Mark looked at me like he was trying to find the broken woman he had left behind.
He found emerald silk, straight spine, and ice.
“Hi, Mark,” I said pleasantly. “The boys wanted to say hello. Say hello to your father, boys.”
Leo and Liam looked up at him.
They didn’t run to him. They didn’t cry. They simply stood there, one on each side of me, holding our hands.
“Hello, Father,” Leo said, exactly as we had practiced.
The humiliation Mark had planned for me began boomeranging back toward him in spectacular fashion.
The reception turned into a sea of whispers.
As we walked toward our table, I could feel the eyes of Mark’s colleagues on me. These were people who had dismissed me for years, people who treated me like an accessory to a rising executive.
Now they were whispering about how that same rising executive looked small beside Julian Vane.
Mark tried to recover. He retreated to the head table with Tiffany, but he couldn’t stop looking at us.
And what he saw was unbearable.
Julian leaning in to laugh at something I said.
Julian helping Leo fold his napkin.
Julian listening to Liam chatter about dinosaurs with more patience than Mark had shown in years.
Julian wasn’t just playing a role.
He was being the man Mark never had the character to be.
Tiffany was visibly furious. Her face turned a dangerous shade of red beneath all that bridal makeup. She had spent a fortune on this “victory,” only to watch the ex-wife become the center of the room.
Halfway through dinner, Mark snapped.
He walked to our table, jaw tight.
“Julian, a word?”
Julian didn’t even look up from his plate. “I’m having dinner with Elena and the boys, Mark. Whatever it is can wait until Monday morning in my office.”
Mark’s face twitched.
“This is my wedding day,” he said. “It’s inappropriate for you to be here with… with her.”
I looked up calmly.
