“A montage?” I interrupted, tilting my head slightly, feeling an eerie, protective calm settling deep into my bones. One of my hands remained flat against my stomach, shielding the four-month flutter of life inside me from the toxicity radiating across the room. “I used artificial intelligence to fabricate your watch? The birthmark on your lower back? The red silk blouse Paige wore to brunch last Tuesday before coming straight to our house while I was at my ultrasound appointment?”
At the mention of the ultrasound, two of Marcus’s cousins gasped. His uncle Richard, who had been sitting at the far end of the table cutting his steak, dropped his silver fork onto his porcelain plate with a sharp clatter.
Paige couldn’t take it anymore. The veneer of the sophisticated, untouchable ex-wife vanished. She shoved her chair back with such violent force that it screeched against the hardwood floor and nearly tipped over. She snatched her designer handbag from the floor, clutching it against her ribs like a shield.
“I have to go,” Paige stammered, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. Her cheeks were flushed a violent crimson. “This is between you two. Marcus, you told me she didn’t care. You told me you two were basically roommates—”
“Paige, sit down and shut your mouth!” Marcus snapped, his panic mutating rapidly into vicious, cornered fury.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” she fired back, tears of humiliation finally spilling over her mascara. “You said she was too busy being sick to notice! You said you had everything under control!”
“Did you have it under control when you took her upstairs, Marcus?” I asked softly, my eyes locking onto his. “Or when you gave her back the spare key to our front door? The key you swore to my face you had taken back the week before our wedding?”
Marcus froze. The sheer weight of the room pressed down on him. Every pair of eyes—his mother, his sister, his childhood friends, the cousins he had bragged to about his perfect life—was fixed on him in absolute, unvarnished disgust. There was nowhere to hide. The evidence wasn’t hearsay; it wasn’t a rumor whispered through mutual acquaintances. It was a digital ghost, glowing in sixteen million colors on the wall of his own dining room.
“Vivienne, please,” Marcus pleaded, his tone abruptly shifting from rage to a sickening, desperate softness. He took two stumbling steps around the perimeter of the table, his hands outstretched toward me. “Please, baby. Let’s go into the study. Let’s talk about this in private. Our guests don’t need to be part of our private struggles. Think about our baby. Think about the stress you’re putting on our child—”
“Do not speak about our child,” I commanded.
My voice was not loud, but it possessed an authority that stopped him dead in his tracks three feet away from me. I looked at the man I had stood before at an altar only seven short months ago. I had worn ivory lace. He had cried when I walked down the aisle. He had sworn before God, his family, and our friends that he would cherish me, protect me, and honor the sacred boundary of our home.
Now, looking at him, I didn’t see the handsome, ambitious architect I fell in love with. I saw a hollow, cowardly little boy who wanted the safety of a domestic life with a pregnant wife while secretly keeping his former life on a leash.
“You invited her to sit at my table,” I said, sweeping my eyes over the wreckage of the dinner party. “You told me she belonged here because she was family. You told me I needed to be gracious. Well, Marcus, I was gracious. I set her place card. I let her eat the food I bought. I let her drink our wine. And now, I have given her—and you—the spotlight you both so clearly craved.”
I turned my back on him.
“Vivienne! Don’t you dare walk away from me!” Marcus yelled, his footsteps rushing forward to grab my arm.
Before he could touch me, a sharp voice cut through the air.
“Marcus, don’t you lay a finger on her!”
It was his sister, Chloe. She had stood up from the middle of the table, her face pale with pure fury. She stepped directly between her brother and me, physically shoving Marcus backward into the table. “You touch her, and I swear to God I’ll call the police myself. Look at what you’ve done, you pathetic narcissist!”
“Chloe, stay out of this!” Marcus screamed, his veins bulging against his neck. “She humiliated me in my own house!”
