Chapter 7
Story: A Billionaire's Sweet Revenge at the Gala
The double doors closed behind them, and the ballroom sighed back into motion. Conversations resumed. Glasses clinked. The waltz swelled. But the space where Seraphine and Daniel had stood seemed to hold its shape for a long moment, an absence pressing against the marble like a shadow that refused to fade.
Gavin let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His hands were shaking. He looked down at them — the fine tremor in his fingers, the way the signet ring on his pinky seemed to weigh more than it had an hour ago — and he did not recognize himself.
"Say something," Delphine muttered, her voice barely a thread, her crimson gown rustling as she shifted her weight. "Everyone is still looking at us."
He looked up. She was right. The guests nearest them had sheathed their curiosity in polite smiles, but their eyes kept drifting back to him — assessing, amused, hungry for the second act of a performance they hadn't expected to be offered. He had given them a show tonight, a spectacle worth retelling at every dinner party for the next month, and they were waiting to see if there would be an encore.
Gavin turned and walked toward the terrace doors without a word.
Delphine followed, her heels clicking a sharp, staccato rhythm against the marble, and neither of them spoke until they had pushed through the narrow glass doors onto the terrace and the cool night air had closed around them like a shroud.
The city glittered below them, a million points of light strung along the dark curve of the river, and Gavin stood at the railing, gripping it until his knuckles went white. The champagne was still warm in his belly, the toast still echoing in his ears, but it felt like a different night, a different man, a different life.
"She's gone," he said finally, and the words felt strange in his mouth, too big for them. "She was — she was right there the whole time, and I didn't — I didn't see her."
Delphine stopped halfway between the doors and his shoulder. Her arms were crossed, her face pale in the blue spill of the terrace lamps, and something in her expression had shifted from sharp to tired.
"Gavin," she started.
"She has a daughter," he said, and his voice cracked. "She has a husband. Daniel Mercer. She has a life." He turned to look at Delphine, and the confusion in his face was a raw thing, unguarded, almost boyish. "How did I not know?"
Delphine's lips pressed into a thin line. "Because you never asked, Gavin," she said quietly. "You never asked where she had gone, who she was seeing, whether she was happy. You told yourself a story about her — that she was nothing, that she couldn't be anything without you — and you never once checked it against the truth."
"That's not —"
"Two years married," Delphine cut him off, and her voice had taken on an edge, not cruel but weary. "Two years married to a man so powerful the barman probably knows his name, and you didn't hear a single whisper. Not one. Because you never listened for her at all." She shook her head slowly. "I didn't want to see it earlier. I wanted to believe you were just — I don't know. But the way you looked at her tonight, when you realized who she'd married. You didn't look like a man who'd lost the love of his life. You looked like a man who'd just found out he'd been defeated in a game he didn't even know he was playing."
The words hit him like a wave, cold and sharp, washing away the sediment of his certainty. He tried to summon the old anger — She should have told me, she owed me that much, she was supposed to be nothing without me — but the words dissolved before they could form.
Because she wasn't supposed to be nothing without him. She was supposed to be something with him. And he hadn't given her the chance.
"She said —" His voice faltered. "She said the library. She said she met him at the library. On Twelfth Street. Do you know how many times I walked past that library, Delphine? Do you know how many times I thought about looking her up, just to see — just to check —"
"But you never did," Delphine said.
"No," he admitted. "I never did."
The city hummed below them, indifferent. Somewhere in the ballroom behind them, the waltz had reached its crescendo, and the scattered applause rose and fell like distant surf. The night was ending, and the only person who hadn't gotten what he came for was the man who had arrived with the loudest toast.
Behind the glass doors, a waiter was gathering empty flutes from the dessert table. One of them was Gavin's, still half-full, the rim smudged with his lip print, left there when he had set it down to chase Seraphine across the room.
He had set down his glass to chase her.
And she hadn't even turned around.
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