CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE DINNER PARTY
AVA MONROE'S POV
There's a unique kind of hell that comes with sitting across from your husband at a dinner party you both didn't plan, pretending everything
is perfect when nothing is.
The Kingsley estate had transformed again. Chandeliers
glittered like falling stars, the dining hall drenched in gold light, as if
opulence could mask tension.
The guest list tonight was handpicked by Ethan's mother, socialites, partners, and those who had something to gain from proximity to power.
And me, the wife.
I wore red, on Diane's advice. "Make them look twice," she'd
said.
"Make them wonder why the coldest man in the room chose you."
I wasn't sure he had.
Ethan looked devastating in black, as usual. Cold. Sculpted.
Watching everyone but me.
The clinking of glass. The forced laughter. The taste of food I barely chewed.
I knew how to play pretend.
But tonight, something felt different.
"Mrs. Kingsley," a silver-haired man two seats away leaned closer, "what's your secret to keeping our elusive Ethan so..., domesticated?."
I smiled, practiced and pleasant. "I let him believe he's in control."
Laughter around the table. Even Ethan's lips quirked, barely.
"I knew there was fire behind that beauty," a woman in diamonds cooed.
"Only when provoked," I replied, and sipped my wine.
The chatter shifted. Talks of stocks, mergers, scandals.
Until someone said her name.
"Isn't that Annalise Crawford over there?."
My hand froze around my glass.
Ethan didn't move, but I saw it, the flicker in his jaw, the inhale he didn't take.
Annalise.
The woman who'd once held Ethan's heart. The one who left
him shattered in ways even I hadn't fully uncovered.
And now, she was walking toward us.
Of course.
Because what's a perfect dinner without an old flame crashing the scene?.
"Ethan," she purred. "It's been too long."
He stood, ever the gentleman. "Annalise."
And then she looked at me.
"You must be the wife."
"Ava Kingsley," I said, extending a hand. "Nice to finally meet the past."
Annalise smiled, tight and glossy. "I must say, I didn't expect Ethan to settle."
"Neither did I," I replied. "But here we are."
For a second, her mask slipped. I saw the flicker of surprise, maybe even irritation.
Good.
"I hope you two are happy," she said, voice soaked in something syrupy and false.
"We're exactly what we need to be," Ethan said. Not looking at her. But at me.
And that was the moment everything shifted.
Not for the guests. Not for the photographers hiding beyond
the velvet curtains. But for me.
Because I realized something chilling.
Pretending to love Ethan Kingsley wasn't the hardest part of this marriage.
The hardest part was starting to mean it.