“After all that your father and I have done for you,” she went on in low, shaky voice, “this is how you repay us. With a disgusting scandal. Your father is so sick over it he can barely function. Look at him.” His normally dour face was twisted in rage. He looked moments away from passing out. “This will send him to the hospital, Cora. And if he dies from it, his death will be onyou.”
I pressed a palm to my forehead, my mind spinning like a tornado. I could always count on my family to make a bad situation worse.
“Listen—”
“There’s nothing to listen to. You have completely ruined everything,” my mother spat.
Silence advanced on the office like a steamroller. I stared at the ground, trying to figure out the best angle. Anxiety slithered through my veins. Dizziness threatened to topple me.
Axel had been right to offer his support. I needed someone to help prop me up. I pressed a palm against the wall. If I fell and cracked my head open, I didn’t trust either of my parents to pick me back up. They’d probably see me unconscious and figure my eventual death was the easiest solution to this mess.
“Axel and his brothers are being unfairly disparaged in the news,” I said slowly, methodically. “That article was a hatchet job. It’s incomplete information. There’s no way they can be linked to sex trafficking. Not when their own sister was a victim to it.”
My mother’s eyes fluttered shut, and she pressed her fingers to the side of her face. “How can you even associate with people who live adjacent to such filth?”
“They are not filth,” I said slowly.
“But they’re so close you can hardly tell the difference,” she said, rising to standing. She started a slow, lethal walk toward me. Her matte black Manolo Blahniks might double as a weapon shortly. “When you smell like trash, people assume youaretrash. You know what our priority is here, Cora. No drama.”
“Even at the expense of my physical and emotional health,” I bit out. “Got it.”
Her lips formed a thin line despite the fillers I knew she regularly got. “We keep a seal on the drama. At all costs. Gotthat?”
“This isn’t my fault,” I said, though I regretted it the second I said it. This news had gotten out somehow. And it wouldn’t have, if I’d just done what they wanted me to do. If I’d done what they wanted, the news wouldn’t even exist.
A bitter laugh rolled past my mother’s lips. “Of course it is. You welcomed it in the second you opened the trash can to take a peek.”
This would be my fault forever.
I swallowed the protests bubbling to the surface. “What do you want me to do that doesn’t involve continuing my marriage to Eli?”
My father ejected a disgusted grunt and tapped a closed fist against his forehead. I wasn’t sure if he was going to faint or explode. Either seemed equally likely.
When they didn’t say anything immediately, I added, “I’m not going back to him.” My voice wavered as I spoke. My mother crossed her arms slowly, looking back at my father.
“It appears she’s ready for negotiation.”
Every inch of my heart that had been bolstered by my return to Axel wilted. Nothing felt good right now. Nothing in this office, at least.
My father cleared his throat, acting like it required a Herculean effort. Without looking at me, he said, “Stop living with the filth. It’s a PR nightmare. Paparazzi are following all of us now.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Maybe, just maybe, if this had broken any other time, it wouldn’t have been such an explosive story. But on the heels of the misinformation posing as an exposé of Fairchild Enterprises, of course the whole world wanted to tune in and see what happened next.
Tabloids lapped up any chance to bring in thePrincess of Manhattantoo. The whole thing was a mess, and my father wasn’t wrong to be stewing in discontent.
“You helped create this salacious story,” my mother added. “The only way to make it stop is to not give them what they want. You need to keep your nose clean.”
I balled and relaxed my fists a few times, working over the possibilities. Axel’s home was the only place I wanted to be. No, scratch that—at Axel’s side, whereverhewas, was the place I wanted to be. And I fully planned to reside there as long as humanly possible.
“I’ll consider it,” I said. “But I am not moving back in with Eli.”
“You need to be seen entering and exiting property you own,” my father said, still not looking at me. “There’s no further consideration required.”
I straightened my back. For how fucked up this all was, there was an important silver lining. I could continue with Axel. I could play the game for them a bit longer until I figured out what made sense. I didn’t have to move in with Eli. I didn’t need to pretend I wasn’t getting a divorce.
In the Margulis world, this was a major win.
“I’m still proceeding with the divorce,” I stated.