Episode 4
1594 Words
Sasha's POV
The shame hit me the moment I sat down.
It swallowed everything, my anger at Ben, the speech I had been rehearsing in my head since the hallway.
All of it, gone. Because he was sitting right there and he was looking at me with his eyebrows raised and his expression caught somewhere between confusion and the beginning of recognition.
I sat down without greeting anyone. "Sasha." Mr Stones' voice cut through the fog. "It's nice to see you again." He folded his hands on the table. "I called this meeting because of you."
"Because of her?" the same voice I had slept with upstairs cut in. I kept my eyes fixed on the table. "Who is she, exactly?"
I looked up before anyone else could answer.
"I'm Ben's wife," I said quickly. The words out of my mouth before he could say anything that would unravel what we did in front of this entire room.
His eyebrows went up. He turned slowly to the woman sitting beside him, the woman from the doorstep, and looked at her. "And who are you?" he asked her.
She lifted her chin. "My name is Sonia, I'm Ben's wife. I have been for five years. And I have a son for him."
The room went very quiet.
He looked at her. Then he turned and looked at Ben with an expression I couldn't fully read. Then he looked at his father and started laughing.
The laugh of a man who had heard something so absurd his body had no other response for it.
"This isn't funny, Lucas," Ben said through his teeth.
"Forgive me." Lucas pressed his hand over his mouth, shoulders still shaking. "I'm sorry, I just—" He laughed again, harder this time, the sound filling the room.
Lucas? I finally had something to call him other than the man from the room and the man from the dream and the worst mistake of my life.
"Lucas." Mr Stones' voice carried the particular weight of a man who did not need to raise it to command silence.
Lucas straightened, cleared his throat, and pressed his lips together. "Sorry, Dad."
Dad? The word landed on me like something physical. I sat very still and let it move through me.
Lucas was Mr Stones' son? Ben's brother?
The room suddenly felt too hot. I kept my face still through what I can only describe as an act of sheer will.
"I will not appreciate any further disruptions until I am done speaking."
Mr Stones looked around the table slowly, his gaze moving from Ben to his wife, to Lucas before settling on me. "Sasha. Tell me what happened between you and my son."
I took a breath. "With due respect sir," I said, "I don't have the strength to go into my problems with Ben right now. That's not why I'm here. I want my money."
Mr Stones turned to Ben. One eyebrow raised. "Why haven't you returned Sasha's money?"
Ben's face did the thing it always did when he was constructing an answer, a brief stillness, a slight shift of the eyes.
"I suffered some unfortunate incidents," he said smoothly. "I don't have it on me right now."
The lie came out so cleanly it almost impressed me.
"That's on you then," Mr Stones said, turning back to me. "Not me. Hold your husband responsible."
"He won't give it to me," I said. "And when he doesn't, it will fall back on your company. I will make sure of it."
"Excuse me?" Mrs Stones' voice came from the end of the table.
I hadn't looked at her directly since sitting down. I looked at her now. "Are you sitting in my husband's house threatening him?"
"On the contrary," I said. "I'm threatening your son."
Her eyes narrowed.
Across the table I saw Lucas unfold and refold his arms, his gaze moving quietly between me and his mother, watching everything with the stillness of someone who had decided, for now, to observe.
Mrs Stones hit the table with her palm. The sound was sharp and flat. "Don't you dare speak to me in that tone. I will not sit here and take insults from a barren entity whose womb is dead."
The words landed hot, I waited for them to sting, but they didn't. Because I knew something she didn't.
I pressed my hand once, briefly, against my stomach beneath the table and said nothing.
"Evelyn." Mr Stones' voice was quiet but absolute. She went still.
He turned to Ben. "I was there when you married Sasha. I know what kind of woman she is and what she has done for this family."
His eyes moved to Sonia, then back to Ben. "So who is this woman? And how is she also your wife? I'm told she has your son."
Ben opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
His mother quickly filled the silence. "Sonia is the real wife," she said.
"Sasha was a mistake. When it became clear that she couldn't give my son an heir I arranged for Ben to marry someone who could. Someone who would carry on this family properly."
"Mom, that's cruel," Lucas' voice was low.
"Keep out of this," she snapped. "This has nothing to do with you."
Lucas pressed his lips together and said nothing. But his jaw tightened and his eyes went somewhere cold and I noticed, even through everything, that it was a different kind of cold from Ben's.
Ben's coldness was calculated. Lucas' looked like anger being held in place by discipline.
Mr Stones raised his hand and the table went silent.
He looked at his wife for a long moment. "Why," he said quietly, "would you do something like that?"
"I was looking after my son." She met his gaze without flinching. "Every mother would do the same."
The room was completely still.
Mr Stones exhaled slowly, like a man carrying something he hadn't agreed to carry.
He looked at me with an expression that was almost kind. "Sasha, I apologize for my son's behavior. And for my wife's."
He glanced briefly at Mrs Stones who said nothing. "I want you both to find a way to work through this. We can sit down, find a settlement, something that works for everyone."
"I don't see how that's possible." Lucas' voice was measured.
I kept my eyes forward. "Ben can't be with them both," he continued. "That's not a settlement, that's a circus. Someone has to make a choice. Everyone at this table has to make a choice."
"Who made you a judge?" Ben's voice was sharp.
"Lucas is right." Mr Stones cut him off cleanly. Ben closed his mouth.
Mr Stones turned to Sonia. "Knowing everything you know now, do you still want to be with my son?"
Sonia didn't hesitate. Not even for a breath. "Yes," she said. "He's the father of my child. Nothing about that has changed."
I watched her say it and something moved through me. Something more like suspicion.
She had been too calm since the doorstep, since the meeting room, since all of it.
No woman finds out her husband has another wife and sits this still unless she already knew, or unless she wants something badly enough to absorb the shock quietly.
Mr Stones turned to me. His expression shifted into something gentler. "Sasha. You will always be Ben's real wife as far as I am concerned."
He paused. "So I won't insult you by asking you the same question."
Then he turned to Ben. "You have to decide. Right here, right now. Sonia or Sasha. You cannot have them both. Choose one."
The room waited. Ben's eyes moved around the table slowly.
Then they landed on me but I looked away. He opened his mouth. "Sasha is pregnant."
I didn't react. I kept my face completely still. But my eyes moved just for a moment across the table to Lucas.
He had gone very still. His jaw was set. He was staring at the table in front of him and swallowing and I watched the muscles in his throat move and then I looked away.
"That's impossible." Mrs Stones' voice was immediate. "She's lying."
"Congratulations, Sasha." Mr Stones said cutting his wife off, and he meant it.
Then he looked back at his son. "But you still haven't answered my question."
Ben looked at me again. I looked at the wall behind his father's head.
He took a long breath. "Sonia has my first son," he said. "And Sasha—" He stopped. "I love them both. I can't choose. I don't want either of them to leave."
Mr Stones' expression didn't change. "You have to choose, Ben."
"Then I want them both." He said it like a man who had decided that the boldness of the statement would somehow carry it. "I don't want anyone to leave."
Mr Stones turned to Sonia. "Are you agreeable to that?"
"Yes," she said simply. Still that same unnerving calm.
Mr Stones turned to me. "I'm filing for divorce," I said. "I will never share a man. Not for any reason."
"Sasha." Ben's voice shifted into something warning. "I told you. You divorce me, you forget about your money."
"You will give me my money, Ben."
"Not if you proceed with this, Sasha. I'd do anything to make sure you don't leave me."
Lucas had his arms unfolded now, leaning slightly forward, his dark eyes steady. "I'll give her the money," he said.
The silence that followed was enormous.
- Writer
