Vivienne's POV
"Get out."
I slam my apartment door, but Damien catches it with his hand. His supposedly dead brother just revealed himself in front of reporters and photographers, and now Damien is following me home like he has the right to be here.
"We need to talk about Marcus," Damien says, pushing his way inside.
"No. We need to talk about you LYING TO ME." I throw my purse on the couch. My hands are shaking. Everything is shaking. "Your brother is alive, Damien. ALIVE. And you didn't think to mention this tiny detail?"
"Because I didn't know!" His voice cracks. "I went to his funeral. I buried an empty coffin. I mourned him for two years. How was I supposed to know he faked his death?"
"Maybe the same way you 'didn't know' about a thousand other things?" I'm yelling now. I never yell. But seven years of silence is exploding out of me. "You didn't know I loved art. You didn't know I was miserable. You didn't know I was falling apart every single day in that penthouse. What DO you know, Damien?"
He flinches like I slapped him. "I know I'm an idiot. I know I failed you. I know—"
"Stop. Just stop." I press my hands to my face. "Your brother said he has secrets about you. Secrets that will make me wish I'd signed the divorce papers. So tell me now. Whatever it is, tell me before he does."
Damien goes very still. "There's nothing to tell."
"Liar." I grab my phone. "Marcus sent me a message. Want to know what it says?"
I read it out loud: "'Ask your husband about the accident that killed his parents. Ask him who was really driving that night. Ask him why he's spent sixteen years lying about it.'"
The color drains from Damien's face.
"So?" I demand. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing. Marcus is trying to mess with your head." But Damien won't look at me. He's staring at the floor like it might swallow him whole. "He's angry. He's been angry since we were kids. This is just him trying to hurt me by hurting you."
"Then look me in the eye and tell me the truth." I step closer. "Were you driving the night your parents died?"
Silence.
"DAMIEN."
"Yes." The word is barely a whisper. "I was driving. I was sixteen. Marcus was twelve. We were coming home from my basketball game and it was raining and I lost control and—" His voice breaks completely. "The car hit a tree. My parents died instantly. Marcus broke his arm. And I walked away without a scratch. That's why he hates me. Because I killed them and I didn't even get hurt."
My anger dissolves into something else. Something that feels like my heart is being squeezed in a fist. "Damien..."
"So now you know. I'm not just a terrible husband. I'm also a murderer." He laughs, but it sounds like crying. "Marcus has spent sixteen years blaming me. I thought when he grew up, he'd understand it was an accident. That I didn't mean to. But then two years ago, he told me he wished I'd died instead of them. We had a huge fight. He drove off and crashed his car and I thought—" He stops. Breathes. "I thought I'd killed him too."
"But you didn't. He's alive."
"Apparently." Damien finally looks at me, and his eyes are red. "And he's been planning this revenge for two years. All those messages you got? The photos of me with Celeste? The videos? That was him. He hired people to follow me. To stage situations. To make you think I was cheating so you'd leave me. Because he knows the only thing in this world I actually care about is you."
My brain feels like it's short-circuiting. "Why didn't you tell me any of this?"
"Because you'd look at me exactly the way you're looking at me right now." His voice is hollow. "Like I'm a monster."
"I'm not—" But am I? I don't even know what I'm feeling. "Damien, it was an accident. You were sixteen."
"Tell that to Marcus. Tell that to the part of me that sees my parents' faces every time I close my eyes." He pulls out his wallet with shaking hands. "But there's something else you need to know. Something I should have told you seven years ago."
He removes a photograph. The same one I found in his desk drawer. The one that broke my heart.
"You kept a picture of Celeste," I say bitterly.
"No." He hands it to me. "Look closer."
I do. At first, I see what I saw before—Celeste at a party, smiling at the camera. But then I notice the crease down the middle. Someone folded this photo. Hard. Multiple times.
"Unfold it," Damien whispers.
My hands shake as I carefully unfold the creased part. The picture is actually much bigger than I thought. It's not a photo of Celeste. It's a photo of a whole party. And there, in the background, slightly out of focus but clearly visible...
It's me.
I'm sitting on a balcony railing, talking to someone out of frame. My hair is loose. I'm laughing at something. I look happy. Free. Beautiful.
And Celeste? She's folded over. Hidden. Creased away like she was never important.
"I took this picture seven years ago," Damien says quietly. "At your sister's graduation party. You probably don't even remember it. You were talking to one of her professors about art history. You were so passionate, so alive. I'd never seen you like that. I'd barely noticed you before that night—you were always just Celeste's quiet sister. But then I found you on that balcony and we started talking and..."
He trails off. I can't breathe.
"We talked for three hours," he continues. "About loss. About grief. About my parents and your parents and how it feels to be responsible for someone else when you're barely holding yourself together. You understood me in a way no one ever had. And when you smiled at me—really smiled—something in my chest just... broke open."
"So you kept this picture?" My voice sounds strange. Far away.
"I kept it because two days later, you came to me about the pregnancy scare. And I knew—I KNEW—there was probably no baby. You'd had two glasses of wine. We'd kissed on that balcony but nothing else happened. But when you stood in my office looking terrified and talking about taking responsibility, I saw my chance."
"Your chance to what?"
"To keep you." He moves closer. "I know how that sounds. I know it makes me selfish and terrible. But Vivienne, I fell in love with you that night on the balcony. And when you walked into my office talking about marriage, I thought maybe—just maybe—you felt something too. So I said yes. I married you. And then I spent seven years too afraid to tell you the truth because I thought you'd only married me to protect Celeste."
The photograph trembles in my hands. Seven years. Seven years of misunderstanding. Of silence. Of loving each other from opposite sides of the same house.
"Why didn't you just TELL me?" I whisper.
"Because I'm an idiot who's better at building empires than building relationships." He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull away. When I don't, his hand cups my face. "I watched you sacrifice everything for Celeste your whole life. I thought if I showed you how much I loved you, you'd feel obligated to stay. Trapped. So I kept my distance, thinking I was being noble. Thinking I was giving you space to choose to leave if you wanted. But really, I was just a coward."
A tear rolls down my cheek. He catches it with his thumb.
"I don't want Celeste," he says. "I never wanted her. That photo? I folded her face away because she didn't matter. Only you mattered. Only you've EVER mattered."
I should be angry. I should push him away. Seven years of pain and loneliness don't disappear just because he kept a photo.
But I'm so tired of being angry.
"That night on the balcony," I say quietly, "we did more than just kiss."
Damien goes very still. "What?"
"We went to your car. We..." I close my eyes. "We were drunk and laughing and everything felt so perfect. And then the next morning, I woke up in my own bed with no memory of how I got there. Celeste told me you'd brought me home. That we'd slept together. That I might be pregnant."
"But we didn't—" He stops. His face goes pale. "Vivienne, I drove you home. I put you in your bed. I left you a note saying to call me when you woke up because I wanted to take you to breakfast. I wanted to see if what I felt on that balcony was real. But you never called. And then three days later, you showed up in my office talking about being pregnant."
"Because Celeste told me we'd slept together. She showed me a text from your number asking if I got home okay. She said it was proof." My voice is shaking now. "She LIED. About all of it. She saw how you looked at me that night and she couldn't stand it. So she invented a pregnancy scare to trap us both in a marriage built on lies."
We stand there in my tiny apartment, staring at each other. Seven years of misery. Seven years of silence. All because my sister was jealous and we were both too afraid to just TALK to each other.
"I'm so sorry," Damien whispers.
"Me too."
He pulls me close. I let him. His arms wrap around me and for the first time in seven years, I let myself feel safe with him. Let myself believe that maybe—just maybe—we can fix this.
My phone buzzes. We both jump.
A text from an unknown number. I open it with shaking hands.
It's a video file. The thumbnail shows a hospital room. Marcus is in the bed. Someone is standing beside him, holding his hand.
I press play.
The video is dated two years ago. The day of Marcus's supposed fatal accident. But Marcus isn't dead in this video. He's awake. Talking. And the person holding his hand, whispering in his ear, telling him exactly how to destroy Damien's life?
It's Celeste.
My sister has been working with Damien's brother for TWO YEARS. Planning this. Orchestrating everything.
Another text: "Meet me at the warehouse on Fifth Street. Midnight. Come alone, or I release videos that will destroy more than just your marriage. Videos of what REALLY happened the night your parents died, Damien. Videos that prove it wasn't an accident after all."
The phone slips from my fingers.
"It wasn't an accident?" I whisper. "Damien, what does that mean?"
But Damien is staring at the phone screen, his face white as paper. And for the first time since I've known him, I see something in his eyes that terrifies me.
Pure, absolute fear.