Chapter 975:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

As she drew closer, a scent hit her. Not Hilliard’s familiar, clean scent of sandalwood and expensive soap, but something else. A heavy, cloying fragrance of winter roses.

Mia’s blood ran cold. She knew that scent. It was Giselle Van Doren’s signature, a limited-edition perfume she flaunted at every social event. Mia remembered Giselle deliberately bumping into her at a gala once, leaving the same suffocating smell on her own dress.

Her hands shaking with a sudden, violent rage, Mia snatched the jacket from the sofa.

And there it was.

𝗦𝘩𝖺𝘳𝖾 𝘆ou𝗿 𝘁𝗁𝗈𝘂ght𝘀 o𝘯 𝘨a𝘭𝘯𝘰v𝖾𝘭ѕ.c𝘰𝗺

On the dark inner lapel, a smear of coral-pink lipstick. It was like a wound against the black fabric.

A strangled sound escaped Mia’s throat. She felt as if the air had been punched from her lungs. She threw the jacket to the floor as if it were contaminated. She grabbed the file folder she’d come for and stormed out of the penthouse, slamming the door behind her.

She drove through the streets of Manhattan like a madwoman, a hot, furious blur of tears in her eyes. It wasn’t fair. It was monstrous. How could he?

She burst into Cailin’s room at Mount Sinai without knocking, her chest heaving.

Cailin was propped up against the pillows, her face as white as the starched sheets. She looked impossibly fragile. She saw Mia’s expression and her own brow furrowed in concern.

“Mia? What is it?”

Mia marched to the bedside, her voice trembling with a rage she couldn’t contain. “Are you still holding out hope for him, Cailin? After everything, do you still think there’s a chance?”

Cailin’s gaze fell to her hands, which were clenched tightly in the thin hospital blanket. “No,” she said quietly. The lie was a stone in her throat. The white-knuckled grip on the blanket told the real story.

Mia couldn’t hold it in any longer. The words tumbled out, hot and poisoned.

“I was just at his apartment. His jacket, it smelled of her. That goddamn winter rose perfume. And Cailin, there was lipstick on it. Her lipstick.”

The world stopped.

For Cailin, it felt as if a heavy iron mallet had swung down and shattered her breastbone. The air left her body in a silent gasp. Her hand flew to her chest, clutching the rough fabric of her hospital gown as if to hold herself together.

A searing pain, sharper than any poison, ripped through her. She forced her hand down, forced her fingers to uncurl. A smile, a ghastly, broken thing, twisted her lips.

“He’s a grown man, Mia,” she said, her voice a dry, rasping whisper. “He can be with whomever he chooses.”

Mia saw through the brittle facade. Her own anger dissolved into a wave of profound, heartbreaking pity. She sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around her friend’s frail shoulders.

.

.

.