Chapter 8: What Serena Said
Serena lived in a penthouse apartment on the forty-second floor of a building her father owned.
She answered the door herself.
She was still in the clothes she had worn the day before — not the wedding dress, she had changed out of that — but the same shoes, the same jewelry, her hair still partially pinned.
She looked like someone who had not slept and had decided not to pretend otherwise.
She looked at Daniel standing in her doorway.
"Come in," she said.
The apartment was large and very clean and full of flowers that had been delivered for the wedding.
White roses.
Dozens of them, still in their wrapping, arranged along the kitchen counter and the dining table and the windowsill.
Nobody had put them in water.
They were already beginning to turn.
Daniel sat down on the sofa.
Serena remained standing.
"You got the email chain," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"I wondered how long it would take." She crossed her arms.
Not defensively — more like she was cold.
"What do you want to know?"
"Did you know what my mother did to Claire?"
"I knew she had handled something.
I didn't ask for details."
"You said *good, confirmed.*"
Serena looked at the window.
"I was twenty-eight when my father first told me about the arrangement.
I had known you for three months.
I thought—" She stopped.
"I thought it was a business matter.
Something that had been tidied up before I was even part of the picture."
"You received that email four months ago.
You were thirty-four.
You knew me well enough by then."
"Yes." She didn't argue it.
"I knew."
"And you said nothing."
"What would you have wanted me to say?
*Daniel, your mother once threatened a woman to keep her away from you, and I knew about it, and I still want to marry you?*" She turned from the window.
"I told myself it was in the past.
I told myself the woman had moved on.
I told myself—"
"She was dying," Daniel said.
"She is dying.
And she has two children who needed their father."
Serena went very still.
"I didn't know about the children," she said.
"I swear to you — that I did not know."
He looked at her.
"I believe you," he said.
"That doesn't change what you did know."
She sat down then, across from him, in the chair by the window.
She looked at her hands.
"I'm not a monster," she said quietly.
"I want you to know that.
I made a choice that was wrong and I knew it was wrong and I made it anyway because I—" She stopped.
"Because I wanted this to work.
I wanted us to work.
That's not an excuse.
I know it isn't."
"No," he said.
"It isn't."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"The merger," she said.
"My father—"
"Your father will receive a proposal from my lawyer by end of day.
The merger is dissolved.
The penalty clause is void — your side misrepresented material facts.
He can accept the quiet exit or he can have the alternative."
Serena nodded slowly.
She had known this was coming.
"And us?" she said.
Daniel looked at her across the room.
At the woman he had been seventeen minutes from marrying.
At the white roses dying slowly on every surface.
"There is no us," he said.
"There hasn't been, really.
We both know that."
She didn't disagree.
"Will you—" She stopped.
Started again.
"Will you let me know?
About the girls.
How they are."
"That depends on a lot of things," he said.
"None of which are decided today."
He stood.
Serena stayed in the chair.
"Daniel." Her voice stopped him at the door.
"For what it's worth — when she walked down that aisle yesterday — when that little girl said *Daddy* — I saw your face before you could hide it." She paused.
"I've never seen you look like that.
Not once in three years."
He turned to look at her.
"I know," he said.
He closed the door behind him.
In the elevator, he called the hospital.
The nurse who answered told him Claire had had a good morning.
That Lily had eaten two bowls of cereal and was currently teaching Mia to wave.
He stood in the elevator with the phone against his ear and his eyes closed.
"Tell her I'll be there by noon," he said.
"Of course, Mr.
Whitmore."
May you like
The elevator reached the lobby.
He walked out into the morning.
