Chapter 7 - LUCY FINALLY TOLD ME WHY SHE WORE WHITE
Lucy arrived at my office three days later wearing black.
The irony almost made me laugh.
She had no appointment.
Security called upstairs.
“Kate Ellis?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a Lucy Vale here.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Serena looked up from across the conference room.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Whatever you’re considering, no.”
“She may know something.”
“She may also be the woman who wore a wedding dress to your wedding.”
“Technically, there was no wedding.”
“That is not helping.”
I told security to send her up.
Lucy stepped off the elevator five minutes later.
No designer handbag.
No perfect curls.
No calculated makeup.
She looked exhausted.
She stopped ten feet away.
“I know you hate me.”
“I don’t.”
Her eyes widened.
“That would require more energy than I have available.”
That hurt her.
Good.
I wasn’t proud of that.
But I wasn’t ashamed either.
Serena remained in the room.
Lucy glanced at her.
“She stays,” I said.
Lucy nodded.
Then she placed a small digital recorder on the table.
My heartbeat changed.
“What is that?”
“Insurance.”
“Against whom?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Who do you think?”
Noah.
I didn’t touch it.
Lucy sat.
For a long moment, she stared at her hands.
Then she said, “He told me he loved me.”
I felt nothing.
That surprised me.
Maybe some betrayals burn so hot they cauterize themselves.
“When?”
“Before you met him.”
“I knew you dated.”
“He came back after you got engaged.”
That one landed.
“When?”
“Four months after Paris.”
I remembered.
January.
Noah had taken more business trips.
Lucy had suddenly begun calling me more often.
Asking about the wedding.
Offering help.
“What happened?”
“He said marrying you was complicated.”
I almost smiled.
“Apparently.”
“He said his father liked you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
Lucy looked at me.
“Grant wanted Noah to look stable.”
My face tightened.
“He was competing with Ryan for influence inside the company. Grant thought marriage would make Noah look ready.”
My stomach twisted.
“He married me for his résumé?”
“No.”
She hesitated.
“Not only.”
Somehow that was worse.
Lucy continued.
“He liked you. Maybe loved you. I don’t know.”
“Don’t soften it.”
She nodded.
“He respected what being with you did for him.”
There it was.
I leaned back.
Lucy’s eyes filled.
“He used to say you made him look serious.”
Serena muttered something under her breath.
I ignored it.
“Why were you helping him?”
Lucy looked ashamed.
“Because he promised me there would be an end date.”
“To my engagement?”
“To your marriage.”
The room became very quiet.
I stared at her.
“He told you he planned to divorce me?”
“After two years.”
I felt almost detached from my body.
“Why two?”
“Long enough that it wouldn’t look like a disaster.”
Serena’s mouth fell open.
Lucy continued through tears.
“He said by then Harper Urban would be integrated with your firm.”
I stood.
Not because I intended to go anywhere.
Because sitting had become impossible.
“He planned this.”
Lucy nodded.
“Some of it.”
“All of it?”
“No.”
She wiped her face.
“The company stuff got bigger later.”
“Explain.”
“Noah originally thought you would agree to a partnership after you married.”
“I never would.”
“I know that now.”
“He knew it then.”
Lucy looked down.
“He said you were stubborn.”
I laughed once.
“Meaning I had ownership.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“He told me the fastest way to change your mind was to make independence expensive.”
The credit lines.
Harbor Point.
My payroll data.
My hands went cold.
“What did you do?”
Lucy began listing things.
Vendor files.
Internal deadlines.
Client contact information.
Draft budgets.
She had access to more than I realized because I had trusted her.
I had once made her emergency contact for a conference trip.
I had given her guest credentials when she helped coordinate a joint event.
She had saved them.
Then Noah used them.
“Eight hundred thousand dollars,” I said.
Her face went pale.
“It wasn’t all mine.”
“Whose was it?”
“Consultants.”
“What consultants?”
“People who could influence lenders. Procurement advisors. Someone connected to the Harbor committee.”
Serena stood.
“Are you admitting to bribery?”
Lucy panicked.
“I didn’t know everything.”
“That sentence is getting old,” I said.
Lucy covered her face.
“I know.”
For the first time, she looked genuinely broken.
Not because she had lost Noah.
Because consequences had finally become real.
I pointed at the recorder.
“What’s on it?”
She pushed it toward me.
“Conversations.”
“With Noah?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Six months.”
Serena and I exchanged a look.
“Why record him?”
Lucy stared at the table.
“Because I started getting scared.”
“Of Noah?”
“He never hit me.”
I hadn’t asked.
Lucy continued quickly.
“But when the investigation started, he changed.”
“What did he say?”
“That I would take responsibility.”
Of course.
“He said the payments could be explained as consulting fees. That the file access was my idea. That if anyone asked, I had become obsessed with you.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“He said people would believe I was jealous.”
“You were.”
“I know.”
She looked at me.
“But not like that.”
I wanted to tell her there was no version of jealousy that made wearing white lace under my arch reasonable.
Instead, I asked, “Why did you wear the dress?”
Lucy’s face crumpled.
Finally.
Not the rehearsed apology from Hawthorne House.
Something uglier.
More honest.
“Because he told me to.”
I froze.
“What?”
“He said if you saw us together, maybe you would call off the wedding.”
My mouth went dry.
“But he still intended to marry me.”
Lucy nodded.
“That’s why I knew he had lied to me.”
The pieces aligned.
“You thought the photographs were your ultimatum.”
“Yes.”
“He thought they were entertainment.”
Her tears fell.
“Yes.”
I remembered Noah tightening his arm around her after seeing me.
Take a few more.
Make them look natural.
He had humiliated both of us simultaneously.
And each of us had believed the other was the enemy.
Lucy whispered, “I wanted you to see.”
I stared at her.
“I did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
She nodded.
I picked up the recorder.
“Have you given this to your attorney?”
“Yes.”
“Federal investigators?”
Her face changed.
“They contacted me yesterday.”
Serena inhaled.
This had moved beyond civil litigation.
“Are you cooperating?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Lucy for a long time.
She had betrayed me.
Repeatedly.
Deliberately.
Whatever Noah had promised her did not erase that.
“You understand I’m not forgiving you.”
“I know.”
“You understand that helping now doesn’t undo what you did.”
“I know.”
“You may have destroyed jobs. People’s mortgages depend on my company surviving.”
Lucy started crying again.
“I know.”
This time, I believed she did.
Not because she deserved absolution.
Because consequences had finally given her something Noah never had.
Perspective.
I slid the recorder into a document bag.
“My attorney gets this first.”
“Okay.”
“Then investigators.”
“Okay.”
She stood.
At the elevator, she turned back.
“There’s one more thing.”
Of course there was.
“What?”
“Noah thinks Ryan is the reason you left.”
I laughed without humor.
“Noah thinks Ryan caused gravity when Noah drops a glass.”
Lucy didn’t smile.
“He’s angry.”
“So?”
“He has copies of messages.”
“What messages?”
“Between you and Ryan.”
I frowned.
“There aren’t any.”
“I know.”
A chill moved through me.
“What do you mean?”
Lucy’s eyes met mine.
“He had somebody make them.”
Serena swore.
I stared at Lucy.
“What do they say?”
“That you and Ryan were having an affair before the wedding.”
My stomach turned.
“He plans to release them?”
“He already gave them to someone.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
I grabbed my phone.
Ryan had texted me an hour earlier.
BOARD MEETING. CALL YOU AFTER.
I suddenly understood why he hadn’t.
Lucy pressed the elevator button.
“I’m sorry.”
The doors opened.
Before she stepped inside, I said, “Lucy.”
She turned.
“For what it’s worth, you were never competing with me.”
Her face tightened.
“You were competing with the version of Noah he sold you.”
She looked like I had slapped her.
Maybe she needed to.
The doors closed.
Serena was already typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Searching.”
Thirty seconds later, her face went pale.
“Oh, hell.”
She turned her laptop toward me.
A celebrity news site had just published screenshots.
Fake messages.
My name.
Ryan’s name.
Dates beginning six months before my wedding.
They looked real.
Painfully real.
One said:
I wish it were you waiting for me.
Another:
After the wedding, we’ll figure it out.
And the final screenshot contained a message supposedly sent by Ryan the night before my ceremony.
Tomorrow changes everything.
The headline beneath them was worse.
SECRET AFFAIR EXPOSED: DID KATE ELLIS LEAVE NOAH HARPER FOR HIS BILLIONAIRE BROTHER?
I stared at the screen.
Then my phone rang.
Ryan.
I answered.
Neither of us said hello.
“I didn’t send those,” he said.
“I know.”
“They’re fake.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then Ryan said the sentence that told me exactly how bad things had become.
May you like
“Kate, the board believes them.”
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