Scarlet Lies and Diamond Tears

Chapter Four

Claudia

Discharge day felt anticlimactic.

I had spent six days in a hospital bed watching the window light change and eating food that Raymond brought and slowly, reluctantly, letting my body remember that it wanted to be alive. And now a nurse was handing me a bag with my belongings — the ruined wedding dress folded inside, which felt like a bad joke — and Dr. Osei was signing forms and someone was asking if I had a ride, if I had somewhere to go, if there was someone they could call.

"I'll figure it out," I kept saying.

"You won't have to."

Raymond was in the doorway. Jacket on, car keys in hand, looking like a man who had already made all the relevant decisions and was simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.

I turned to face him. "I didn't ask you to come."

"No," he agreed. "But here I am."

Dr. Osei looked between us with an expression that was professionally neutral and personally very entertained. She handed me my discharge papers, told me to follow up in two weeks, gave my hand one last brief squeeze, and left us to it.

~

The car ride was quiet for the first ten minutes.

I sat with the paper bag in my lap and watched the city move past the window — ordinary Monday city, people with coffees and groceries and problems that were probably significantly smaller than mine — and tried to figure out what I was actually going to do. My apartment was technically still mine for another two weeks before the lease ran out. The lease I hadn't renewed because I'd been planning on moving into Kenny's place after the wedding.

Kenny's place.

The thought arrived like pressing a bruise.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Minerva House," Raymond said.

I turned to look at him. "What's Minerva House?"

"A guesthouse. It is private, quiet. Good security." He kept his eyes on the road. "You'll stay there while you get back on your feet. I've arranged it."

I stared at him for a full three seconds. "Raymond."

"Mm."

"You can't just… you can't arrange things for me without asking."

"I can and I did," he said simply. "You said your lease ends in twelve days. You are nine weeks pregnant, recently discharged, and have no viable alternative. Minerva House has a kitchenette and a garden and a staff that will leave you entirely alone if you want them to."

"That's not the point—"

"Then what is the point, Claudia?"

The way he said my name wasn't unkind. It was just direct. Like a hand placed firmly on a table.

"The point," I said, pulling my dignity together, "is that I am a grown woman and I get to make my own decisions about where I live."

"Noted," he said. "Minerva House is on Clement Street. We'll be there in eight minutes."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Looked back out the window.

"You're infuriating," I told the glass.

"So I've been told," he said, and I could hear, just barely, the ghost of something that was almost satisfaction in his voice.

Raymond

Minerva House was the right choice. She'd see that eventually.

I had six properties I could have offered. I chose Minerva because it was anonymous — no connection to my name in any public record — because it was staffed by people I trusted, and because the garden in the back got good morning light, which seemed like the kind of thing a person needed when they were rebuilding themselves from nothing.

I was practical about it. That was all.

I helped her carry the bag inside, spoke briefly with the manager — a sturdy, warm woman named Greta who had the good sense to simply welcome Claudia without questions — and confirmed the arrangements. First month covered. Groceries stocked. The number for the building's private doctor on the kitchen counter.

Claudia stood in the middle of the little sitting room and turned slowly, taking it in. It was nice. Not extravagant — I'd specifically avoided extravagant because she didn't seem like a woman who responded well to being overwhelmed — but warm. Real furniture. Good light. A bookshelf with actual books.

"This is too much," she said quietly.

"It's adequate," I said.

She turned to look at me. Her eyes did that thing they sometimes did — that quick, searching assessment, like she was trying to see further into me than I intended to let her. It was mildly inconvenient.

"Why," she said, "are you doing all this?"

"I told you I don't know yet," I said. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

She held my gaze for a moment. Then she nodded once, slowly, like she was filing that answer away for later.

I left.

Claudia

Three weeks later, I found out about the therapist.

It happened accidentally, the way most things I wasn't supposed to find out happened. I was at my second appointment with Dr. Amara Solis — sharp, composed, the kind of therapist who asked questions that felt like small surgeries — and I had just written the cheque for the session fee when she looked at me with mild confusion.

"Oh," she said gently, "that's already been taken care of, Claudia."

I looked up. "Sorry?"

"Your sessions are covered," she said, in the careful tone of someone realizing they've said something they perhaps weren't meant to. "Through a private arrangement. I assumed you knew."

I sat very still.

"A private arrangement," I repeated.

"I'm afraid I can't say more than that." She had a excellent professional face. "I assumed—"

"It's fine," I said. Calmly. Pleasantly. "Thank you, Dr. Solis."

I put my cheque book back in my bag.

~

He picked up on the second ring.

"Claudia—"

"Did you pay for my therapist?" I asked.

Silence. Two seconds of it. Which from Raymond Xavier was basically a confession.

"The sessions are covered, yes," he said.

I stood in the car park outside Dr. Solis's building and felt something move through me that was complicated and hot and not entirely anger, though anger was definitely in there.

"Raymond." I pressed my free hand against my forehead. "You cannot keep doing this."

"Doing what, specifically?" he said, and the evenness of it, the complete absence of apology in his voice, made the complicated hot feeling sharpen into something cleaner.

" This, " I said. "Arranging things. Paying for things. Making decisions about my life without consulting me. I am not a — I am not a charity case. I am not something you pulled out of a river that you now feel responsible for like some kind of — project —"

"You are not a project," he said, and something in his voice had shifted. Just slightly. An edge underneath the evenness.

"Then what am I?" I demanded.

"Someone who needed help," he said. "Someone who wasn't going to ask for it. Someone who would have sat in that discharge room telling everyone she'd figure it out until she figured herself right back onto a bridge." A pause. "Dr. Solis is the best in the city. You deserved the best. It wasn't complicated."

I stood there in the car park with the phone pressed to my ear and the wind moving through the trees overhead and I wanted to stay angry. I was trying very hard to stay angry because anger was manageable and what was underneath it — that complicated warm thing I didn't have a name for yet — was not.

"You should have told me," I said. Quieter now.

"You would have refused," he said.

"That was my right."

"Yes," he said. And then, after a moment — "You're right. I should have told you."

I blinked.

In three weeks, I had never heard Raymond Xavier say you're right about anything.

"Did that hurt?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

A pause. "Moderately," he said.

And there it was — my mouth doing the thing it did whenever he said something unexpected, pulling into a smile I hadn't planned on, and I pressed my lips together to stop it but it didn't really work.

"Don't do it again," I said.

"Which part," he said. "The therapist or the honesty."

" Raymond. "

"Come to dinner," he said. "There's a place near you. I'll explain myself properly over food. You can be angry at me in person. I find it easier to process."

I laughed. Actual, genuine, surprised — the kind that escapes before you can catch it.

"Fine," I said.

"Seven o'clock," he said, and hung up.

~

I stood there a moment longer looking at my phone screen.

And then I searched his name.

I don't know why I hadn't before. Maybe I hadn't wanted to know. Maybe knowing would have made it feel different, transactional somehow, like I was keeping track of what a man was worth before deciding whether to trust him.

But I typed it in.

Raymond Xavier.

And I stood there in the car park with the afternoon light fading around me and read. And read. And kept reading.

Xavier Industries. Net worth estimated at four point three billion. Named in Forbes thirty under forty at twenty-seven. Youngest person to — self-made — no family money — built from—

Four point three billion.

The man who had sat in a hospital chair for six days bringing me soup from a paper bag was worth four point three billion dollars.

I thought about all the times I'd argued with him about money. About the guesthouse and the therapist and the groceries. About my rights. I thought about how he'd sat there and taken every word of it without once mentioning—

My phone buzzed.

A text from an unsaved number that I somehow already knew.

Seven o'clock. Wear something warm. The table is outside.

I stared at it.

Then I looked back at the search results. At the photos. Raymond in a boardroom. Raymond at some gala, in a black tuxedo, looking like a man who found the entire event mildly tedious. Raymond shaking hands with someone whose name I recognized from the news.

And one more headline, near the bottom.

One I almost missed.

Xavier Industries in heated dispute with Yozmid Group — insider sources suggest blackmail allegations.

I frowned at the screen.

Yozmid.

I didn't know why that name made something cold move through my chest.

I didn't know why it felt, in some distant, instinctive way, like a name I'd heard before.

Heard. Somewhere dark. Somewhere I'd spent eight months trying to forget.