Chapter 67: You knew!?

Ivy’s pov

"That’s my boy!"

Father’s voice boomed across the polished dining table, making my stomach clench. He obviously wasn’t referring to me.

Yeah, you guessed right, Jake was back.

It had been five days since the scandal about the Knights broke, and here I was, trapped in the suffocating air of my childhood home, having dinner with the last two jerks I ever wanted to be seated with.

Jake was leaning back in his chair, a smug, self-satisfied smirk plastered on his face. He had just finished telling a ridiculous story about how he, from a fucking café in Berlin, had orchestrated the scandalous news report about the Knight brothers.

Him? He had to be joking.

"I just have an ear for these things, Father," Jake said, swirling the white wine in his glass. "I heard some things, made a few calls, and boom. The perfect distraction."

My father beamed at him, his eyes crinkling with a pride that had never once, in my entire life, been directed at me.

"Smart, Jacob. Very smart. You take after me. You’re always thinking three steps ahead."

I kept my eyes on my plate, pushing around the salad with my fork. I had seen the headline, of course. The whole world had.

"Harper, see how good Jake did?" my father sighed.

"You’re living under their roof, and yet you found nothing. Jake, thousands of miles away, manages to dig up dirt on our enemies, while you, who are inside the walls, come back with nothing."

"I... I’m sorry," I mumbled, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. I brought him the ledger. I endured working like a slave and blackmail just so I could stay in their house. I was trying!

"Sorry isn’t good enough. If you truly cared about this company, about your family’s legacy, it would show. Your actions would speak for you."

"She only cares about herself, Felix," Angel quipped next to me, a pitiful look on his face as he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a linen napkin. "Harper has been so busy; she has even been neglecting me terribly."

I stiffened, my head snapping up to glare at him. What the fuck was his deal?

"Is that true, Harper?"

"I’m handling it, Father," I pushed through gritted teeth, my eyes locked on Angel.

"Oh, she’s handling it, alright," Angel continued, ignoring me completely, painting himself as a poor, suffering angel at my mercy.

"She keeps going out these days and coming back at odd hours. Last weekend, she went out on a Saturday night and didn’t come home until late at night."

He didn’t say it outrightly, but the implication was clear. He was begging my father to intervene, to save him from his neglectful, cheating wife.

God, how did I ever get stuck with this jerk? What would he gain from pretending and painting himself as a better person?

"It’s him who-"

"Did you or did you not go out on Saturday night, leaving your poor husband at home alone?" my father thundered, cutting me off.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jake take a slow sip of his drink, grinning.

"Now, now, Dad," He quipped. "Perhaps Harper just needed some fresh air. Though a wife’s place is with her husband, wouldn’t you say, Angel?"

"Mind your business, Jake-"

"That’s enough." Father pushed his chair back and rose. "Harper, meet me in my study, now."

A chill swept down my spine, so cold and sharp it felt like a shard of ice had lodged itself in my heart. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly tight while we all watched him walk out.

"Now, Harper, all couples go through these little spats," Anthony spat as he chewed on his beef.

"But you must be a good woman.

Settle your home, arrange your affairs. A man needs a peaceful home to come back to."

Jake snickered. "Yeah, Ivy. Arrange your affairs. Like your clothes, on your husband’s bedroom floor."

Angel actually had the nerve to look pained. "Please, Jake. This is difficult enough."

I tuned them out, my entire being focused on the dread coiling in my gut. I had to go to the study. Which meant I had to walk down that hallway.

The one with the stairs that haunted me for 15 years.

I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the floor. I couldn’t show weakness.

As I neared the entrance to the grand hallway, a dizzy, nauseating feeling started to build in my chest. My heels clicked against the marble floor, each sound echoing strangely in my ears.

I couldn’t remember most of that night, just flashes. But as my heels hit the floor, they marched in blood. So much blood at the bottom of the stairs. The walls started to spin.

Oh god, no.

The distant shriek of a siren, an ambulance, was merging with the sound of laughter from the dining room I had just left.

What have you done, Harper? You killed her! You pushed her from the stairs!

My hands started to fidget, fluttering at my sides, reaching up to pinch and scratch at my skin. I walked faster, my heels clicking more frantically as I ran past the bloody stairs. It wasn’t real. It was not real!

I was scratching my arms, my neck, anywhere I could reach, trying to feel something other than the crawling dread under my skin. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Breathe, Ivy, it’s not real. Breathe.

I fixed my eyes on the door at the very end of the hallway. My father’s study was my only escape from the spinning walls.

I stumbled, my ankle twisting in my heels, and half-ran the rest of the way, burst through the heavy oak door, slamming it shut behind me. The noise, the spinning room, the laughter all slowly faded away.

"It is disappointing, Harper." Dad had his back to me as he stared out the window. "That you cannot manage even a simple home. How am I supposed to trust you with my company?"

"I’m sorry, Father," I whispered, biting back all the words I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him Angel was the one cheating, that he was a liar and a manipulator.

But Father kept talking. "I gave you everything, Harper. I made it easy for you. I even arranged your marriage to a prominent family, a union that would benefit us all. And you can’t even manage that? You can’t even keep your husband happy?"

The words tumbled out before I could stop them. "He doesn’t love me, Father! He’s cheating on me! I caught him on New Year’s Eve... with Jake. He even got the receptionist pregnant!"

I expected him to be shocked and angry, but he just turned around; his face was a mask of cold indifference.

"Your marriage to Braddock is final. It is a business arrangement, and it will stand." He picked up a letter opener from his desk, examining it as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

"If love is the problem, Harper, that is a trivial thing. Make him love you then, and maybe he wouldn’t do that."

My head spun for a moment.

Wait... what?

"You knew? You knew about Angel.... Angel and Jake all along?"