🥀Chapter 02🥀

Selene let out a slow breath through her nose.

One breath. It was the trick her mom had taught her when she was twelve, back when she first realized that living in the Calloway house meant keeping your feelings in check. You don't get rid of the emotion, her mom used to say, you just decide when it's allowed to show.

She squared her shoulders and walked toward the patio.

Her heels clicked against the stone pathway, giving her away before she wanted them to. The steady sound in the quiet garden made both men turn around before she was even halfway there. The orange light from the string bulbs caught them mid-turn. For a split second, she saw their real expressions before they fixed their faces.

Her dad's face instantly slid into his go-to smile, the one that looked warm but was secretly doing math in his head.

The other man's face did something that made her skin crawl.

"Father," she said, stopping at the edge of the patio roof.

"Ho, ho...happy birthday, angel!" Fitch said it before she could even finish her sentence, stepping forward with the loud energy of a guy who thought he owned every room he walked into. Up close, he was way bigger than he looked from the path. His bald head was shiny. His belly pushed hard against a fancy tuxedo shirt that definitely cost too much money. "What a picture you are. An absolute picture."

Selene forced a smile from somewhere and put it on her face.

"Happy birthday again, my dear daughter," Victor said. He was watching her the way he always did at these parties, inspecting her, checking to see if her outfit was perfect, looking for any cracks in her confidence. He didn't find any. He never did. "You look great."

"Thank you, Father."

A short silence followed. Victor swirled the drink in his glass once, slowly. Then he cleared his throat in that specific way that meant he was about to tell her to do something she had no choice but to accept.

"So." He looked quickly at Fitch, then back to her, with the casual expression of a guy announcing a tiny change in plans. "I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. About the company. About the future." He paused. "I've decided to give Calloway Industries to Brian."

The garden went completely dead silent.

Selene blinked once.

Brian. The name hit her chest like a heavy rock dropped into calm water, the ripples moving out slowly and messing up everything.

Brian. Her dad's son from a marriage that lasted only fourteen months and ended in a total silence nobody in the family ever talked about. He was six years older than her. He was a guy she only knew as a name dropped in conversations and a face in a single photo she found once in a drawer she wasn't supposed to open. He was a stranger, plain and simple.

She thought about when she was nineteen. Fresh out of college, running between different departments, getting to work before everyone else and leaving after dark. She had learned every single floor of that corporate building by basically living there, exhausting herself, and slowly figuring out how the business worked. You couldn't take shortcuts with that stuff. She had given that company years of her life. She had given it her best years because her dad had stood across a desk when she was seventeen and told her...

It will be yours. Everything I build is for you.

She kept her face totally still.

She looked at her dad and waited for him to keep talking. It was like waiting for someone to finish a sentence that is ruining your life, because stopping them in the middle doesn't change the damage.

Victor took a small sip of his drink. "You're a woman, Selene. I've thought about this seriously, from every angle. The reality is that this industry, the way it runs, the relationships it takes, it needs a certain kind of leadership."

He said certain kind the way people say things they know are totally sexist but have decided to say anyway. "Reginald here, on the other hand..." he pointed his glass toward Fitch, "...is one of the most connected men in the country. Rich, established, respected. He'll take care of you properly. The way you deserve."

Fitch stepped up right on cue, like he had rehearsed his entrance.

"More than take care of you, darling." He said darling with a vibe that was way too comfortable for a guy who didn't even know her. "Once we're married and settled and I mean this sincerely, if you give me a son, I will buy you a yacht. Custom built. Whatever color you want." He turned to Victor with a proud look, like he had just made an incredible deal. "Not bad, eh,Victor?"

Victor laughed. It was an easy, relaxed sound. "Not bad at all."

The two men clinked their glasses together.

Selene stood between them and felt something rush through her that was so huge and so hot that, for three whole seconds, she was actually scared of what her hands might do.

A yacht.

A son.

This man, pot-bellied, arrogant guy who had just called her darling to her face like he already owned her was offering her a yatch in exchange for her body, her future, and the company she spent six years working for. And her dad was just standing there laughing like this was a normal conversation between normal people.

She took a breath.

She fixed her face.

She turned to her dad first.

"So just so I understand you clearly," she said, her voice sounding polite, hiding everything she was actually feeling, "what you're saying is that I should marry this man."

"It makes sense when you..."

"I just want to make sure I have it right." She smiled. "Marry him. Have his kids. In exchange for being taken care of." She let the words just hang out there for a second, ugly and obvious. "That's the deal."

Victor nodded, getting excited about the plan again now that she seemed calm. "He's a good man, Selene. Richer than you'll ever need. You won't want for anything. Just marry him, have kids with him, he doesn't have any yet...and your life will be..."

She turned to Fitch.

"How old are you?" she asked. She sounded casual, like they were just chatting at a dinner table.

Fitch smiled like a guy who loved bragging about the answer. "Sixty-one, my dear."

Selene turned back to her dad. "Father." Her voice was still totally calm. It was actually kind of crazy how calm she was, like the quiet air right over an exploding volcano. "You are fifty-four years old. You are handing me over to a man who is older than you. A man who is literally older than you." She tilted her head slightly. "Does that not even make you pause for a second? Does nothing inside you realize how insane this sounds?"

Victor's smile started to disappear.

"Selene..."

She turned back to Fitch. She wasn't yelling; she was just being completely direct.

"Sir, you told me you don't have kids. I think somewhere...if you're being honest with yourself when you're alone at night, you understand why a guy your age without kids might want to rethink asking a twenty-five-year-old woman to fix that problem for him." She paused. "If you had a daughter my age and you definitely could have, mathematically, you wouldn't want her standing in a freezing garden being offered a yacht in exchange for her entire life. I think you know that."

Fitch's smile vanished too, just like her dad's.

"So with all the respect I can possibly find for either of you right now," she said, her voice still perfectly even, still totally calm. "you have both lost your minds."

"Did you just..." Victor's voice dropped low, sounding genuinely shocked. Almost nothing ever shocked him.

"Yes," she said simply, without adding anything else. "I just did." She looked right at her dad, straight at him.

She rarely looked at him like this because it took a lot of energy. "If the company was never going to be mine, then fine. Give it to Brian. Give it to some stranger off the street. That's your choice, and it looks like you already made it." She stood up a little straighter. "But do not stand here and tell me that my only other option is marrying a man old enough to be my grandpa. I don't care how many yachts you throw at me."

She snapped her purse shut with a loud click.

"Enjoy the party," she said. "Both of you."

She turned around and walked back toward the stone path.

Behind her, the silence lasted for about four seconds.

Then Fitch's voice came through the dark, sounding angry, with all the warmth completely gone. "You stood right there and let your daughter talk to me like that, Victor. Right in front of you. Like I was nothing."

A short pause followed.

"Calm down," Victor said, his voice dropping into that quiet tone that meant he was actually furious. "I'll handle this."

"You better." A glass clinked loudly as Fitch set it down way too hard. "I don't do deals where the girl has to be managed before the ink is even dry."

"I said I'll handle it, Reginald."

Selene's heels hit the stone path again.

She walked back toward the bright lights and the noise of her own birthday party. She didn't look back once. She kept her feelings locked down inside until she passed the archway and reached the dark, empty part of the garden before the hotel steps.

Then she stopped.

She pressed her hand flat against the cold stone wall next to the path, letting herself feel how solid it was. She closed her eyes for three seconds and finally let the reality of what just happened sink in.

Her phone buzzed.

The sound was small and ordinary, and it felt like the most normal thing that had happened in the last ten minutes. She unhitched her purse and pulled the phone out.

A text from jessica.

GIRLLLL I just got here, where are you?? This place is doing the absolute most by the way, the flowers, the chandelier, anyway WHERE ARE YOU?

Selene just stared at the screen.

Then she locked her phone, dropped it back into her purse, and snapped the latch shut with a final little click.

She took the stone steps back into the hotel.