Chapter 2

By the time I reached the elevator, Burton had caught up.

He grabbed my shoulder and forced me to turn and face him.

"Victoria, are you done making a scene?"

He stared at me, brows knotted together.

"This is a public event, not home! That room is full of my staff and business partners, and you just walk out like that. Do you have any idea how bad that makes me look?"

I said nothing and reached up to press the call button.

He caught my hand and pushed it back down, forcing me to look up at him.

The white ceiling lights poured down, and that face I'd lived beside for three years looked like a stranger's now.

"Burton, do you still remember last year, when my grandmother was in the hospital?"

A blank look crossed his face.

"The deposit was three thousand dollars. I came to talk it over with you, and you said didn't my grandmother get a pension every month, so let her figure it out herself first."

"In the end I scraped that money together from a friend. She was in the hospital over two weeks, and you went twice. The first time you stood there five minutes, took a phone call, and left."

"The second time you dropped a case of milk by her bed and left before you even sat down, saying you had a meeting at the company."

"But when Shelagh got sick, you pushed back all three of your afternoon meetings and sat outside the exam room waiting two hours for her."

The more I said, the more it hurt, until I was close to tears.

"So who's actually your family?"

Burton's brow drew tighter and tighter, and he said impatiently,

"You're dragging up all this ancient history now? Shelagh's a young woman alone in New York with no family, no one to lean on. I'm her boss, I look out for her a little on the side, what's wrong with that?"

"And that thing with your grandmother, you never made it clear how urgent it was—"

"I didn't make it clear?"

I cut him off, furious.

"I was crying on the phone telling you. You said what's the big deal, why are you crying like this, and you hung up before I could get out a second sentence."

"Later my grandmother paid the surgery bill out of her own retirement savings, and when you found out, all you said was, well, there you go, then. You didn't ask a single word about how she was recovering."

His face darkened.

"Burton, I told you every single one of these things. You just never let a word of it in."

He fell silent.

A few seconds later he pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and opened my message thread.

"Money's transferred to you."

His voice was ice cold.

"Your grandmother, your dog, whatever's missing I'll make up. Ask me if it's not enough."

The screen glowed, one transfer sitting quietly in the chat history.

I stared at it and thought how absurd it was.

I'd said all of that, and all he heard was money.

Three years of marriage, and he had never once cared what I actually needed.

Then his phone buzzed.

Burton glanced down at the screen, and his tone turned gentle the moment he answered.

"Shelagh? What's wrong… okay, I'll come take a look…"

He hung up and turned his head toward me.

"Think about what you did. Stop making a scene."

He walked off without looking back.

The elevator doors reflected my tear-streaked face.

I looked down at that transfer.

Seven thousand.

Crying, I tapped return.

The elevator arrived, the doors opened, and I stepped inside.