Chapter 17
I had put so much effort into my look tonight.
My midnight-blue silk gown is tailored perfectly, and my hair is styled beautifully.
At least, I think so. I can see the curl of it that I'm playing with on the sides of my face, glistening and shiny under the passing highway lights.
I don't usually like wearing makeup, but it looks beautiful tonight.
Kara helped. I am fully decked out. In any other world, I would feel like a goddess walking into a room, but sitting next to my husband on my left, I just feel empty.
It's like little bits and pieces of me are constantly being chipped away.
I don't even know how we got there so fast. Maybe it's because my mind completely turned off during the trip.
But as the car pulls up to the glittering titanium-and-glass entrance of the Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum, I can already see that there's a lot of activity, and I start feeling nervous.
The futuristic angles of the architecture look almost alien against the night sky.
The car stops, and everything goes quiet as Rafi, our driver, gets out to open the doors.
"You ready?" Daniel asks me.
I don't say anything back to him; I just nod.
We slide out of the car, and immediately, paparazzi and corporate photographers are flashing lights everywhere.
The second the door had opened, I watched my husband's corporate mask flip on instantly.
He turns into the perfect, attentive husband, guiding me by the small of my back.
Funny. That was the exact same way he touched Kara, and God knows how many other women.
He flashes his charismatic smile for the cameras. I do the same, forcing that smiley little doll expression while the lights flash behind me, in front of me, and seemingly from everywhere, blinding me. I have to pretend that I'm happy while I literally can't even see where I'm stepping.
As Daniel pushes into the small of my back gently, my skin crawls a little bit. It flashes me straight back to the memory of him watching Kara's ass in our hallway a mere half an hour or so ago.
"Remember to smile," he says, leaning in close as he smiles for the cameras. He says it right through his teeth, like he's gonna punish me or something if I don't. His grip tightens just enough on my waist to control my pace as we step onto the red carpet.
Playing my part, my lips curve upward. I'm his little smiley doll. It's the absolute last thing I wanna do.
The reporters ask him questions. Of course, they do. At this point, it's just white noise to me. But the moment we cross the threshold into the big, multi-story atrium, I take a small breath. It's crowded in here, but I'd rather be in here than out there with all those locusts.
Look at all this wealth. The whole room just smells of snob.
Before we can even take three steps, Daniel is swarmed.
International investors and executives crowd around him, throwing out numbers about automated transit systems or whatever else.
He takes the lead effortlessly; his mind is built in such a way that he can navigate these conversations with absolute, ruthless pragmatism.
"Have you met my wife, Melody?" he says to one person.
They give me their quick smile, assessing my body. Older men, younger men, it doesn't matter. The billionaires look right through me past the initial pleasantries, discarding me the exact moment they realize I have absolutely nothing to offer their bottom line.
Then after a while, the initial crowd parts slightly.
There's Danny's father. He lifts up a finger to him, and his father nods.
Danny's dad still commands a whole room just by standing there.
He's dressed in a spiffed-out suit just like Danny.
Sometimes I can almost see the uncanny similarities in the both of them.
Kenjiro greets his son with a handshake and then drops a cold reminder to Danny about an upcoming infrastructure summit in Tokyo next month where absences will not be tolerated.
Funny that he said that in English. I don't know if he was doing that for my benefit or just because he's trying to get himself in the headspace of speaking in English since there are a lot of English speakers here.
I don't hug Danny's father this time. I wish that Danny's parents and me had the kind of relationship where I could do that without feeling weird.
Anyway, I'm spared from whatever it is I'm expected to do when Danny's dad glides away to hold court with a group of international banking executives.
At least, that's what he says when he takes his leave.
Danny doesn't even flinch. He just straightens out the jacket on his suit and steers me deeper into the crowded atrium.
For most of the evening, I'm glued to his side like a piece of high-end corporate branding.
Honestly, I hate wearing high heels. Hate with a capital H because my feet are on freaking fire in these heels, and my smile at this point feels like it's been surgically plastered onto my face.
Have you ever tried to smile for two hours straight?
It's exhausting. And when you let the smile drop, you can't let it drop too fast or you're gonna look rude, and people are always watching.
God knows how many cameras are on us even when we're in here. I'm tired.
Eventually, we stop near a high-top marble table where a group of rich, sharply dressed men are gathered. Danny immediately locks into the conversation, and I watch his eyes light up with that fierce, calculating executive energy. It's one of the things that made me love him.
I feel so out of place here.
"The domestic labor market is completely bottlenecked," one of the men says, swirling a glass of scotch.
He's tall, with silver hair and a tailored suit that probably costs more than my car.
"Especially in logistics and specialized home management.
The healthcare overhead alone is eating up our margins.
We're paying out the nose for human benefits, and the turnover rate is a joke. "
"That’s exactly why the market is pivoting," Daniel replies, leaning forward slightly, his corporate tone commanding.
"Optimizing capital expenditure. If you integrate autonomous systems directly into the primary architecture of next-generation smart homes, you eliminate the variable of human friction completely.”
“Mmmm,” the other man answers. “No healthcare packages, no liability, no scheduling conflicts. People will always be resistant to change, but they always hop on board when the future arrives, and they risk being left behind.”
"We've actually just finished restructuring a massive acquisition," the silver-haired man continues and flashes a grin. "I'm Julian Vance, by the way. CEO of Vance Autonomous Holdings.”
Danny and he shake hands once more.
"We just bought out a specialized tech portfolio from Amatus," Julian says. "They had a brilliant line of automated units, but the previous developers completely mismanaged their funding. We had to haul the assets back to the factory floor, tweak the AI cores, and refurbish a whole batch of them."
"I heard about that. Amatus does top-tier work," Daniel nods, shifting his glass as his mind works through the logistics. "It’s crazy that their units look…”
“A little too human?” the other man asks.
“Heh, I mean, yeah. The way they move… it’s so on point it’s almost uncanny? The physical response times are supposed to be perfect for high-end estates."
A glamorous woman standing next to Danny, dripping in diamonds, chuckles softly into her champagne.
"Oh, absolutely. They’re fantastic for bodyguards too.
My husband put one at our Aspen estate. It’s quite the novelty not having to deal with payroll taxes or melodramatics.
You just program the parameters, lock down the security clearance, and they execute the directives perfectly. ”“Perfectly you say?” Danny smiles.
“PER-fect-ly,” she smiles back. “Honestly, it saves us half a million a year in household management alone."
I stand there, clutching my glass so hard my knuckles turn white. Listening to them speak, I feel completely out of the loop. It’s like I’m standing in a deep pond where I don't know how to swim, completely drowning in this alien ecology of tech and financial lingo.
Asset maximization.
Refurbished units.
Domestic companions.
They talk about these things, these machines, with the exact same calculated detachment Daniel used when he told me he hired Kara just to fix a "resource deficiency" in our house.
And I wonder what was the deficient resource.
My eyes fixate on the side of Daniel's face as he continues to debate the cost-benefit analysis of synthetic labor margins with Julian.
A strange chill settles into my belly.
It's the way they're talking about these perfect companions for a stretch of the conversation that makes me feel… like I'm one of them.
Like he expects me to be.
"Melody," Daniel’s voice suddenly breaks through my spiraling thoughts.
Looking up at him, I smile because I'm trained to do that now. It's like my mouth just automatically does it on cue.
"Yes," I say.
"We're gonna move on," Daniel says, nodding in a direction across the room.
Soon after, dinner is served. The food looks absolutely exquisite, but honestly, half of the stuff I'm expected to eat, I don't even know what it is. It's all high-art, tiny portions on pizza-sized plates, looking more like a museum exhibit than actual food.
After cocktail hour, during the dinner, Danny leans in close to me.
"See that group over there" he says, gesturing toward a cluster of gorgeous women.
"That's Alana Despiza in the center. She's only 23 years old, and she’s already the leading mind in bio-synthetic surgical robotics.
Her company is developing nanoscale cellular repair drones that can perform internal micro-surgeries without a single incision.
I've always wanted to meet her and discuss how we can integrate her facility logistics into our new tech sectors. "
"Oh, wow," I say, trying to sound unbothered. "She’s so young to have achieved so much."
"Yes," Daniel says, his eyes locked on them. "When you're ambitious, that's what happens. These girls, they actually have the mind for it."
"I'm pretty sure it also has to do with the fact they have unlimited resources," I tell him.
Daniel doesn't argue. He just gets up from the table and steps away to go talk to them. I'm left sitting there at the table with a few other business people and some of the other wives who were brought along too, all of them chatting away with each other.
From across the room, I watch Danny work.
He uses that devastating charm and those good looks that made me fall in love with him in the first place.
But as Danny laughs and leans in close to a beautiful, tall, blonde executive, I notice his hand subconsciously drift up to his chest. He’s checking for the marriage ring that he hides under his shirt when he's around his so-called clients.
The moment he does it, flashes and images of those porn girls on his phone and the exact way he looked at Kara in our hallway keep on flashing inside my mind. He is smiling and beaming with them, and I try to remind myself that it's just business.
But in that moment, as he talks with one woman, and then another, until three of them are completely surrounding him, some of them laughing and putting their palms on his chest before pulling it away in that classic gesture of 'oh my god, you're so funny', the reality sets in.
I realize that in this room of the ultra-wealthy, women are a dime a dozen.
And every single one of them fits the exact mold of what Daniel pays attention to.
My self-esteem feels completely shattered under the high-gloss gallery lights.
It's like I'm trapped in a roomful of people, playing a role for a man who just told me to my face that he honestly doesn't care if I leave him.
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