He'd barely pulled the strap down before Warren shrugged off his jacket and draped it over Yvonne's shoulders, pulling her into a tight embrace. "Don't move. Stop crying. If you cry any more, you won't look pretty for your graduation photos."
Then he turned and shot me a warning look. "Leonora, that's enough. Today is Yvonne's graduation. I brought her here. The necklace was my graduation gift to her."
My chest seized like something had lodged itself behind my ribs. I couldn't breathe. I clenched my jaw and stared at him. "You and Yvonne. You don't think you owe me an explanation?"
"She's your lover? Then what am I?"
He barely glanced at me, his tone dismissive. "Leonora, Yvonne is just a twenty-year-old girl. Do you really have to be this petty?"
"It's nothing more than a young girl's innocent admiration. I indulged one small wish of hers. What's the big deal? You're making a scene."
With that, he wrapped his arm around Yvonne and walked out of the venue, leaving me standing alone in the crowd like the punchline of a joke.
Yvonne. She was the girl I'd first noticed outside the office, handing out flyers. It had been nearly a hundred degrees that summer day, and she wouldn't even spend a dollar on a bottle of water because she was saving every cent for next semester's tuition and living expenses.
She'd just moved to the city for college. She had no one. Everything fell on her own shoulders.
I admired her independence, her resilience.
When I found out she was studying the same field as me, I wanted to help her.
I added her on WhatsApp and offered to cover four years of tuition and living expenses so she could focus on her studies.
To repay me, she came to the office every weekend and every school break to help with odd jobs.
That was how she met Warren, who drove me to and from work every day.
Whenever I was too busy, I'd ask Warren to drop Yvonne off at campus. He used to complain that she was cutting into our time together, and I always laughed and told him he was being ridiculous, getting jealous over nothing.
But gradually, the complaints stopped. He even started reminding me on his own that he hadn't seen Yvonne in a while, asking whether school was keeping her too busy, suggesting we send her some supplies.
A colleague once warned me to be careful about letting my husband spend too much time alone with Yvonne. A lot of college girls, she said, went crazy for men like Warren: mature, established, successful.
I always told them they were overthinking it. But they weren't the ones overthinking it. Everyone had seen it. The dynamic between Warren and Yvonne had shifted long ago. The whole world knew. I was the only one who didn't.
When I got home, Warren was already sitting on the couch, waiting.
He was scrolling through his phone, brow furrowed, swiping faster and faster. The moment he saw me walk through the door, he tossed the phone onto the coffee table. His voice carried the weight of a command. "Leonora, using tactics like these against a naive young girl. Don't you think that's going too far?"
"In just a few hours, rumors calling her a homewrecker, saying she's someone's kept woman, all of it trending online."
"You moved fast, I'll give you that. How much did you spend? How many bots did you hire?"
"How can you do this to her and not feel a shred of guilt? Do you have any idea what cyber-harassment does to a woman?"
I stood frozen in the doorway, my voice hollow. "What are you talking about?"
He hurled his phone at me. It struck my brow bone dead-on. A sharp, splitting pain exploded across my forehead, and I crouched down, pressing both hands to the spot.
"Playing innocent? Leonora, I thought you knew your place. Using your cutthroat business tactics on a girl with no one in her corner. You really think you can bully her just because she has nobody to protect her?"
I felt something warm seeping from the gash, running down and blurring the vision in one eye. I didn't bother wiping it away. All I could manage was to open my mouth in my own defense. "I didn't do anything."
Warren rose to his feet. "I'm giving you one night. If you don't go online tonight, clear her name, and make those trending topics disappear, tomorrow I'll handle it myself."
