Chapter 3
853 Words
During her days at WNBX Channel 7, Vivienne worked without stopping, early mornings, late nights, no distinction between the two. In between assignments, she was quietly rebuilding her case, gathering fresh evidence about what had really happened to her father. She buried herself in the work, and for a while, it was enough to keep Julian out of her head.
The Wall Street tycoon who had been stonewalling every journalist in the city finally agreed to sit down with her. The story ran on the front page. The team's morale lifted. And then, right in the middle of all of it, Julian called.
She stared at his name on the screen for three full seconds before she picked up. "What is it?" she asked, keeping her voice flat.
"I sent you messages telling you to come home." A brief pause, a trace of irritation underneath the calm. "You didn't see them?"
She said nothing.
She hadn't just ignored them. She'd muted his notifications entirely.
Julian let the silence sit for a moment, then moved on without pressing her. "Ellie's coming over for dinner tonight. My father and Mrs. Calloway will both be there. You should come back."
Then Eleanor's voice came through the line, soft and gracious: "Vivi, what happened between you and your stepbrother, I don't hold it against you. Come home. There's nothing to be ashamed of."
Vivienne's knuckles went white around the phone.
Come home. To sit across the table from the woman who had stolen her award, whose family had taken her father's life, and smile like none of it had happened? To let herself be humiliated all over again, just so the evening could go smoothly for everyone else?
She couldn't.
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was perfectly steady. "I can't. I'm hitting the pavement tomorrow. I don't have time."
She hung up before he could respond.
It was the first time she had ever said no to Julian. For years she had bent herself around his needs without thinking. Even through her period, even when she was exhausted and hurting, she had always found a way to give him what he wanted. And he had never once stopped to ask how she was.
She must have looked as bleak as she felt, because Madison appeared at her elbow almost immediately.
"Forget them. Let's go to the private lounge. They just got a new guy in, and he is gorgeous."
That actually made Vivienne laugh.
She had assumed it was a joke. It wasn't. Madison swept her out the door and straight to the private lounge, where the new arrival turned out to be Theodore Langston, and he was, as advertised, exactly as attractive as advertised.
Vivienne looked at his face and felt a strange, disorienting flicker of recognition. Certain angles, certain expressions, he looked a little like Julian.
When he opened a bottle for them, he asked, naturally and without any particular weight to it, when she'd be coming back.
"I won't be," Vivienne said, and paused. "I applied for a war correspondent posting in Korvath. I leave in five days."
Five days. The same day as Julian's wedding.
The room went quiet for a beat, and then Madison erupted.
"You didn't tell me? And besides, your stepbrother would never let you just—"
She caught herself mid-sentence and stopped dead.
Vivienne went still.
She thought back to when she had first started out as a journalist, how all she had wanted was to stay in Nexis City, to stay close to Julian. When The Tribune next door ran a piece that took shots at him, she had stormed over and gotten into it with their editor on the spot. She'd come home with a swollen face. That night, Julian had kissed her, and never noticed the bruise forming across her cheek.
Looking back now, it was almost funny.
"He's not my brother," she said. "He doesn't get a say."
She stood up, tipped her glass back, and drank deeply. The laugh that came out of her had tears in it.
"He's busy planning the wedding with Eleanor Whitfield. Why would he even…" think about me?
She couldn't finish the sentence.
She'd seen the photos online. Eleanor in a European royal tiara, standing beside Julian, radiant and untouchable. That tiara. Vivienne had been the one who'd pointed it out first, told him she loved it. She had imagined wearing it someday, on a day that was supposed to be hers.
That day was never coming.
By the end of the night, Vivienne had drunk herself into a pleasant, weightless blur and collapsed sideways onto the couch. Theo helped her upright and touched her hand that had gone cold.
"Let me turn up the air conditioning," he said.
Vivienne floated somewhere between awake and not, and gradually became aware that she was leaning against Theo's shoulder. She opened her mouth and was just starting to say something when a voice cut across the room, sharp and cold as a blade.
"Vivienne. So this is what you call 'don't have time'?"
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