I picked up my fork, but the food tasted like ash in my mouth. My throat was tight, my stomach was in knots, but I forced myself to eat.
I knew that tonight would be different. Arthur’s gaze was more piercing, more definitive, like that of a judge preparing to pronounce his sentence.
I could feel the blade hovering above my head. I didn’t ask when it would fall. I simply waited.
“Nora,” said Arthur, wiping his mouth with a silk napkin after what seemed like an eternity. “My office. Now.”
Julian didn’t even flinch.
The heavy oak doors of Arthur’s study closed behind me with a sound similar to that of a tomb closing.
Arthur sat behind his imposing desk, like a judge about to pronounce a death sentence. The room smelled of old leather and luxury cigars.
Behind the desk hung portraits of the men of the Sterling family, going back five generations. They all stared at me with the same cold, scrutinizing gaze.
Julian followed us into the office, but he didn’t sit down. He leaned against a shelf full of first editions, his eyes already fixed on his phone.
“Look up,” Arthur snapped at me.
I raised my head and met his gaze. He made no attempt to hide his contempt.
“Nora, you joined this family through marriage three years ago.”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured, my voice barely audible in that immense room.
“You know how Julian treated you. You know your place here. You were a lapse in judgment, a phase he’s finally moved past.”
He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a check that had already been written and signed.
He dropped it on the desk. It slid towards me, light as a feather, heavy as a mountain.
One hundred and twenty million dollars.
“You don’t belong in her world,” Arthur said, enunciating each word precisely. “Take this, sign the papers, and disappear. That will be enough to keep you and your miserable family in luxury for the rest of your days.”
The insult stung me like a needle stuck directly into my heart.
My pathetic family.
My father, a high school teacher, held down two jobs to finance my higher education.
My mother, a nurse who spent thirty years caring for people who couldn’t afford better healthcare.
Pathetic.
My body was trembling, but I kept a straight face. I looked at Julian, searching for a spark of something.
Regrets? Guilt? A single memory of the nights spent together, of the promises whispered in the darkness?
Nothing.
He didn’t even blink. His thumb continued to scroll, scroll, scroll through everything that was more important than the present moment.
My heart died instantly, right there in that office.
Three years of patience and devotion, three years of enduring silent meals and icy stares, three years of hoping he would remember why he married me, reduced to a misjudgment worth one hundred and twenty million dollars.
I felt a bitter taste rising in my throat and I swallowed.
I looked at Arthur and, to his great surprise, I didn’t shout. I didn’t beg. I didn’t throw the check in his face.
I smiled.
A small, calm smile that seemed to disturb him more than tears ever could.
I placed my hand on my stomach, where four little lives were just beginning to take root.
The surprise I had been waiting to reveal to Julian for three days, ever since the doctor had confirmed it, eyes wide and after numerous tests.
Quadruplets. Four babies. A medical miracle.
It was now a secret that I would take with me.
“Very well,” I said.
One word. Calm as a cemetery, cold as winter.
I took the pen he had put down, turned the page to the last page of the divorce decree which had obviously been prepared several days before, and signed it.
Nora Vance.
Not Sterling. Vance.
In any case, I never really belonged to them.
I picked up the check, folded it carefully, and slipped it into my pocket.
Then I left that office for the last time.
The air in the office turned icy when I pocketed that check.
Arthur seemed genuinely stunned. He had clearly rehearsed his angry stepfather speech for an hour, preparing counter-arguments to my tears and pleas.
I had just deprived him of his performance.
Julian finally looked away from his phone. His eyebrows furrowed, a flicker of confusion crossing his perfect features, perhaps even a hint of something darker.
But I didn’t care.
Whatever emotions he may have felt, they came three years too late.
“I’ll be outside in thirty minutes,” I said.
I left the office and went up the grand staircase one last time, my hand brushing against the banister that I had polished with my own hands when the staff were overwhelmed.
