It was as clear as day.
As Alana glanced around the crowd, her stomach bubbling with a mix of rage and shame, a sudden realization came over her. Everyone in the crowd knew that Asher Tarkin was a playboy. Everyone knew that he’d betrayed her, time and time again. And the worst of it was that everyone expected that to happen. He was a rich and powerful artist, a man so obsessed with aesthetics that he’d changed the wallpaper in their Paris apartment three times in the past five years. The fact that he still had his wife from his early twenties was a miracle, probably one his peers revered.
“Hey, honey!” Bianca’s voice rang out through the cacophony of the crowd.
Alana blinked at her as though she was a stranger.
And then, something almost Biblical happened.
In front of Alana, the crowd parted, bit-by-bit, like the Red Sea for Moses. Suddenly, Alana found herself facing that gorgeous face from her youth, the face that her mother had said: “wouldn’t last forever.” The face that would probably bring in one million dollars that night, if not more.Where would that money go?Asher and Alana never had children (although Alana had ached for them). And they already had more homes than they knew what to do with.
The answer floated into her mind like a cloud.
The money would go to his numerous affairs.
It would go to brand-new, gorgeous heels for Miss Six Inches over there.
Or dinners for young women who would refuse to eat only a portion of them, out of principle. Alana had said it countless times, hadn’t she? “Oh, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”
“Alana! Do you want to head outside for a moment?” Bianca sounded panicked.
Alana was several layers of people away from her friend. She turned her head sharply and gave Bianca a rueful smile, one that made Bianca stop short. Alana wanted to scream at her:You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along.But what good would screaming at Bianca do?
It was better to destroy the source.
Alana took several sturdy steps toward the portrait of herself. Her heart lurched, but her mind and breaths were steady. There was no question within her any longer.
She stood before the painting and stared directly into seventeen-year-old Alana’s eyes for one final time. “You ruined your life, you know?” Alana spat quietly. She’d never hated anyone more than she hated the young woman in the painting.
And suddenly, with a quick and succinct movement, Alana threw the rest of her glass of wine across the painting with a tremendous splat.
Behind her, the crowd screeched with alarm.
It was over.
She was finally free.