Chapter5
1094 Words
The city lights blurred past the car window, but Olivia couldn’t focus on the skyline. She kept replaying Elijah’s words from the elevator this morning — Smile tonight. Hold my hand. Make them believe.
It was easy to fake affection for the cameras. The harder part was faking the walls she was desperately trying to keep around her heart.
She glanced at him across the car. He looked maddeningly composed in his black tux, hair slicked back, cufflinks gleaming like tiny weapons. He caught her staring and arched an eyebrow.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“About your father? Always,” she said, smoothing the silk of her midnight-blue gown over her thighs. “About Naomi? Less so.”
“And about Amelia crashing the party?”
Olivia’s stomach flipped. “She wouldn’t dare.”
Elijah didn’t answer — which meant she would. Of course she would.
The car pulled up to the grand entrance of The Williams Foundation’s annual charity gala — gold carpet, photographers, whispered gossip curling through the warm spring air.
Elijah’s hand closed over hers before she could reach for the door handle. She looked down at his fingers threading through hers — strong, certain, possessive in a way that made her chest squeeze.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Are you?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her temple — soft, barely there, but enough to make the cameras outside flash like wildfire the second they stepped out.
Inside, the ballroom glittered with chandeliers and old money. Waiters wove through the crowd with champagne. Olivia plastered on her best smile as Elijah guided her through clusters of power suits and diamond necklaces.
He never let go of her hand. When someone asked a question, he would slide a warm palm to the small of her back. When the board members approached, he stood close enough that their shoulders brushed.
It was an act. All of it.
So why did it feel so dangerously real?
Halfway through the evening, Elijah steered her toward a table near the front — where his father already sat, silver-haired and stern in a bespoke tux, Naomi next to him, eyes bright with mischief and curiosity.
“Robert,” Elijah greeted tightly.
“Son,” his father said, eyes flicking to Olivia. The weight of his gaze made her stomach knot. “And the wife. We finally meet.”
Olivia extended her hand, pulse hammering. “Mr. Williams. It’s a pleasure.”
His handshake was firm, assessing. “You’re very… unexpected.”
“I get that a lot,” she said, her smile sharp enough to slice the tension.
Naomi jumped in, wrapping Olivia in a hug that felt like borrowed warmth. “Ignore him. He’s ancient and rude.”
“Naomi,” Robert warned, but his daughter just rolled her eyes and clinked her champagne flute against Olivia’s glass.
“I saved you a seat,” Naomi whispered. “Next to me. I want the real story.”
Olivia laughed — a sound that startled even her.
Dinner was a blur of small talk and sharp looks. Robert quizzed her about her family, her degree, her goals — questions she deflected with polite charm she didn’t know she had.
Elijah watched her field every blow, his hand brushing her knee under the table once — a warning or maybe a reward. She couldn’t tell.
Naomi kicked her heel under the table every time she thought Olivia needed rescue. It helped.
But the real test arrived draped in blood-red satin and poison.
Amelia.
She glided in like a queen reclaiming her stolen crown, hair curled to perfection, lips a lethal shade of crimson.
“Well, well,” she purred, stopping at their table. “I almost didn’t recognize you, Elijah. Marriage looks so… quaint on you.”
Robert’s eyes narrowed. “Amelia.”
Olivia felt Elijah’s hand tighten on her thigh beneath the table — a silent claim that made her breath catch.
“Amelia,” Elijah said, voice cold enough to frost glass. “You weren’t invited.”
She laughed — a delicate, venomous sound. “Oh, darling. You can’t uninvite family friends.”
Her gaze slid to Olivia — dissecting, dismissing. “And the new wife. Tell me, dear, how long do you think you can keep him interested?”
Olivia set down her fork carefully. She could feel Naomi’s eyes dart between them like a spectator at a boxing match.
“That depends,” Olivia said sweetly. “How long did you manage it?”
Jared — seated two spots down — let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Ouch.”
Amelia’s jaw twitched, but she recovered with a cruel smile. “Enjoy it while it lasts, Mrs. Williams. Men like him never change.”
Olivia didn’t flinch. Instead, she slipped her hand under the table and laced her fingers with Elijah’s — a reckless move, considering how her heart pounded.
“He already has,” Olivia said. “And I think you hate that.”
Amelia opened her mouth, but Robert cut in, voice iron and final. “I think you’ve said enough, Amelia.”
The room exhaled with him. Amelia glared at Elijah, then at Olivia, and turned on her stiletto heel — vanishing into the ballroom like a ghost who’d just lost her haunt.
The rest of dinner blurred past in a whirl of champagne and secrets. Elijah stayed close, leaning in once to murmur, “You didn’t have to do that.”
She whispered back, “I wanted to.”
Later, Olivia found herself alone in the powder room, staring at her reflection under the soft gold lights. Her lips were painted into a perfect smile — the same one she’d worn all night.
But she knew what the smile was hiding.
She touched her flat stomach, her mind replaying the test hidden deep in her purse. Positive. The word pulsed behind her ribs like a drum.
She closed her eyes, sucked in a breath.
He can’t know yet.
Not until she figured out if this marriage could hold something real — a secret growing quietly inside her, bigger than any contract or lie they’d built.
When she stepped back into the ballroom, Elijah was waiting at the door, tie loosened, jaw set — watching her like he could see every secret she hadn’t spoken yet.
And when he held out his hand, she took it.
Because for tonight — pretend or not — she needed him to hold her up.
- Writer
