44. Alexis
Alexis
A long silence falls over my father’s office. I’m reeling, clutching the chair for support. My stomach, already agitated from this morning’s bout of nausea, feels twisted, shaken.
“Is… is this t-true?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. I turn to my parents.
My father’s face is as expressionless as ever, but his jaw is clenched tight, as though he’s battling some internal war. My mother, though, is pale, her hands trembling ever so slightly at her sides.
“Don’t bother with them,” Gabriel says bitterly. There’s fury in his eyes as he stares down my father. “They were using you. The whole time.”
“What?” I try to meet my mother’s gaze, but she won’t look at me.
“They appointed you CFO. Had you sign documents that were part of the tax evasion scheme. You didn’t even know what they were. That way, if they ever got discovered, they could pin the whole mess on you. You’d take the fall.”
My mouth falls open, my blood running cold. “You… you can’t be serious.”
“I am.” His tone is apologetic, like he knows that he’s breaking something inside me with this truth.
“How… how could you do that to me?” I whisper, turning to my parents. Neither of them answer.
This whole time, I thought they were distant and cold because they didn’t know how to navigate their grief over Noelle’s death, or because they saw me as a means to achieve social standing and were disappointed in my failures.
Now, though, the realization crashes over me that I’m nothing but a pawn to them.
A tool, disposable, ready to be tossed away whenever it suited their needs.
They don’t give a shit about me. Not as a person, not as a daughter, not even as a status symbol.
“My lawyers found evidence that proves Alexis is innocent,” Gabriel says, his voice hard as he stares down my parents. “You’ll never be able to pin it on her if you go down for it.”
Then he turns to Travis.
“So. You’re more than welcome to go public with the shit you dug up on Vérité. It won’t hurt anyone but those two.”
For several seconds, no one speaks. It’s quiet enough to hear the faint hum of the office’s air conditioning. My heart races, and I feel a sick, hollow sensation deep in my chest.
Then my father speaks. His voice is taut, stretched thin. “How dare you?”
Travis rises to his feet, his fists clenched, face flushed with anger. “You’re making a mistake,” he spits at Gabriel. “You—”
“Travis,” my father interrupts. I realize suddenly that while he’s angry at Gabriel, he’s even more furious with Travis. Travis, who knows all about Vérité’s impropriety. Who stuck his nose where it didn’t belong.
I can see the realization dawning in Travis’s eyes too. He turns toward the desk, his movements slow and careful, like he’s standing on the edge of a sheer cliff.
“You,” my father hisses. “How dare you bring this mess into my house, into my business, without understanding the consequences?”
Travis’s mouth opens, then closes. He seems to make a mental calculation. Color floods his face, and his shoulders drop. “I’d watch your tone with me, if I were you,” he snaps. “You’re the one standing on thin ice, not me.”
“Are you threatening me?” My father slams his hands down on his desk as he shoots to his feet. “Is that how you do business? Root around for blackmail material on everyone you deal with?”
“I wouldn’t have had to do it in the first place if you hadn’t gone back on our deal!” Travis shouts. “She was promised to me, and you broke our arrangement to score a Thorne—”
“We hadn’t signed anything,” my mother snaps.
“We had an agreement!”
I bury my fingers in my hair, overwhelmed by everything. By the situation, the cruelty, the sound of raised voices. I can’t be here. I can’t handle this.
As if on autopilot, I make a break for the door. My parents and Travis have devolved into a shouting match, hurling insults and threats over the glass surface of my father’s desk, and none of them even seem to notice as I slip out.
From the hallway, I hear Gabriel’s voice as he calls after me. “Alexis!”
I don’t stop.
I take the stairs rather than the elevator, even though my knees feel weak and my stomach is in open revolt. I don’t want to run into anyone on my way down to the lobby.
I don’t slow until I burst through the lobby doors and out into the street.
It’s an overcast day, and the cool air feels nice against my overheated skin.
My chest heaves, and for a breathless second, I think I’m about to hurl on the sidewalk right outside of Vérité’s offices, which would be the most mortifying thing to ever happen to me.
No, I’m not nauseous, I’m just dizzy. My head feels like it’s spinning, like I got put on a tilt-a-whirl in my father’s office and couldn’t leave it by going outside.
I hear Gabriel’s voice before I see him. He sounds concerned, and more than a little desperate.
“Alexis.”
He must have followed me outside. There’s a part of me that’s glad someone in that office cared to check up on me. Clearly, my parents couldn’t give less of a shit.
There’s another, larger part of me that isn’t sure what to say to him. I can’t deal with this right now. I don’t know how to think about Gabriel anymore, and the uncertainty is almost worse than the heartbreak.
“Alexis,” he says again, his voice lower now, anguished.
I turn on my heel to face him. The emotions roiling in my chest are almost painful, and I can’t hold them back any longer.
“How could you do this to me?” There are tears in my eyes, but the words feel hot on my tongue. When he flinches away from me, it’s like I’ve burned him.
His mouth opens, but I cut him off.
“Why did you lie? Why didn’t you just tell me? You broke my heart, you asshole! You—”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he says, his tone pleading.
He steps forward, his hands half-raised like he wants to touch me but doesn’t dare.
“I swear. Travis was going to take the dirt he got on Vérité public. You would have been arrested. Your reputation would’ve been ruined, and I…
I didn’t want to let him destroy what you’ve built. ”
My fists curl so tight my nails bite into my palms, trembling from the force of everything I want to say and can’t. I want to scream, to lash out at him more, but all that comes out is a strangled sob.
“I had to let him think he won. I had to protect you. I divorced you so that he would back off. I needed time to prove your innocence.”
The ache in my chest doesn’t fade, and it isn’t helped by the racing of my heart. Too much has happened in such a short time, too much for me to process. Gabriel takes a step toward me, and something inside me snaps.
I pound my balled-up fists against his chest. He doesn’t even react. “Why couldn’t you just tell me?” I yell. “Why did you do this to me? You… you pushed me away…”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his expression pained. “I shouldn’t have done it like I did. I know that now. I just wanted to keep you safe.”
My heart is racing so fast it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of my chest. Patches of gray dance at the edges of my vision. “I—I—”
“Alexis?” There’s worry in his tone now. He reaches for me, but I pull back, my breath coming in shallow gasps.
“D-don’t—”
The world around me tilts. My knees buckle beneath me, and before I can even react, the ground rushes up to meet me.
For a moment, everything goes dark. When I do regain awareness, I’m disoriented, every sound muffled as though I’m submerged in water.
The only thing that tethers me to the present is Gabriel’s arm pressed against my back, the tinny sound of his voice as he repeats my name.
His face swims in front of me, his brow furrowed with worry.
I’m vaguely aware as he says something to me, something I can’t make out.
Then his arm is a solid weight against my back, steadying me as I float somewhere between consciousness and oblivion.
The pressure tightens, and the ground falls away as he lifts me.
My body feels weightless, like I’m floating.
For the next few minutes, everything comes in flashes.
The faint scent of his cologne mixing with the leather of his car.
The rough tug of a seatbelt sliding across my chest.
The world outside, reduced to smears of light and color as we speed through the city.
The car jerks as he takes it around a corner, and my body sways with the movement, making everything feel even less solid. I want to tell him I’m okay, to halt his panic, but I can’t seem to make my mouth work.
His voice is there too, urgent, rough, terrified. I don’t like hearing him so afraid. Even after everything we’ve been through, everything he put me through, I don’t like that he’s upset.
The car stops, the sudden jerk pulling me back to some semblance of awareness. Through the passenger window, I can see sliding glass doors stenciled with red letters. EMERGENCY ROOM.
Gabriel is out of the car in an instant. The door swings open, and before I can even attempt to move, his hands are on me again—strong, but trembling slightly as he unbuckles my seatbelt.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, his voice tight. My head spins as he lifts me against his chest. His body is warm, his scent grounding.
Gabriel carries me through the sliding doors.
The fluorescent lights of the waiting room are harsh and bright, emitting a constant buzz that amplifies my headache.
The hum of conversation, the distant beeping of monitors, the hurried footsteps of nurses…
it’s all a blur of noise, rough and grating against my hard-won consciousness. But none of it drowns out Gabriel.
“She needs a doctor! Now!”
I hear the rustling of papers, the startled intake of breath from the receptionist. “Sir, sit down and we’ll be—”
“No—no, we’re not waiting! She passed out! She can’t even stand. Get someone now!” His voice cracks on the last word, and I feel his arms tighten around me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish.
There’s a beat of silence, then hurried footsteps, the clatter of a chair scraping back. A shapeless mass of pink appears in my line of sight, a nurse’s scrubs, and a woman’s voice says, “Follow me.”
Gabriel doesn’t hesitate. He’s still carrying me, as though I don’t weigh anything, and I doubt he would put me down even if I asked him to. I’m still dizzy as we move down the hospital’s corridor, but my vision is returning, my senses coming back into focus.
“Gabriel,” I murmur, trying to calm him. He glances down at me, but doesn’t stop or slow his pace.
The nurse brings us to an exam room, where Gabriel sets me down gently on the examination table, his hands lingering as if he’s reluctant to let me go. The moment his arms withdraw, I feel the loss acutely, my skin cold where his touch had warmed it.
A doctor enters the room, a clipboard in hand. I force myself into a sitting position, squinting against the harsh light as she approaches. “Miss Beaumont, I’m Dr. Bryant. Can you tell me what happened?”
Gabriel answers before I can. “She passed out.” His voice is clipped with barely-restrained worry.
Dr. Bryant nods, stepping closer to me. “Do you feel any pain?”
“Um…” I still feel too disoriented to answer, like my brain is full of cotton. “I don’t… I don’t think so.”
The doctor positions a stethoscope in her ears, and a few seconds later, I feel the cold metal as she presses the chest piece against my ribs. “It could be exhaustion, dehydration, or something else. Have you eaten today?”
I hesitate. I can’t remember. Everything before the argument, before Gabriel’s confession, feels like it happened in another lifetime.
Gabriel exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair. “She was upset,” he says. “She’d just gotten some bad news.”
Dr. Bryant hums in understanding and shrugs off the stethoscope. “We’ll get her some fluids and run a few tests.” She glances at Gabriel. “You can step outside while we—”
“No. I’m staying.”
The doctor studies him for a moment, then nods. She seems to realize that it’s not worth arguing. Gabriel won’t budge.
I hear the rustle of paper as Dr. Bryant makes a note on her clipboard. “Alright, let’s get a nurse in here to set up an IV. We’ll check your blood pressure and run some tests to make sure there’s nothing serious going on.”
Dr. Bryant leaves the room, and a nurse enters. She wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm, then watches the screen as the pressure tightens. There’s a beep, and the nurse clicks her tongue.
“Your blood pressure is a little low. That might have caused the dizziness. Fluids will help.”
I barely register the prick of the needle as she inserts it into my arm. She draws some blood, presumably for tests, then places the IV in the crook of my elbow and leaves me alone with Gabriel once more.
He doesn’t say anything. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his eyes on me.
“You don’t have to hover,” I mutter.
“I’m not hovering.”
I bite my lip, staring at the ceiling. Now that my awareness is returning, so are the details of the confrontation in my father’s office. There are a thousand things I’d like to know from Gabriel, and I have zero desire to push him for answers.
After a few minutes, Dr. Bryant returns to the room, consulting a tablet as she enters. “Nothing overly concerning, from the looks of your tests,” she says. “You were dehydrated. Based on what he told me”—she nods to Gabriel—“stress was a big factor. Stress-induced syncope is surprisingly common.”
“So she’s going to be okay?” Gabriel asks.
Dr. Bryant nods. “Aside from the dehydration, everything else looks normal. We’ll keep you on fluids for a little while, and under observation.”
“Thank you,” I murmur. My voice sounds stronger now. The IV is definitely helping.
The doctor smiles. “And the baby is just fine.”