Chapter 2

Amira Osborne POV:

"I did not lay a hand on her," I said, my voice a tremor of disbelief housed in a cage of rage. But he spoke over me, his fingers compressing the delicate bones of my wrist until I flinched.

"Do not lie to me, Amira."

He hauled me across the nap of the living room carpet, positioning me before Francine, who was now weeping with a practiced, delicate theatricality into her palms. "Apologize," he ground out, the muscles in his jaw standing out like cords.

I had spent years making excuses for him, acting as a patient mender of things, using the thin glue of 'he is under pressure' or 'he is merely tired' to patch the widening fissures between us. But as he forced me before her, a supplicant to her lie, I heard something inside me give way. It was not a thunderous crack, but a quiet, irreversible crumbling, like old mortar turning to dust.

"Why?" I whispered, my voice frayed. "Why will you not believe me? Carter, it is I. It has been I for eight years. You know this is not a thing I am capable of."

The raw grain of pain in my voice gave him a moment's pause. For the space of a single heartbeat, I saw a flicker of the man I had once known in his eyes-a brief, uncertain wavering.

But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. Francine, a virtuoso of manipulation, seized the instant. She struck her own face again, the sound a sharper crack in the quiet room. "It is my fault," she cried, her voice thick with a cloying, false guilt. "I ought not to have come between you. Carter, I shall simply... I shall pack my things and be gone. I do not wish to be an encumbrance."

The threat was as clear as if it had been etched in glass. Her investment, his company, the whole of his future-it was all tethered to her.

Carter's hesitation vanished, consumed by a fresh conflagration of fury directed wholly at me. "Do you see what you have done?" he roared.

With a violent thrust of his leg, he sent the small coffee table skidding across the hardwood. It struck the far wall with a hollow boom. The framed photograph atop it-our first, taken eight years ago, his arm a possessive loop around my shoulders, his eyes bright with what I had then mistaken for devotion-pitched forward and fell. The sound of the glass was not a simple crash, but a sharp, crystalline report, like a gunshot in a cathedral, followed by the skittering of a thousand tiny fragments across the polished floor.

I stared at the fractured image. At his smiling face, now splintered beyond all recognition. The allegory was so crude, so painfully plain, it felt like a scene from some overwrought stage play.

Slowly, I wiped the damp tracks from my cheeks. I looked from the ruin of the photograph to him. Without another word, I stepped over the glittering debris and walked from the room. I was done. I would no longer try to piece together that which was so utterly, so irrevocably, undone.

The following evening, my telephone buzzed. A message from him. "Family dinner at my parents' house tonight. Be there."

Before I could compose a refusal, another appeared. "Your mother is already here."

A paralytic numbness crept up from the base of my spine. My mother, Edie, lived with a heart condition as fragile as a sparrow's egg. The slightest stress, the barest whisper of trouble between Carter and me, could prove catastrophic. He knew this. He was holding her life as collateral.

Swallowing my pride, which now tasted of ash, I put on a mask of composure and drove to his parents' house. The moment I saw my mother, her face illuminated with a love that threatened to break me, I felt the performance begin. "Amira, my sweet girl! There you are. Where is Carter? I assumed you would arrive together."

Before I could assemble a lie, he appeared in the archway of the dining room. He was not alone. Francine was affixed to his arm, draped in an elegant evening gown. She beamed at my mother. "Edie, you look simply marvelous tonight!"

My mother, in her blessed innocence, smiled in return. "Francine, how lovely to see you. Amira, I was not aware your friend was to join us."

Carter's smile was a taut, bloodless line. "Francine is more than a friend, she is practically family," he said, his eyes locking with mine, issuing a silent, unmistakable threat. "In fact, Amira owes her a rather significant apology for a misunderstanding yesterday."

He pulled me aside, his grip on my elbow a bruising vice. "Do it," he hissed, his voice a low, menacing current beneath the hum of conversation. "Apologize to her before everyone, or I swear to God, I will announce that the wedding is cancelled. Here. Now."

The room seemed to tilt. I looked at my mother, laughing with Carter's father, utterly oblivious. The image of her collapsing, of the worst imaginable thing happening because of me... it was an agony I could not bear.

My dignity was a small price for her life.

I walked toward Francine, my body feeling dense, as if moving through deep water. "Francine," I said, the name a foul taste on my tongue. "I am sorry."

Her smile was not a smile at all, but a baring of teeth, a silent declaration of victory. She plucked a champagne flute from a passing tray and held it out to me. "Apology accepted, darling. Let us have a drink to seal our new accord."