Chapter 3 - The Broken Trust
Celeste didn't move for ten seconds. She stood pinned against the dark mahogany of the library door, her fingers digging into the seam of her trousers so hard her knuckles turned white.
“You’re choosing her?” she whispered, her voice rasping as if her throat were full of dust. “A girl from a suburban development who worked for an hourly wage? Over your own sister?”
Rowan didn't answer. He was kneeling in front of my bench, unlacing my damp leather shoes with careful, slow fingers. His hand stayed around my ankle for a moment, feeling the thick, unnatural swelling above my sock—the fluid buildup that Celeste had told him on the phone was just "indolence and lack of exercise."
“Rowan!” Celeste screamed, stepping forward and kicking the silver bucket. The pink, wine-stained water splashed across the toe of Rowan’s custom Italian boot, soaking into the leather. “Look at me!”
Rowan froze. He didn't wipe the wine from his boot. He stood up slowly, turning to face her with a stillness that made even the air in the room feel heavy.
“I have looked at you, Celeste,” he said, his voice dropping into that terrifying lower register again. “I’ve looked at you for thirty-four years. When Father died, I let you keep the town house because you said you needed time to get your affairs in order. When the gallery in Savannah went bankrupt, I cleared three hundred thousand dollars of your personal debt from my own distribution account so the board wouldn't see it.”
He took one step toward her. Celeste backed up, her heels clicking against the wet marble.
“I brought my wife into this house seven months ago,” Rowan continued, his eyes cold as ice. “She was sick. She was carrying my son. And while I was eight thousand miles away trying to keep the international accounts stable so this entire property wouldn't go under during the restructuring, you treated her like a squatter in her own home.”
“She was taking over!” Celeste cried, her voice cracking as her composure shattered completely. “She was changing the garden staff! She was talking to the trustees behind my back! She was making everyone in town think I was just a dependent living on your charity!”
“You are a dependent living on my charity,” Rowan said simply.
The words fell between them like heavy iron weights. Celeste flinched as if he had struck her across the face.
“Get your coat,” Rowan said. “Lena is waiting.”
“I’m not going to a highway motel,” Celeste said, her chest heaving as she tried to pull her posture back together. “I have rights to the third-floor apartment. The trust deed explicitly states—”
“The trust deed states that the primary resident has sole discretion over guest occupancy,” I said from the bench, my voice trembling only slightly as I pulled the wool blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Section Four, Paragraph Nine. I wrote the addendum myself when Rowan and I signed the marriage settlement three months before the baby was due.”
Celeste turned her dark, venomous eyes toward me. “You quiet down, you little parasite.”
Rowan moved so fast he seemed to bridge the eight feet between them in a single stride. He didn't touch her, but his hand came down flat against the doorframe right beside her ear with a crack that sounded like a pistol shot.
“If you speak to my wife in that tone again,” he said, his face three inches from hers, “I won't just remove you from the house, Celeste. I will initiate a formal criminal audit with the district attorney’s fraud unit tomorrow morning at eight a.m. I will give them the St. Thomas bank statements, the forged reimbursement slips, and the security footage from the gate house showing you locking the doors.”
Celeste gasped, her shoulders sinking two inches as the reality of his threat sank in. Criminal fraud charges meant her name would be removed from the social registers in Atlanta by nightfall. It meant her accounts at the club would be frozen. It meant she would be completely, totally cut off.
“You wouldn't,” she whispered, though her eyes showed she knew he would.
“Try me,” Rowan said. “You have eighteen minutes left.”
Celeste stared at him for three long seconds, looking for any trace of the soft, compliant brother she had manipulated since their father’s funeral. She found none.
She turned on her heel, her head held high even as her breath came in short, jagged gasps, and walked swiftly toward the grand staircase. Her heels hit the oak treads in a furious, rhythmic beat that faded as she reached the third floor.
Rowan stayed by the library door for a moment, his forehead resting against the dark wood of the frame. His shoulders were rising and falling slowly, his fingers uncurling from the fists he had made.
Then he turned and walked back to me.
He didn't say anything at first. He simply sat down on the edge of the bench, reached out, and pulled me into his chest. His arms went around my waist, his face burying itself in the crook of my neck, right above the collar where Celeste had told me to hide the marks.
I felt his body shake once—a single, deep shudder that rattled through his chest—before he squeezed me tighter, being careful not to press against the heavy curve of my belly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “God, Abby, I’m so sorry.”
“You didn't know,” I murmured, resting my chin on his damp shoulder.
“I should have known,” he said, his voice choked with a grief he had been hiding behind his corporate demeanor for six weeks. “I heard it in your voice every time I called. You were so quiet. You kept saying the connection was bad whenever I asked why you weren't using the video feed in the bedroom.”
“She was sitting on the landing,” I whispered. “Every time the phone rang, she stood right outside the door with the house keys in her pocket. She told me if I said anything to make you worry while you were negotiating the European merger, she would tell the trustees I was having a nervous breakdown and have me committed to the private facility in Savannah for evaluation.”
Rowan pulled back, his hands coming up to frame my face. His thumb wiped away a fresh tear that was tracking down my cheek.
“She can’t touch you anymore,” he said, his voice hard as flint. “She will never set foot on this property again as long as I am breathing.”
The sound of heavy leather boots coming down the service stairs made us both look up.
Lena stepped into the foyer carrying a small, black overnight bag—Celeste’s bag from the second-floor guest suite. She set it by the front door, then held up a silver key ring with three small keys attached.
“The third-floor suite is locked, Mr. Armand,” Lena said, her face expressionless. “I took the liberty of packing her winter coat and her personal toilet items. The rest of her things can be sent to her lawyer’s office by courier on Monday.”
Rowan nodded once. “Thank you, Lena. Is the car ready?”
May you like
“Idling in the breezeway,” Lena said. “And Mr. Vance is on line two on the pantry phone. He says he’s standing in his office downtown with the preliminary audit files in his hand.”
Rowan looked down at me, his fingers tightening gently around mine. “Tell him I’ll call him back in an hour. Right now, I’m taking my wife to the hospital.”
