The Birthday Party
CHAPTER 1: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
The candles were still burning when Marisol Devane walked into the ballroom.
Wren saw her first. Six months pregnant, wearing a red dress that showed it off, walking straight toward the head table like she owned the room.
Jonah was still at another table. Frosting on his chin. Laughing.
Marisol didn’t stop at a polite distance. She walked right up to Wren, stood close enough that Wren could smell her perfume.
“Hi, Wren,” Marisol said, smiling. “I’m Marisol. You probably know who I am.”
Wren’s stomach dropped.
“I just wanted you to hear it from me before Holt tells you.” Marisol pressed her hand flat against her belly, right in front of Wren’s face. “We’re having a daughter in March. He’s really excited. Like, excited in a way he never was about Jonah.”
Wren stood up.
“Get away from me.”
“I know this is hard”
Wren’s hand moved. The slap landed hard across Marisol’s cheek, the sound sharp enough that the closest tables stopped talking.
Marisol’s head snapped to the side. For a second, nobody moved.
Then Marisol shoved her back with both hands.
Wren’s hip hit the edge of the table. A glass fell and shattered against the floor.
“You crazy b***h,” Marisol hissed, hand flying to her cheek where the red mark was already spreading.
Holt was moving through the crowd, but Odalys got there first. She grabbed Wren’s arm from behind, nails digging in hard enough to hurt, hard enough to draw blood.
“Enough,” Odalys said into her ear. “You will not do this.”
Wren wrenched her arm away so hard Odalys stumbled backward into a chair.
That’s when Holt grabbed her wrist. Not gentle. Tight. Trying to pull her toward the hallway, away from cameras.
“Let go of me.”
“Wren, you need to calm down right now. You’re making a scene”
She drove her elbow backward into his ribs without thinking. Not a small movement. A real hit, using her body weight.
He grunted. His hand opened.
Marisol was crying now, hand on her face, and the photographer near the bar had lifted his camera. The click-click-loud enough that everyone heard it.
Holt grabbed Wren again, this time both hands, trying to physically pull her away from the crowd.
“Stop,” Wren said. “Let me go.”
“You’re embarrassing me. You’re embarrassing yourself. You need to leave right now before this gets worse.”
“Worse than what? Worse than you bringing your pregnant girlfriend to our son’s birthday party?”
Holt’s face went red. “That is not what’s happening here, and you know it. I told you I was seeing someone. I told you months ago.”
“You told me you were going to a conference. In Denver. Every time I asked, you said business trip.” Wren pulled against his grip. “Six months, Holt. You’ve been paying for her apartment, her car, her fertility clinic bills. You think I didn’t notice the withdrawals?”
The room had gone quiet. Two hundred guests were staring at them now.
Odalys stepped forward. “Wren, this is neither the time nor the place”
“You knew,” Wren said, looking directly at Holt’s mother. “You knew the whole time. This is why you wanted the party here, at The Plaza, with photographers. You wanted witnesses.”
Odalys’s face didn’t change, but her jaw tightened. That was answer enough.
Holt tried to drag Wren toward the exit again. She twisted her wrist and he pulled harder, the pressure on her bones sharp and mean.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Wren said.
She slapped him. Not as hard as the first one, but hard enough that his head turned. To the point that his hand finally released her wrist.
Marisol made a small sound, shock or sympathy or something else.
Holt looked at Wren like she’d become a stranger to him. “You have no idea what you just did.”
“Yes, I do.” Wren pulled her arm away from him completely. The bruises from his grip were already forming. She could see them blooming purple and yellow on her wrist. “I finally did something you can’t control.”
Across the room, Jonah stood up from his chair. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was just staring at his parents with the particular stillness of a child who understands more than anyone wants him to.
Wren walked straight to him, picked him up, and carried him out of the ballroom. She didn’t look back.
In the parking lot, her hands were shaking so bad she could barely open the car door. Her knuckles were red where they’d connected with Marisol’s face. Her arm was bleeding where Odalys’s nails had dug in. Her wrist was already bruising from Holt’s grip.
Isolde caught up to her at the valet stand. “Wren, are you okay? What happened in there? That was”
“Get in the car.”
“But your arm is bleeding”
“Get. In. The. Car.”
They made it three blocks before Wren’s phone buzzed.
A text from a number she didn’t recognize.
“This is Bastian Calloway. I saw what happened in there. My nephew is a coward and I am not. My family has been planning to humiliate you for weeks. They want you gone before the inheritance vote next month. Don’t go home tonight. When you’re somewhere safe, call me.”
She stared at it. Her hands were still shaking.
Isolde read over her shoulder. “Your ex-husband’s uncle? What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” Wren said. But she was already typing back.
How do you know about the inheritance vote?
The response came in seconds.
“Because I’m the one who controls it. And because I’ve been watching my family destroy people for six years without doing anything about it. Tonight, I stopped watching. Call me. Use the number this text came from.”
Wren’s phone buzzed again. Another text, this time from Holt’s number.
“Don’t think this makes you look good. Everyone saw you lose control. Everyone saw you hit me. You just proved to every lawyer I hire that you’re unstable. You just lost your son.”
She set the phone down on the seat between her and Isolde.
“What do we do?” Isolde whispered.
Wren pulled out of the valet line and drove toward the highway.
“We go somewhere safe,” she said. “And then we figure out how to fight back.”
