutting his trip short.
He saw the video of the fight and decided to come home immediately.
When I found out, I called to tell him not to bother, but he was already on the plane. He should arrive any minute now.
After Annabelle and Laurie left, I tried to distract myself and resist the temptation to go online.
I asked the maids to change all the bedding and clean my bathtub.
I took a long shower, then lay in bed, trying to read a book or watch a TV show, but my attention didn’t stick to either.
Eventually, the temptation won. I went to my desk, opened my laptop, and watched the video of the fight.
There are a pair of videos floating around.
They are a little blurry, and the audio isn’t great given the music, but the people there were filling in the blanks.
After that, I went down a rabbit hole, scrolling through comments, news articles, and anything else I could find about what had happened yesterday.
When people say never to Google yourself when you’re famous, they’re right.
The articles from the tabloids ranged from titles like The Heir to the Winthrop Fortune Chooses Age Over Beauty—focusing on TJ and my mother—to They Keep It in the Family, dragging in TJ, Nate, my mother, and me.
Some articles were more creative than others, and a few definitely took some creative liberties.
One from CB London, the tabloid that I’m convinced profits mostly off us, even claimed we all were a quartet until TJ and my mother reduced it into a duo.
There’s even a Twitter poll about who’s more attractive—my mother or me. At least I’m winning.
I hear a knock on my door. “May I come in?” Anthony’s voice comes from the other side.
“You may,” I reply as I turn around to face him.
Anthony enters my room, perfectly dressed in a blue suit despite coming straight from a transatlantic trip. He holds out a box for me. Ever since I was little, he has always brought me back a gift from his trips. Back then, it was toys—now it’s jewellery and bags.
I quickly get up from my desk, take the box from his hands, and walk over to my chaise longue to sit down and open it.
Inside the box sits a Jemma Wynne pendant featuring a 1.30-carat champagne pear diamond surrounded by twelve white round-cut diamonds, hanging from a delicate ball chain. It’s beautiful.
He sits beside me, and I hug him. “Thank you, I love it.”
“You’re welcome.” As we part, his yellow-green eyes scan me up and down. “How are you with everything?”
My brother is always tiptoeing around me.
I let out a little laugh, returning my gaze to the necklace and letting my fingers trace its surface. “You know, all our conversations would be more efficient if you didn’t dance around what you really want to ask.”
He smiles at me and nods. “You’re right. How are you feeling about the fight, and everyone finding out about what happened with TJ and… Mum?”
I shrug. “I’m fine.”
“You know, for this to work, the not dancing around has to go both ways.”
“I’m not fine,” I correct myself, meeting his gaze. “But I’m handling it. Sooner or later, it was bound to come out. Sure, there were a hundred better ways for it to happen, but what’s done is done.”
“Very mature approach,” Anthony compliments me. If he only knew. He thinks I’ve handled it all so well. I doubt he’d think the same if he knew what I had done the day before leaving for Paris.
Still, I take the compliment. “Thank you.”
Anthony glances at the cart with barely touched food in the middle of my room. In the morning, it held breakfast, which I ate little of, but Annabelle and Laurie did. Around one hour ago, one of the maids took it away and brought it back with supper, which I wasn’t keen on eating either.
He frowns at it. “Have you eaten anything today?”
I think about lying, but decide not to. “Not much,” I admit.
He looks at me, concerned.
I quickly say, “I haven’t eaten because I have a killer hangover, and the sight of food makes me want to vomit. But once that passes, I’ll eat.” That doesn’t seem to convince him. “I promise,” I add, and that two-word, eight-letter phrase does. I offer him my pinky.
When I was little, we made a pact never to break each other’s promises; that two-word phrase is kind of sacred to us. It’s also why I hold the promises I make him—and the promises I make others—in such high regard.
He takes it, linking his pinky with mine. “Okay, but I’ll hold you to that.”
I roll my eyes playfully.
Anthony looks at me, mulling over something. “Is there something going on between Nate and you?” The question takes me back.
“No,” I say firmly.
“Then what was the fight all about?”
“Nate kissed me, and TJ didn’t like that.”
“So… he kissed you, but there’s nothing going on between you?” he asks, his voice heavy with scepticism.
“Yes,” I say, unsure.
He gives me one of those looks the older generations often give to the younger ones—a look that seems to say, I will never understand you all.
Now that I hear someone say it aloud, I realise how strange it sounds. I’m not even sure I understand it.
I always thought the night Nate and I spent in Paris meant the same to him as it did to me—a way to forget each other’s problems, drowning in each other. But now, with what happened, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it meant something different to him.
“You know who I bumped into at Harrods two days ago?” I ask, changing the topic because I want him to think I’m unbothered by all of this, and I’d like to talk about something that won’t give me a headache or make me want to throw up again.
Besides, I’d planned to bring this up the moment he came back.
He rests his fingers on his jaw as he looks at me. “Who?”
“Mackenzie Vanride.” She’s a socialite and a writer for Vogue.
We’ve hung out at events from time to time.
She’s Anthony’s age, and she’s genuinely nice—not the kind I’m nice to you because of who you are and what I can get from you nice, which I get a lot.
“She got a divorce and is back in London for good.”
She married a New York lawyer one year ago and moved there. Some people may see that as a red flag, but I don’t. I actually think that speaks well of a person—knowing when something isn’t working and leaving, rather than staying and being unhappy.
Anthony doesn’t say anything but looks intrigued to see where I’m going with this, which I take as a signal to keep talking.
“I was thinking that maybe the three of us could go to dinner and catch up.”
Actually, it was more like what she was thinking.
When I bumped into her, she asked me a lot about Anthony and kept going over her divorce.
In my mind, what she was really saying was, Is your brother still single?
She asked about going to dinner next week, and I thought I might as well cut the middleman and take Anthony with me.
I know that, technically, her wanting to hang out with me to get to my brother contradicts my argument that she’s genuinely nice, but she was nice to me when she was dating her now ex-husband.
And I don’t blame her—she’s almost forty.
Where else is she going to find a billionaire with no children, no ex-wife, muscles, and all of his hair?
And I really think they could make a cute couple.
Anthony’s lips curl slowly. “Thank you very much, but I can get my own dates.” He saw straight through me.
Sure, he can get his own dates, but he never gets himself a girlfriend—which is why this isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that I’ve tried to set him up with someone.
Before I can argue, he gets up. “I’m going to unpack, and you eat something, or I’ll take it away.” He gestures at my new necklace, and I clutch it, bringing it to my chest. If he wants it back, he’s going to have to fight me.
On his way out, he glances at my laptop, which is still sitting open on my desk, with a lot of tabs open on various tabloids.
“Also, stop reading that trash,” he says, pointing at my laptop.
“I know it’s tempting, but it won’t do you any good.
I’ve already called the lawyers to serve them papers for defamation.
It won’t get everything down, but it will address the ones that aren’t based on facts. ”