Chapter 11
Serena asked to leave.
I let her.
Not before one conversation.
“You sat in my chair.”
She closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Marcus told me to.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“He invited you. You sat.”
She looked at me.
Fair.
“I wanted to know what it felt like.”
There.
Honest.
“What did it feel like?”
Her face tightened.
“Like everyone noticed me.”
That was her hunger.
Visibility.
She had spent years adjacent to powerful people and mistook being looked at for being valued.
Marcus offered a shortcut.
My chair.
My jewelry.
My house.
Borrowed significance.
I did not pity her enough to erase the harm.
But I understood it.
“Did you know about my mother’s restraints?”
“Not until the last two days.”
“And then?”
“I should have left.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
Good.
Before she walked out, she placed one expensive bracelet on the table.
Bought with Victoria’s care money.
“There are more.”
“I know.”
“I’ll return them.”
“Do that.”
She nodded.
Then stopped.
“Are you going to destroy Marcus?”
I looked at her.
“No.”
She seemed surprised.
“What then?”
“Remove what he built.”
That would hurt more.
Marcus wanted significance.
Spectacle would make him important.
I preferred subtraction.
No household authority.
No donor access.
No crew favors.
No ability to borrow Romano status through marriage.
Just Marcus.
A forty-two-year-old man with his own name.
May you like
If that felt like destruction, then the problem was never what I did to him.
It was what he believed he was without me.
