Chapter 2 No.2

Alex Bennett POV:

The giant screen that usually displayed a tasteful, rotating gallery of modern art now showed my face. But it wasn't my face from today, poised and controlled. It was my face from twelve years ago, flushed and tear-streaked, my mouth open in a cry of anguish.

It was a viciously clever manipulation. They had taken a clip from the indie film that had been my last acting job-a gritty, desperate role that had earned me critical acclaim-and twisted it. They had spliced my character's most vulnerable moments with fabricated audio, making it sound as if I were admitting to being cold, calculating, and unfit to be a mother. My face, contorted in fictional grief, was now a mask for the villain they wanted me to be.

A collective gasp rippled through the lavishly decorated ballroom. The parents of Beckham' s classmates, New York' s elite, froze with champagne flutes halfway to their mouths. Their polite smiles curdled into masks of disgust and judgment.

I saw it in their eyes, the quick, damning conclusion. That's Alex Bennett. The washed-up actress Justin Barlow inexplicably married. The gold digger. The trash he brought into his pristine world.

I knew, with a certainty that was as cold and sharp as a shard of glass in my gut, who had done this. It had Beckham and Bertram' s cruelty written all over it, guided by the precise, malicious hand of their mother, Carolina. This was their birthday gift to their brother. My public execution.

My phone, clutched in my hand, buzzed with notifications. I didn't need to look. I knew what they were. The clip would be all over the internet in minutes. The headlines would write themselves. The comments would be a swarm of digital whispers, each one a tiny, sharp sting. Whispers of my past, twisted into a caricature of ambition. Whispers about my status as an outsider, a judgment colder than any winter. Whispers that painted me as a temporary fixture in a world I never truly belonged to.

From across the room, I saw them. My stepsons. Beckham stood with his arms crossed, a smug, triumphant smirk on his face. Bertram, ever the weaker one, was filming the crowd's reaction on his phone, giggling.

"She's going to lose it," I could imagine Bertram whispering. "Wait for it. She's going to scream and cry and make a huge scene."

They were waiting for me to break. They wanted the drama, the validation that they had finally pushed me over the edge.

But just as the first real wave of nausea hit me, Justin appeared. He moved with the swift, brutal efficiency he usually reserved for hostile takeovers. He grabbed the master remote from a panicked event coordinator and slammed his thumb on the power button.

The screen went black.

A suffocating silence fell over the room. Justin' s face was a thundercloud. He spun around, his gaze locking onto his sons. He didn't shout. He didn't have to. He strode over to them, grabbed them both by the arm in a grip that made them wince, and dragged them out of the ballroom without a single word. The heavy doors swung shut behind them, leaving me alone in a sea of hostile eyes.

I needed to get out. I couldn't breathe. I stumbled toward a side door that led to a deserted terrace, my legs shaking. The cold night air was a shock to my lungs. I leaned against the stone balustrade, my knuckles white.

My fingers, trembling slightly, went to my lips, an old, ghost of a habit. I just held them there, a silent prayer in the darkness, breathing in the cold night air.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Justin' s voice was sharp, cutting through the quiet. He strode over, his disapproval a palpable force.

"Have you lost your mind?" he hissed, his face inches from mine. His breath smelled of expensive whiskey. "You can't do that. What if you're pregnant?"

His eyes weren't filled with concern for me. They were filled with condemnation. The same look he gave me when I' d had a second glass of wine at dinner last week.

Pregnant.

A strange, hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. Oh, the irony was thick enough to choke on. Pregnant. A baby. Our baby.

The memory, the one I kept locked in the deepest, darkest vault of my soul, broke free.

It was five years ago. Our first child. A boy. We named him Leo. He was a surprise, a small, miraculous crack in the contractual foundation of our marriage. For two years, I had allowed myself to believe he could be the glue that held us together. He had Justin' s eyes, but my smile. He was perfect.

And then he was gone.

He had just learned to walk, a clumsy, joyful toddler. We were at the Barlow summer estate. I was watching him. I turned away for a second-just one single, unforgivable second-to answer a text from my sister.

When I looked back, the world went silent. One moment, there was a child's laughter catching on the summer breeze. The next, only the humming of a distant lawnmower and the deafening beat of my own heart. The world didn't just stop; it fractured, the bright summer day splintering into a million sharp-edged pieces of before and after.

Panic, cold and absolute, seized me. I screamed his name. Leo. LEO! My voice was a raw tear in the fabric of the perfect afternoon. My heart pounded a frantic, terrifying rhythm against my ribs.

"Alex! What are you doing?!" Justin's voice was a roar. He had been on a business call inside.

His words, not his hands, were the blow that struck me. "He's gone, Alex!" Justin shouted, his face contorted with a grief so raw it was terrifying. "It's too late!"

I fell to my knees, my whole world collapsing into that single, horrifying moment. The sun was so bright. The birds were still chirping. How could the world keep going when my son was gone?

"Please," I begged, crawling toward him, my voice a shredded whisper. "Please, Justin. Let me take him. Just let me have him. We can go away. I'll take him and I'll never ask you for anything again. Please."

He didn't listen. He just stared down at me, his eyes filled with an accusation that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

He made me watch them take him away. He made me go to the funeral. He made me sit in the front row of the crematorium and watch as the small, white casket disappeared behind a velvet curtain.

A part of my soul burned away with my son that day. I became a ghost in my own life, a hollowed-out shell going through the motions. The doctors called it depression. I called it survival.

I never cried about it again. Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone.

And now, he was talking about another baby.

"Alex?" Justin' s voice softened, a rare occurrence. He saw the look on my face, the same vacant stare I'd had for months after Leo died. He mistook my trauma for shame over the video. "It's okay. I'll handle the boys. I'll handle the press. It will all blow over."

He reached out, trying to pull me into an embrace.

"Don't worry," he murmured, his voice laced with the condescending calm he used to soothe hysterical shareholders. "I'll take care of you."

I flinched away from his touch as the heavy ballroom doors behind us were thrown open, bathing the terrace in a sudden flood of light.

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