CHAPTER 8
Brittany wore blue to the relaunch strategy meeting because Aiden had once told her it made her look calm.
He had said it absently during a late-night prep session two weeks ago, when she changed from a pink blazer into a navy one after spilling coffee on herself. He probably didn’t remember. Men like Aiden noticed everything and still forgot which observations women kept.
The blue dress was modest enough for business and fitted enough to remind a room she had a body. She paired it with a soft cardigan because softness worked better now. After the anniversary party, overt polish looked calculating. Vulnerability was safer.
She arrived five minutes early and greeted Claire with careful humility.
“Is he in yet?”
“Mr. Devereaux is finishing a call.”
Brittany hated when Claire called him Mr. Devereaux in that tone. As if Brittany were a vendor. As if months of late nights and private messages and Aiden’s voice telling her to breathe through panic had not earned her something warmer than appointment etiquette.
“Of course,” Brittany said. “I can wait.”
Claire looked at the blue dress, then at Brittany’s face. “The team is gathering in conference room three.”
“I thought Aiden wanted me in the executive room.”
“Mr. Devereaux asked that all relaunch staff use conference room three today.”
Brittany’s smile didn’t move. “Did he?”
“Yes.”
Claire walked away before Brittany could ask another question.
The first warning.
By ten, the conference room was full of people pretending not to know anything about Aiden’s marriage.
Brittany could feel the pretending like humidity.
Every glance that moved over her face and away.
Every pause when Lorraine’s name appeared in a legacy planning note.
Every careful use of the phrase “the anniversary event.”
Aiden entered at ten.
He looked immaculate. Dark suit. White shirt. No tie. Tiredness tucked so deep most people would miss it. Brittany didn’t. She had built entire conversations out of his exhaustion.
His gaze passed over the room and landed on her for one second.
Not warm.
Not angry.
Worse.
Measured.
“Let’s begin,” he said.
For the next forty minutes, Aiden discussed timelines, press previews, donor overlap, and security.
He was crisp, almost cold. When Brittany offered an idea about softening the relaunch narrative around his personal accessibility, he looked at her as if she had said something distasteful in a restaurant.
“This relaunch is not about my personal accessibility,” he said.
The room went quiet enough to hear the air system.
Brittany kept her smile gentle. “Of course. I only meant that the human angle has been effective for us.”
“The property is the human angle. The staff is the human angle. The history of the building is the human angle. My marriage is not a narrative asset.”
No one looked at her.
That was the second warning.
After the meeting, Brittany waited near the hallway outside his office. She knew better than to barge in. Men liked to believe they chose the conversation.
Aiden came toward her with Claire at his side.
“Aiden,” Brittany said softly. “Do you have a minute?”
Claire’s mouth tightened.
Aiden stopped. “One.”
Brittany looked at Claire.
Aiden didn’t dismiss her.
The third warning.
Brittany’s fingers curled around her tablet. “Privately?”
“I have another meeting.”
“This won’t take long.” She let her voice thin, not quite break. “I just feel like something has shifted, and if I’ve done something wrong, I’d rather you tell me.”
Aiden studied her.
The old Aiden would have softened by now. He would have stepped closer, lowered his voice, made her feel as if the hallway had narrowed around them. He would have said she was under pressure and doing fine.
This Aiden said, “You need to stop inserting yourself into my marriage.”
Brittany’s breath caught.
Claire looked away, but Brittany saw the satisfaction before she hid it.
“I haven’t,” Brittany said.
“You gave a toast at my anniversary party calling me your safe place.”
Her eyes filled immediately. “I was trying to be kind.”
“It was inappropriate.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
The words were quiet.
They still slapped.
Brittany took a step back. “That’s not fair.”
Aiden flinched slightly.
Interesting.
“I care about you,” Brittany said, lowering her voice.
“As a mentor. As someone who has been there for me when my life was falling apart. Maybe I leaned too much, and I’m sorry for that.
But Lorraine has never liked me. She looked for the worst possible interpretation because she already decided I was a threat. ”
Aiden’s expression closed further. “Were you?”
The question found the one place she had not armored.
Brittany stared at him. “What?”
“Were you a threat?”
Her laugh was small and wounded. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes,” he said. “For the first time in a while, I think I do.”
Then he walked away.
Brittany stood in the hallway, shaking with a fury she could not afford to show.
That was more than a warning.
That was a door closing.
She spent the next hour in the PR workroom, pretending to revise media placements while her mind moved quickly through options.
Sympathy still worked with everyone else.
Aiden was more complicated now, but guilt had layers.
Lorraine leaving had made him question things, yes.
But men like Aiden hated feeling guilty.
If Brittany could make guilt too uncomfortable, he might choose the easier emotion again.
Protectiveness.
He liked being needed.
She would remind him.
At twelve thirty, she found him in the service corridor outside the ballroom, reviewing light placements with the technical director. The hallway was busy enough not to feel intimate, but private enough for her voice to reach him.
“Aiden,” she said. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
He looked up. “What is it?”
“I just wanted to let you know I’m going home for the day.”
His brow tightened. “Are you sick?”
She wrapped one arm around herself. “I’m fine. I just think maybe Lorraine was right. Maybe my presence is making things harder for everyone.”
The technical director found sudden interest in his clipboard.
Aiden’s face shifted, but not enough.
“I’ll have Claire redistribute your tasks,” he said.
Brittany had expected resistance. At least a pause. Something.
She swallowed. “Right.”
“You can work remotely this afternoon.”
“Of course.”
Then, because desperation made people sloppy, she added, “I really did admire her, you know.”
Aiden’s gaze sharpened.
“Lorraine,” Brittany said. “I admired how perfect she always seemed. The rooms, the clothes, the way she never had to need anything from anyone. I think maybe I envied that.”
The line was good. Vulnerable, flattering, self-aware.
Aiden didn’t take it.
“Lorraine needs things,” he said.
Brittany’s eyes widened.
“I forgot that,” he continued. “You don’t get to use it.”
He turned back to the technical director.
Brittany walked away before her face betrayed her.
She did go home. Or rather, she went to the apartment Aiden’s hotel group had arranged for senior relaunch consultants, a sleek corporate rental with city views and furniture no one could love.
She poured herself white wine at two in the afternoon and called Sienna Vale, a freelance influencer coordinator who owed her money and liked cruelty when it was dressed as gossip.
Sienna answered on the fourth ring. “Please tell me you’re calling with rich people drama.”
Brittany smiled for the first time all day. “I need to vent.”
“About Devereaux?”
“About his wife.”
“Ooh. The hallway queen.”
Brittany laughed, sharp and relieved. “Don’t call her that.”
“You called her worse yesterday.”
“I was upset.”
“You said she looked like she’d been waiting fifteen years for someone to wrinkle her perfection.”
Brittany took a sip of wine. “She has that face.”
“What face?”
“The one women get when they think being dignified makes them untouchable.”
Sienna snorted. “Did she really threaten you?”
“No. But she wanted to. That’s the thing with perfect wives. They hate looking messy, so all you have to do is hand them a mirror at the wrong angle and they crack themselves.”
“God, you’re evil.”
“I’m strategic.”
“Is Aiden still playing wounded husband?”
Brittany rolled her eyes. “He’s pulling back. Lorraine got to him.”
“So let him miss being needed.”
“I’m trying.”
“Or let the wife keep overplaying. Women like that always do.”
Brittany smiled into her glass. “She already did. One toast, a few tears, and she walked right into it.”
On the other side of the half-open office door, Aiden stood without moving.
He had come to the corporate apartment because Brittany had not returned the updated media deck, and Claire had told him it was faster to send a courier. He had decided to bring it himself because some part of him still wanted to have one final, clarifying conversation away from the staff.
He had not expected the door to be ajar.
He had not expected to hear Lorraine’s name.
He certainly had not expected to stand in a hallway listening to Brittany laugh about cracking his wife.
Inside the apartment, Sienna said something he could not make out.
Brittany answered clearly.
“Please. Aiden always chooses the woman who needs him more in the moment. Lorraine’s problem is she’s too proud to look helpless. That’s why she lost the hallway.”
Aiden’s hand tightened around the folder.
Lost the hallway.
The phrase opened the memory again. Brittany’s tears. Lorraine’s face. His own voice.
Lorraine, stop.
He saw it differently now, not as chaos, but choreography.
Brittany dropping the glass. Brittany crying loudly enough for witnesses. Brittany making herself small so Lorraine would be forced into the role of the woman towering over her.
And he had stepped into his mark perfectly.
He had not been tricked by a mastermind. That would have been easier. Cleaner. A story where Brittany was the villain and he was merely blind.
No.
The truth was uglier.
Brittany had read the weakness he kept insisting was kindness. She had known he liked being needed. She had known Lorraine’s dignity would make her look cold beside another woman’s tears. She had known Aiden would try to stop the scene instead of ask who had staged it.
Brittany only had power because he had given it to her.
Inside, Brittany laughed again, lighter now. “Anyway, Lorraine will come back. Women like her always come back once they realize dignity doesn’t keep the bed warm.”
Aiden stepped into the doorway.
Brittany turned.
The color left her face so quickly it was almost fascinating.
Sienna’s voice chirped through the phone. “Britt? You there?”
Brittany lowered the phone slowly. “Aiden.”
He looked at the wineglass in her hand, the media deck open on the counter, the blue dress she had chosen to look calm.
For the first time, she looked exactly as she was.
Not fragile.
Not misunderstood.
Not a young woman under pressure.
A woman who had watched his wife bleed and called it strategy.
“How long have you been standing there?” she whispered.
“Long enough.”
Her eyes filled.
This time, the tears didn’thing.
“Aiden, I was angry. I didn’t mean—”
“Stop.”
She flinched.
He heard the echo again, but this time it didn’t belong to Lorraine. This time, the word was exactly where it should have been.
Brittany set the phone down, call still active, and took a step toward him. “Please let me explain.”
“No.”
“I was hurt. You’ve been so cold today, and I felt like everyone was blaming me, and Sienna was pushing—”
“Did you lie in that hallway?”
Her mouth opened.
“Did you lie?” he asked again.
Her tears spilled over. “She came at me.”
“Did you lie?”
Brittany’s face crumpled, but behind it he saw calculation racing for another door. “I was scared.”
Aiden nodded once, slowly.
There it was.
Not an answer. Another performance.
He placed the folder on the nearest table. “You’ll receive updated boundaries from Claire. Until then, all communication goes through my office.”
Panic cut through her expression. “You’re cutting me out?”
“I’m correcting a mistake.”
“I didn’t do this alone.”
The words left her before she could soften them.
Aiden looked at her.
Brittany froze.
For one bleak second, he almost admired the accidental honesty.
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
He turned and walked out.
In the elevator, he looked down at his phone.
Lorraine’s name sat in his contacts beneath a photo from their fifth anniversary. She was smiling at him over the rim of a champagne glass, eyes bright, ring catching the light. He had taken that picture because he liked the way she looked at him.
As if he were safe.
Aiden pressed call.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Then voicemail.
He ended the call without leaving a message.
What would he even say?
You were right.
Not enough.
I’m sorry.
Not enough.
I believed the wrong woman because needing me made me feel important and your dignity made your pain too easy to ignore.
Closer.
Still not enough.
The elevator doors opened into the lobby. Aiden stepped out into the cold shine of afternoon rain, and for the first time since Lorraine left, he didn’t feel angry that she was gone.
He felt afraid that she had every reason to stay gone.