Chapter 5: What Amanda Was Hiding
Amanda was still in the ballroom when I came back through.
My father's two men stood a few feet away, close enough to be clear, far enough to avoid a scene.
Patricia had taken a seat at a nearby table and was reviewing something on her tablet with the focused calm of someone billing by the hour.
Amanda saw me coming.
She didn't run.
There was nowhere to go.
But her body did something involuntary — a small backward shift, her weight moving away from me before her mind caught up.
"Amanda," I said.
"I don't have anything to say to you."
"That's fine," I said.
"I have things to say to you."
She crossed her arms.
She was still beautiful, still composed in the way that Chloe's family valued — polished surface, nothing underneath that you were meant to examine.
But her silver evening purse was gone, and without it her hands didn't know where to go.
"The ring was your idea," I said.
"Not Chloe's."
Amanda's eyes went flat.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Chloe doesn't plan things.
She reacts.
She sees something she doesn't like and she lashes out." I kept my voice conversational.
"But someone had to think through the logistics.
Someone had to know the cameras were positioned where they couldn't catch the handoff — except they were wrong about that, weren't they."
Amanda said nothing.
"What did she promise you?" I asked.
"I want a lawyer."
"You're not under arr*st.
Yet." I tilted my head.
"What did she offer you, Amanda?
Money?
Because Chloe doesn't have her own money.
She has Griffin's.
And Griffin just spent the last twenty minutes looking at his new wife like he's already doing the math on what this marriage is going to cost him."
Something moved behind Amanda's eyes.
"She told you I was going to make a claim," I said.
It wasn't a question.
I was reading it off her face as I spoke.
"She told you that after the baby came, I was going to go after the family assets.
That I'd been planning it all along.
That humiliating me publicly would — what?
Discredit me?
Make me look unstable?"
Amanda's chin lifted.
"You don't have any proof of what she told me."
"I don't need it," I said.
"Patricia does."
Amanda glanced at Patricia.
Patricia did not look up from her tablet.
"Here's what I want you to understand," I said.
"I don't have a claim on this family's assets.
I never wanted one.
I have my own." I let that sit for a moment.
"But Chloe didn't know that.
Because she never asked.
She decided what I was the day she met me and she never looked again."
Amanda's composure cracked slightly.
Not much.
A hairline fracture.
"She said you were using him," Amanda said.
Her voice was quieter now.
Defensive in a way that meant she was beginning to hear herself.
"She said you got pregnant on purpose.
That you were going to take everything."
"And you believed her."
"She's my cousin."
"She's also the woman who just put a stolen ring in your purse and let you stand there holding it while the police were being threatened." I watched Amanda's face.
"How long have you been cleaning up after her?"
Amanda didn't answer.
"Long enough," I said, answering for her.
"Long enough that it feels normal."
I stepped back.
"Patricia is going to need a statement from you," I said.
"About the ring, about what Chloe told you, about what was agreed between you.
You can give it willingly, or you can give it later under less comfortable circumstances." I paused.
"I'd suggest willingly."
I turned to go.
"Vivienne."
I stopped.
Amanda's voice had changed.
The composure was still there, but underneath it something else had surfaced.
Not remorse, exactly.
Something more complicated than that.
"She really does think you're after everything," Amanda said.
"She genuinely believes it.
That's not — I'm not saying it excuses it.
But she's not performing.
She actually believes you're a threat."
I turned back slowly.
"I know," I said.
"That's the saddest part."
I left her with Patricia.
In the corridor, my mother was waiting with my coat.
She held it open without a word and I slipped my arms in.
"The car is outside," she said.
"I know.
Dad told me."
"Are you ready?"
I thought about Dominic at the bar.
About Chloe standing in her wedding gown with her hands trembling.
About three years of holiday dinners where I was introduced to people as "Dominic's wife" with a pause before the word, as though it still surprised everyone.
"Yes," I said.
We walked toward the exit together.
Behind us, through the closed ballroom doors, I heard the band start up again.
Someone had decided the evening should continue.
I didn't look back.
But as we reached the outer doors, my phone buzzed.
A text from Dominic.
*We need to talk.
Please.
Not tonight.
But soon.
There are things you don't know.*
I read it once.
Then I put the phone in my coat pocket and walked out into the night air.
Things I didn't know.
May you like
After three years, after everything that had happened in that room tonight, Dominic thought there were still things I didn't know.
I wondered, for the first time, if he might be right.
