Chapter 4 - The Songbird and the Console
Inside the study, neither man seemed to notice. Dominic picked up a heavy silver fountain pen, twirling it between his scarred fingers with mechanical ease.
"Besides," Dominic said, his tone shifting into something distinctly softer, an inflection Emma had not heard him use in years—perhaps had never heard him use at all. "Emma is safe. She provides structure. But she doesn't possess the fire. Vanessa’s different. She's a songbird."
The name struck Emma like a physical blow across the chest.
Vanessa.
Vanessa Reed. The celebrated lyric soprano whose sudden departure for Milan four years ago had been framed as a career milestone, but whose return to Chicago three weeks ago had dominated the society pages. The Reeds and the Vances had shared summer compounds in Door County for three generations. Emma had met Vanessa only twice—both times at crowded charity galas where the blonde singer had treated Emma with an airy, practiced warmth that felt like scented vapor.
"Vanessa is back," Gabriel stated, his voice flat, stripped of all warmth. "I saw her name on the donor roster for the Lyric Opera opening next week. Does she know you've maintained this absurd medical pantomime with your wife?"
"Vanessa knows who I am," Dominic replied, a dark, possessive note creeping into his cadence. "She always has. When she sings, Gabe, she doesn't modulate her voice for a damaged man. She commands the room. She has an appetite for life that Emma couldn't begin to fathom. Emma lives to serve; Vanessa lives to conquer."
"And Margaret?" Gabriel asked quietly. "Your mother has been in Northwestern Memorial for four days with cardiac complications. Does she know Vanessa is back in town?"
"My mother orchestrated her return," Dominic said, setting the pen down with a decisive thud. "Mother has never hidden her preferences. She tolerated Emma because Emma was useful when the family needed an obedient caretaker to oversee the estate transition after my father died. But Vanessa... Vanessa belongs in this family's bloodline. Everything is falling into place."
Outside the doorway, Emma’s tears finally spilled over her lower lashes, hot and silent, tracking down her porcelain cheeks and dripping onto the ivory silk of her dress.
Every instinct in her body urged her to kick the heavy oak door open, to fling the two silver hearing aids into Dominic’s smug, handsome face, to scream until the crystal sconces shattered against the plaster walls. She wanted to force him to look at the devastation he had wrought, to confront the monster lurking beneath his tailored clothes and billionaire pedigree.
Yet, as the raw agony tore through her chest, another sensation rose from beneath the ruins of her grief: a cold, crystalline stillness.
If she screamed now, she would be nothing more than an emotional casualty, easily managed, easily dismissed, easily escorted out by security while Dominic’s high-priced lawyers drafted an ungenerous settlement to silence her. He had already calculated her helplessness. He had already mapped out her financial vulnerability and assumed her docile breeding would keep her compliant.
Idealists are remarkably easy to manage, he had said.
Emma swallowed the bitter salt in her throat. Her breathing slowed, shifting from frantic gasps to a deliberate, icy rhythm. She lowered her hand from her mouth.
Moving with deliberate, phantom grace, she turned toward the burl-wood entry console positioned between the two fluted columns of the hallway. She did not throw the devices. She did not slam the lid. With steady, immaculate care, she placed the silver hearing aids precisely into their silicone grooves inside the black lacquer case.
She clicked the lid shut. The tiny latch made an almost imperceptible snick.
May you like
She positioned the case exactly where Dominic expected to find it, aligned parallel to the silver card tray. She wiped the tear tracks from her cheeks with the back of her wrist, smoothed the bodice of her ivory dress, and turned her back on Dominic Vance’s study.
She did not look back as she walked down the marble gallery, her heels making not a single sound against the deep wool of the runner.
