Chapter 6: Things You Don't Know
I didn't respond to Dominic's text that night.
I slept in my old bedroom at my parents' house, in the same bed I'd had at sixteen, under a window that looked out over the garden my mother had kept for thirty years.
My father had quietly arranged for my things to be collected from the house Dominic and I shared.
By the time I woke up, three bags were stacked neatly in the hallway.
He hadn't asked permission.
He hadn't needed to.
I spent two days not thinking about Dominic's text.
On the third day, I called him.
He answered before the second ring.
"I wasn't sure you would call," he said.
"I wasn't sure either."
A pause.
"How are you feeling?"
"Tired.
The baby is fine."
"Good.
That's—" He stopped.
"Vivienne, I need to tell you something.
I should have told you a long time ago."
"Then tell me."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
The kind of pause that means someone is deciding how much truth they can afford.
"Can we meet?" he said.
"In person.
Not at the house.
Somewhere neutral."
"The café on Merchant Street," I said.
"Tomorrow.
Ten o'clock."
"I'll be there."
I arrived first.
I ordered tea and sat facing the door and watched him come in.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
His jacket was the wrong one for the weather, and he'd forgotten to shave on one side of his jaw, which was so unlike him that I noticed it immediately.
He sat down across from me.
He didn't order anything.
"You look terrible," I said.
"I know."
"Say what you came to say, Dominic."
He put both hands flat on the table.
"My mother has been paying someone to look into your background."
I went still.
"For how long?"
"Two years.
Maybe longer." His jaw tightened.
"I found out six months ago.
I told her to stop.
She said she had."
"But she didn't."
"No." He looked at the table.
"She found out about your father.
About the properties, the holdings, all of it.
She didn't tell me directly.
She told Chloe."
I set my cup down carefully.
"And Chloe told Amanda."
He looked up.
"You already knew?"
"I worked it out." I kept my voice level.
"So the ring wasn't just about humiliating me.
It was about discrediting me before I could make any kind of claim.
They thought if they could establish publicly that I was a thief—"
"They could challenge any legal action you took after the birth." He said it quietly, like a man confessing to something he didn't do but failed to prevent.
"Vivienne, I swear to you I didn't know about the ring.
I didn't know what they were planning that night."
"But you knew your mother had been investigating me."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"I told her to stop."
"That's not the same thing as telling me." I looked at him across the table.
"You knew for six months that your mother was building a case against me.
You knew she had found out about my father.
And you stayed quiet."
He didn't try to argue with it.
That, at least, was something.
"Why?" I asked.
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Because I was afraid of what it meant."
"What it meant."
"That she'd been right.
That from the beginning, she'd been right that you were — that there was something you weren't telling me." He looked up.
"Not about stealing.
Not that.
But about who you were.
Why you never talked about your family.
Why you kept that part of your life so separate."
I looked at him.
"I kept it separate," I said slowly, "because every time I tried to talk about my family, your mother changed the subject.
Because the one time I mentioned my father's name at a dinner, Eleanor laughed and said 'how charming' in the tone people use when they mean the opposite.
Because I learned very quickly that in your family, talking about where I came from made me a target." I paused.
"So I stopped."
Dominic's face did something that I recognized as the specific expression of a man understanding something too late.
"I didn't know that," he said.
"I know you didn't." I picked up my cup.
"Because you never asked."
He was quiet.
"There's more," he said finally.
I set the cup back down.
"My mother didn't just hire someone to investigate you," he said.
"She hired someone to find out if there was anything that could be used to have our marriage annulled."
The café was warm and smelled of coffee and pastry and ordinary morning life.
"On what grounds?" I asked.
He couldn't quite meet my eyes.
"Concealment of assets.
Fraudulent misrepresentation.
The argument would be that you deliberately hid your financial background to — to entrap me."
I heard the word and felt something cold move through me.
"She was going to claim I trapped you," I said.
"Yes."
"While I was pregnant."
"Yes."
I looked at my hands on the table.
At my wedding ring, which I was still wearing because I hadn't yet decided what to do with it.
"Did she find anything?" I asked.
"Anything she could actually use?"
"No," he said.
"Because there's nothing to find.
You didn't do anything wrong." He said it plainly, without decoration.
"That's what I've been trying to tell her for three years.
You didn't do anything wrong."
"But you still didn't tell me she was looking."
He had no answer for that.
"Dominic." I waited until he looked at me.
"What does your mother plan to do now?"
He reached into his jacket and placed a folded document on the table between us.
I looked at it without touching it.
"She filed it two days ago," he said.
"Before the wedding.
Before any of this happened." His voice was very quiet.
"I found out yesterday morning."
I unfolded the document.
It was a petition for annulment.
Filed by Eleanor.
Not by Dominic.
I read it through once, carefully, from the first line to the last.
Then I folded it back up and set it on the table between us.
"She filed this herself," I said.
"Not you."
"I didn't know."
"Does she have standing to file this?
It's not her marriage."
"Her lawyer is arguing that she has standing as a family member with financial interest in the estate." He looked exhausted.
"It probably won't hold.
Patricia will know better than I do."
I nodded slowly.
"Dominic," I said.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me honestly."
"Okay."
"Do you want this marriage to end?"
He looked at me for a long time.
"No," he said.
"But I understand if you do."
I stood up and picked up the annulment petition.
"I'll have Patricia look at this today," I said.
"Vivienne—"
"I'm not making any decisions right now," I said.
"I'm eight months pregnant and I've had a very long week.
But I want you to understand something clearly."
He waited.
"Whatever happens between us," I said, "your mother does not get to decide it.
Not with a petition.
Not with an investigation.
Not with a torn dress in a ballroom." I held his gaze.
"That's between you and me.
No one else."
I picked up my coat and walked out.
On the pavement outside, the morning was cold and bright.
My phone rang before I reached the car.
It was Patricia.
"I was just about to call you," I said.
"I know," Patricia said.
"Eleanor's lawyer contacted us this morning.
But that's not why I'm calling." A brief pause.
"Vivienne, we pulled the full camera archive from the venue last night.
Not just the ballroom.
The entire building."
"And?"
"There's a conversation recorded in the corridor outside the bridal suite.
Forty minutes before the ceremony.
May you like
Eleanor and Amanda." Another pause.
"You need to see it."
