“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she added lightly. “Mostly from Ethan.”
I looked at him.
He did not correct her.
---
Dinner that evening was held in a private dining room with glass walls overlooking the inner courtyard. Julian’s seat at the head of the table was conspicuously absent — not replaced, not ignored, simply… preserved.
As though no one dared to declare his vacancy.
Lydia sat across from me.
She spoke gently, laughed when appropriate, contributed nothing that could be disagreed with. But I noticed the way Ethan tracked her movements unconsciously — a subtle lift of attention whenever she reached for her glass, a slight shift when she paused mid-sentence.
I didn’t eat much.
“The board would like the engagement announced within the week,” Clara said at one point. “Stability matters.”
“That’s fast,” Lydia remarked carefully.
“It’s necessary,” Clara replied.
Lydia nodded — then looked at Ethan.
Not me.
After dinner, as everyone rose, Lydia touched Ethan’s arm.
“May I speak with you?”
There it was again. That quiet assumption.
He hesitated — just long enough to make the moment visible — then said, “Of course.”
I watched them step aside, their voices lowering, heads angling toward each other like a private orbit.
Clara appeared at my shoulder.
“You noticed,” she said.
“I did.”
“She’s been here since the beginning. Before you.”
“I gathered.”
“She understands how this family functions,” Clara added. “And Ethan… understands how to prioritize people who matter.”
People.
Plural.
I swallowed the word.
---
Later that night, alone in the east wing bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for my phone to vibrate.
It didn’t.
No message. No check-in. No quiet reassurance that had once arrived automatically.
I told myself it meant nothing.
But it was the absence that did the damage — not betrayal yet, but displacement.
I wasn’t losing him.
I was discovering he had never truly been mine.
---
I woke to raised voices drifting faintly through the corridor.
Not loud. Controlled. The way arguments sound when people are trying not to admit they’re having one.
“She doesn’t know,” Ethan said.
“That’s unfair,” Lydia replied softly.
“It’s practical.”
There was a pause.
“Practical for whom?” Lydia asked.
“For the system,” he answered.
“For you,” she corrected.
I stood frozen in the doorway, pulse loud in my ears.