He didn't try to deny it.

That was the thing I hadn't expected.

After three years of *they'll come around* and *give them time* and every other deflection I had learned to recognize, I had braced myself for another version of the same.

Instead, Dominic looked at me from the bench and said, "How much do you know?"

"Enough," I said.

"Tell me the rest."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he moved to one side of the bench, making room.

I sat down, not because I wanted to be close to him, but because my back was aching and I was eight months pregnant and I was tired of standing.

"Thomas came to me four years ago," he said.

"Before we were married.

He'd been working on this case for years and he needed a financial partner to fund the next phase of the research.

Document retrieval, expert consultants, that kind of thing."

"And you agreed."

"He made it sound straightforward.

A legitimate legal claim.

Properties that had been acquired through a process that may not have been entirely clean.

He had documents.

He had testimony from former city officials." Dominic paused.

"He was convincing."

"When did you find out he was my father's son?"

Dominic's hands pressed together between his knees.

"About a year into it.

He told me himself.

He said he thought I should know, given that I was seeing you."

"And you didn't tell me."

"No."

"Why?"

He was quiet for a long time.

Long enough that I almost said his name.

"Because by then I'd already put money in," he said.

"A significant amount.

And because I told myself it didn't change anything.

That if the case had merit, it had merit regardless of who Thomas's father was."

"But it did change something," I said.

"Yes."

"It meant you were building a legal case against my father's company while living in my father's daughter's house and letting your family treat her like she was nothing."

He flinched.

"When you say it like that—"

"Is there another way to say it?"

He didn't answer.

I looked at the wall across from us.

Someone had hung a framed photograph of the ballroom from the 1940s — full of people in formal dress, laughing, unaware of anything that would come after.

"Does Thomas know who I am?" I said.

"Yes.

He's known since the beginning."

"Did he ever ask you to use our marriage?

To get information about my father's business?"

Dominic's jaw tightened.

"He suggested it once.

I told him no."

"Once."

"Once," he said firmly.

"And I meant it."

I believed him.

That was the difficult part.

I believed that specific thing, and it didn't make the rest of it better.

"Your mother knew," I said.

"I know.

I found out tonight.

She pulled me aside when you went upstairs." He exhaled.

"She's known for three years.

She used it to — she used it to justify the way she treated you.

In her mind, you were a threat to the family.

A complication."

"I was your wife," I said.

"Yes." His voice was rough.

"You were my wife.

And I let them treat you the way they did because it was easier than fighting them, and I told myself you were strong enough to handle it, and I was a coward." He stopped.

"I was a coward, Vivienne.

That's the honest answer."

The word sat between us.

I had waited three years to hear him say something true and direct, and now that he had, I didn't know what to do with it.

"What happens to the case?" I said.

"I'm withdrawing my investment.

Tonight, if I can reach Thomas." He paused.

"If the case has genuine merit, it should stand without my money.

If it doesn't, it shouldn't exist."

"And if Thomas pushes back?"

"Then Martin can deal with him." He glanced toward the ballroom.

"Your father's attorney is considerably more formidable than Thomas expected, I think."

Despite everything, something almost like a laugh moved through me.

I pressed it down.

"What about Chloe?" I said.

Dominic rubbed his face with both hands.

"Garrett is — I don't know what Garrett is going to do.

He's a quiet man but he's not a weak one.

What she did tonight was—" He stopped.

"It was wrong.

It was cruel.

And I should have seen it coming, because it didn't come from nowhere.

I watched her treat you badly for three years and I made excuses."

"Yes," I said.

"You did."

He looked at me.

"I don't know how to fix this."

"I don't know if it can be fixed," I said honestly.

His eyes went to my stomach.

Something in his expression went very still.

"I want to be there," he said quietly.

"For the baby.

Whatever happens between us — I want to be there."

"I know," I said.

"Is that enough to—"

"I don't know yet," I said.

"I'm not making any decisions tonight.

I'm too tired and too angry and I've been standing in a torn dress for two hours."

He nodded.

He reached down and picked up his jacket from the bench beside him.

He held it out.

I looked at it for a moment.

Then I took it and draped it over my shoulders.

We sat in silence for a while.

Not a comfortable silence.

Not a resolved one.

The kind of silence that exists in the space between what has been broken and what might, with a great deal of work, be repaired.

Then my father appeared at the end of the corridor.

He looked at us both.

At the jacket on my shoulders.

"Martin needs you," he said to me.

"Thomas Reeve just called the office."

I stood up.

Dominic stood with me.

"I'll come," he said.

My father looked at him for a long moment.

The look of a man deciding something.

"All right," he said finally.

We walked back toward the ballroom together — my father, my husband, and me — and none of us said anything, because there was nothing simple left to say.

Behind us, from somewhere deeper in the building, I heard Chloe's voice.

She was crying.

Not performing.

Not the sharp theatrical distress she had deployed in the ballroom.

This was something quieter and more private, leaking through a door that hadn't quite closed.

I didn't stop walking.

But I heard it.

And it was the first moment all evening that I felt something toward Chloe that wasn't anger.

I wasn't sure yet what to call it.

I kept walking.