During his corporate celebration, my husband struck my shoulder and whispered, “Go home. She belongs beside me tonight.” His mistress stood nearby in a tight red dress, pretending she hadn’t heard. I adjusted my gown and answered, “No. I think I’ll stay for the announcement.” Ten minutes later, the chairman introduced the company’s new majority owner. I walked onto the stage—and my husband forgot how to breathe.
Part 1
“Go home,” Julian whispered after striking my shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling into a champagne table. “She belongs beside me tonight.”
Two hundred employees had gathered beneath the glass chandeliers of the Halcyon Hotel for Aurelia Systems’ twentieth-anniversary party. Conversations faltered, then picked back up at the careful volume people use when they’ve witnessed something ugly but fear the man responsible.
Camilla Price stood at my husband’s side in a fitted red gown, one hand resting possessively on his arm. As Aurelia’s communications director, she had spent months appearing beside Julian at conferences, dinners, and “emergency strategy retreats.” Tonight she wore the diamond earrings I’d noticed missing from my jewelry box.
She tilted her head. “Audrey, perhaps this isn’t the right evening for a domestic scene.”
My shoulder throbbed beneath my blue silk dress. I fixed the strap, lifted my chin, and said, “No. I think I’ll stay for the announcement.”
Julian’s smile tightened. He was Aurelia’s chief strategy officer, and for three weeks he had talked about the promotion he expected tonight. He was certain the board would name him president. He was also certain I spent my days managing a modest inheritance and volunteering at an arts foundation.
He had never once asked why my late mother’s investment office occupied three floors in Boston. He preferred the version of me that made him feel taller.
“The announcement is for executives,” he said. “Not decorative wives.”
Camilla laughed softly.
Across the ballroom, Chairman Malcolm Reed caught my eye. He touched two fingers to his cuff — the signal we’d agreed on after the closing documents were signed that afternoon. Beside him stood Aurelia’s general counsel and the forensic accountant who had spent six weeks examining vendor payments authorized by Julian.
I picked up an untouched glass of sparkling water.
“Enjoy the next ten minutes,” I told my husband.
He grabbed my wrist. “What does that mean?”
“It means you should listen carefully.”
The lights dimmed, leaving the stage bathed in blue light. Malcolm stepped up to the microphone and thanked the employees who had kept Aurelia afloat through eighteen months of debt, canceled orders, and a failed expansion. Julian let go of me and straightened his jacket, already arranging his victorious expression.
“Tonight,” Malcolm said, “we welcome the investor whose capital preserved eight hundred jobs and paid off our most dangerous debt. The acquisition closed today. Northstar Holdings now owns fifty-eight percent of Aurelia Systems.”
Julian was the first to applaud.
Then Malcolm looked straight at me.
“Please welcome Northstar’s founder and Aurelia’s new majority owner, Ms. Audrey Vance.”
I set my glass down on the table and walked toward the stage.
Behind me, someone gasped. Camilla’s hand slipped from Julian’s arm.
My husband stopped breathing.
