The crystal chandeliers cast warm light across the Collins mansion's grand ballroom, but I felt none of that warmth as I adjusted another centerpiece for what had to be the fifth time that evening.
Christmas Eve.
The most wonderful time of the year, they said. But for me?
It was just another day of invisible labor.
"Excuse me, could you take this?" A woman in a pearl-encrusted gown thrust her mink coat at me without looking at my face. I wasn't a person to her. Just another piece of the household machinery.
I took the coat silently, adding it to the growing pile on my arm.
Around me, guests swept past in waves of expensive perfume and champagne-soaked laughter. Designer gowns brushed against my simple dark suit—the one presentable outfit I owned that Margaret hadn't openly criticized. Not that it mattered. I could have worn Armani, and they still would have mistaken me for the help.
Maybe that's all I was.
"Elias." Margaret's voice cut through the ambient noise like a blade through silk. "The caterers are asking about the timing for the main course. Handle it."
No please. No thank you. Just commands, as if I were staff she'd hired rather than her son-in-law.
I nodded and moved toward the kitchen, catching a glimpse of Elizabeth near the entrance. She stood beside her mother, a vision in emerald green silk that complemented her dark hair perfectly. They greeted guests together, Margaret's hand possessively on Elizabeth's shoulder, both wearing matching smiles that never quite reached their eyes. Elizabeth laughed at something Senator Morrison said, and for a moment, I remembered the woman I'd fallen in love with five years ago.
That woman felt like a stranger now.
"Who is that man?" I heard Mrs. Ashford ask as I passed, her voice pitched just loud enough to be deliberately audible. She was looking directly at me, her expression a mixture of curiosity and disdain.
Margaret's response came without hesitation, smooth as aged whiskey. "Just my daughter's husband. He helps with the arrangements."
Just.
That single word landed in my chest like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples of pain outward.
Five years of sacrificing my career, five years of twenty-hour days managing Collins family projects, five years of swallowing my pride at every family gathering—all reduced to 'just' her daughter's husband.
The helper. The arrangement-maker. The outsider.
I continued toward the kitchen, my jaw tight enough to ache. The marble floors beneath my feet cost more than my childhood home in Chicago. Everything here did. The paintings, the furniture, even the damn Christmas tree probably cost more than my father earned in a year before he died. I'd never quite fit into this world of casual wealth and inherited importance, no matter how hard I tried.
And God, had I tried.
The kitchen was controlled chaos—caterers moving in practiced synchronization, plates being assembled with precision, the head chef barking orders. I coordinated the timing, ensured everything would flow smoothly, then slipped back toward the ballroom. Through the service corridor, I could hear the string quartet starting a new piece, something classical and elegant that Elizabeth had selected.
But it was a different sound that stopped me cold.
Elizabeth's laugh.
Not her polite, social laugh—the one she used with her mother's friends and business associates. This was something else. Unguarded. Intimate. The laugh she used to give me, back when I still believed our marriage meant something.
I shouldn't have followed the sound. Some instinct warned me to turn back, to return to my invisible duties, to maintain the careful blindness that had let me survive five years in this house.
But I couldn't stop myself.
The laugh led me up the curved staircase to the second floor, away from the party's glittering heart. The hallway here was dimly lit, doors to guest rooms standing closed and dark. All except one, at the far end, where a sliver of light escaped into the corridor.
My feet carried me forward despite the dread pooling in my stomach.
Through the partially open door, I saw them.
Elizabeth and Clint Cole.
His hand rested on her waist with casual possession, fingers splayed across the emerald silk. Her head tilted back as she looked up at him, that unguarded laugh still playing at the corners of her mouth. They stood close—too close—their bodies angled toward each other in a way that spoke of intimacy and shared secrets.
Clint murmured something I couldn't hear, and Elizabeth's smile widened.
The scene burned itself into my memory with cruel clarity: the way her hand rested on his chest, the way he leaned toward her, the way neither of them seemed to remember or care that she was married to someone else.
My hand pushed the door open before my brain could override the impulse.
They sprang apart, but not quickly enough. The damage was done. I'd seen everything I needed to see.
Elizabeth's face flashed with something—guilt, maybe, or surprise—before settling into an expression I'd come to know too well over the years. Cold. Defensive. Closed.
"Elias." My name from her lips sounded like an accusation rather than a greeting.
"What's going on here?" My voice came out steadier than I felt, but I could hear the tremor underneath. Hurt. Anger. Five years of swallowed pain threatening to break free.
Elizabeth smoothed her dress with deliberate calm, her composure clicking back into place like armor. "Don't be ridiculous, Elias. It's just friendly contact. You're being paranoid."
Just friendly contact.
Clint adjusted his cufflinks, that trademark smirk playing at his mouth. "Come on, man. We've known each other since childhood. Don't make this awkward."
Don't make this awkward.
As if I were the problem. As if my hurt feelings were the real issue here, not his hands on my wife, not her laugh that she no longer gave to me.
I looked at Elizabeth, searching for some sign of the woman I'd married, some indication that this mattered to her at all.
She met my gaze with cool indifference, and I saw the truth written in her eyes.
I didn't matter enough to even warrant a real explanation.
