Vivienne's POV
I knew something was wrong the moment I walked into the boardroom and Helena smiled at me.
Helena never smiled at me. Not like that. Not warm and wide, like a woman who'd already won something she hadn't told you about yet.
I took my usual seat in the back corner, the chair nobody wanted, the one close to the door like they expected me to need a quick exit. Maybe they were right. Around the long table sat twelve board members—men and women who had shaken my father's hand, attended his birthday dinners, cried at his funeral. People who called themselves family once.
None of them would look at me this morning.
That was the second sign.
Helena stood at the head of the table in my father's old chair, and I had to breathe carefully through my nose to stop the rage from showing on my face. He had sat in that chair for twenty years. She'd been sitting in it for two, and she'd already redecorated it like she was born there.
"Let's begin," Helena said.
The first forty minutes were numbers. Bad numbers. The company was bleeding money from bad investments and worse decisions, and the finance director stumbled through his report like a man confessing a crime. Helena listened with a grave, concerned face, nodding slowly, performing competence for the room.
I had submitted three proposals last quarter that could have helped. Revenue ideas. Media partnerships. A sponsorship structure that could have pulled in real money. Every single one was sent back stamped rejected with no explanation.
Delilah had rejected them.
I sat in my corner and kept my face still.
Then Helena set down her pen.
"There's one final matter," she said, folding her hands. "A personnel matter. Regarding Vivienne."
Every head in the room turned toward me.
My stomach dropped.
"As the board is aware," Helena continued, "Vivienne holds a small percentage of family shares through her late father. And she maintains a salaried position here, though—" she paused delicately, "—her contributions have been difficult to quantify."
"I have contributions," I said.
Helena's smile didn't move. "Vivienne—"
"I submitted three proposals last quarter. All three were rejected without review. I've been managing the—"
"They were reviewed," Delilah cut in. She was sitting to Helena's right, relaxed, like this was nothing. Like she wasn't dismantling my life one sentence at a time. "We reviewed them. They were garbage."
The word landed flat and loud in the quiet room.
"They weren't," I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. "The media partnership alone could generate—"
"Could we stay focused?" Delilah stood up, smoothing her jacket, addressing the board like I wasn't even there. "The truth is simple. Vivienne doesn't work. She sits in an office, collects a salary this company desperately needs, and contributes nothing. She has no real role here. She never did."
"My father gave me those shares," I said. My voice was getting stronger now, some part of me refusing to stay quiet. "He built this company. Those shares are mine legally—"
"Your father is dead," Helena said.
The room went silent.
She said it so gently. Like a reminder. Like I might have forgotten.
"And you are not your father," she continued. "You're a woman who married a dying billionaire five years ago and has been waiting for him to die ever since. That is not a businesswoman, Vivienne. That is a strategy."
Heat crawled up my neck. My hands flattened on my thighs under the table so nobody could see them shake.
Then Delilah spoke again.
And everything changed.
"I think we should stop pretending," she said, her voice ringing clearly through the whole room. "We all know what Vivienne is. She's a charity case. A girl who sold herself to a dying man for money and has been draining everyone around her ever since." She looked directly at me, and there was nothing in her eyes but pleasure. "You're not an Ashford. You're not a businesswoman. You're not a widow and you're not a wife." She paused, making sure every person at the table heard what came next. "You're a whore with a marriage license. And it's time we stopped paying you to pretend otherwise."
Nobody breathed.
Mr. Huang—the man who used to give me lollipops—stared at the table like it had personally offended him.
Nobody said stop. Nobody said that's enough. Not one person in that room who had known me since I was a child opened their mouth to defend me.
I stood up slowly. My legs felt like water.
"The vote," Helena said calmly, as though her daughter hadn't just gutted me in front of twelve witnesses.
I counted the hands without meaning to. Twelve. Twelve hands lifted to remove my salary. Twelve hands to transfer my shares to a board-controlled trust.
Unanimous.
I picked up my bag. I walked to the door. Someone called my name—I don't even know who—but I didn't stop.
I drove until the city thinned out and the waterfront appeared, dark and wide and quiet. I parked and turned off the engine and sat there staring at the water.
Whore with a marriage license.
I had sacrificed everything for my father's family. Given up my dreams, my freedom, five years of my life. And in return, I had nothing. No salary. No shares. No dignity.
My father was gone. Dante was still somehow alive. Helena owned everything. And Delilah had said those words in front of twelve people and smiled while she said them.
The water in front of me was black and perfectly still.
I wondered, for one terrible moment, if drowning would be fast.
Stop it, I told myself. Stop it, stop it, stop it.
But the thought had already been there. And I hated myself for it.
My phone lit up on the seat beside me. Aria, calling for the fourth time. I reached for it—
And a black car rolled slowly past me on the waterfront road.
I wouldn't have noticed it. Except it stopped.
Just stopped. Twenty meters ahead of me. Engine running. No one got out.
It just sat there.
I stared at it. My pulse ticked upward.
Then my phone buzzed with a text. Unknown number. No name.
Three words.
Are you safe?
I looked at the message. Then at the black car. Then back at the message.
My heart was hammering now, and I didn't know why, and I didn't understand what was happening, but the hair on my arms stood straight up because something was very, very wrong—
Or maybe something was watching over me.
And I had no idea which one was worse.