Vanessa kissed his shoulder.
“And the divorce?”
Ethan smiled into his glass.
“Not yet. That would look greedy. First the papers. Then the emotional breakdown. Then the separation.”
Vanessa giggled.
“Emotional breakdown?”
Ethan turned, his expression colder than I had ever seen it.
“People already believe she is fragile. After her mother’s death, after the anxiety treatment, after the charity incident last year—”
“The charity incident you arranged,” Vanessa said.
He shrugged.
“Optics matter.”
My knees almost gave out.
The charity incident.
For a year, I had blamed myself for that night.
A medication mix-up before the gala.
A dizzy spell.
A confused speech in front of two hundred donors.
Whispers afterward that I was unstable.
I had apologized to Ethan for embarrassing him.
He had held my hand and told me he only wanted to protect me.
And all along, he had been the one poisoning the story of me.
Vanessa walked toward the vanity again.
“Will she fight?”
Ethan laughed softly.
“Olivia? No. She’ll cry. She’ll ask what she did wrong. She’ll beg for an explanation. Then she’ll retreat like she always does.”
The words were so cruel, so certain, that something inside me became still.
Not healed.
Not calm.
Still.
