The car door shuts. The tires crunch over snow. And just like that…she’s gone.
I stand there, breathless, fists clenched at my sides, staring at the space she just occupied.
I lost her.
I fucking lost her!
The cold forces me back inside—a place I don’t wantto be. I want to go to my wife, to run after her and beg her to give us a chance. To give me a chance to make this right. But the way she stood in that room and ripped off every Band-Aid this family ever slapped over their wounds…that was her message.
There’s no going back.
She didn’t just leave—she burned the bridge behind her. Not just so I couldn’t reach her…but so she couldn’t come back.
The living room is not Christmassy any longer.
A part of me is amused at what Mia achieved—at how she paid them all back for every ugly comment they made about her, for every time they made her feel like she didn’t fit in. Another is horrified at what I did to her, that she becamethisperson who could do what she did.
A lump forms in my throat as I watch the debacle she left behind. I don’t care that my family is fighting, that they’re hurt. They deserve it. Each one of them. The only person who didn’t deserve the pain I caused her is Mia.
And despite the chaos in the living room—my mother crying, my father yelling at Gianna for losing her job, my brother telling a sobbing Betty that it’s all a lie—I know they’ll all get over it soon enough.
Evil is resilient.
My sweet Mia will never get over my betrayal. She’ll carry that scar inside her forever, and so will I.
“Your wife is out of line,” Dad yells at me.
Silence falls in the room, broken by a sob, a sniffle, here andthere.
“Is she?”
“What she said is?—”
“All true,” I cut him off. “Tristan is sleeping with the nanny. Even I know this. But I did what we always do in this family: look away when things are unpleasant. And come on, Betty, stop behaving like your life is over, you’ve also known.”
My brother and his wife look at me like I kicked their puppy.
“I’m not sleeping?—”
“Save it.” I wave my hand so he’ll shut the fuck up about the lies.
“Son,” Dad begins, but I shake my head.
“Not your first mistress, Dad.” I look at my mother, whose eyes are red-rimmed. A part of me feels bad for her because I genuinely think she didn’t know about my father’s many dalliances, but that was her intentionally being blind.
And she thinks she’s better than Mia? She, who once told me that having Mia as my wife lowers the family’s aesthetic?
The second Mia knew I cheated on her, she slapped me with divorce papers despite knowing that she wouldn’t get a dime if she left. But she doesn’t care about money. I know that. They don’t. Can’t because everything in their lives revolves around keeping up appearances.
This is the family I’ve been protecting? The one I made Mia twist herself into knots to please?
“She revealed some very personal things, Aiden,” Gianna flingsat me.
“Not so personal if the gossip is making the rounds at Little Luminaries, Gianna. But it does explain why you asked to borrow money from me.” I feel ashamed of my sister, not because she lost her job, but because of how she acts like she’s royalty and treats Mia as the maid who dared sit on the throne.
“She’s never allowed back here again,” Mom bites out.
I laugh without humor. “I doubt she’s interested in anything to do with any of us, Mom.”
