Chapter 5 - THE MISTRESS FINALLY CONFESSED
They met in a hospital conference room.
Two attorneys were present.
Elliot stayed near the wall.
Mara sat.
Roman sat beside her.
Celeste entered without her coat.
For the first time, she looked ordinary.
Tired.
Her makeup had faded beneath her eyes.
She glanced at Roman.
He did not react.
Then she looked at Mara.
“You look better.”
Mara almost admired the audacity.
“Sit down.”
Celeste did.
Mara folded her hands over her stomach.
“Did Roman ever tell you he wanted me gone?”
Celeste stared at the table.
“Not in those words.”
“What words?”
“He said things were easier when you weren’t asking questions.”
Roman frowned.
“When did I say that?”
“January. At dinner.”
“I said business was easier when Mara wasn’t involved because I was trying to keep her away from dangerous financial disputes.”
Celeste smiled bitterly.
“You see? There’s always an explanation when you say something cruel.”
Mara looked at Roman.
He did not defend himself.
Celeste continued.
“You were miserable. She was miserable. I accelerated what was already happening.”
“You stole my phone.”
“Yes.”
The room went still.
“You forged my signature.”
Celeste’s jaw tightened.
“My father arranged paperwork.”
“You told me my husband wanted me to lose my baby.”
Roman’s hands curled into fists beneath the table.
Celeste looked at Mara.
“I told you a child wouldn’t save your marriage.”
“No.”
Mara’s voice sharpened.
“You told me Roman said a baby would trap him.”
Celeste said nothing.
“You told me he would hate the child.”
Silence.
“You told me if I wanted any chance of keeping my marriage, I needed to make the pregnancy disappear.”
Roman pushed his chair back.
Mara reached sideways and touched his sleeve.
Not affection.
Warning.
He stopped.
Celeste stared at the floor.
“My father said the pregnancy complicated everything.”
Mara felt physically cold.
“What did your father want?”
“For Roman to fail.”
Roman’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“Why?”
Celeste looked at him.
“Because he could never control you while Mara was still the one person you trusted.”
Mara almost laughed.
“Roman stopped trusting me months ago.”
“No,” Celeste said. “That’s what you never understood.”
Her eyes filled with furious tears.
“He stopped speaking to you. He stopped coming home. He ignored you. But every decision still bent around you.”
Roman frowned.
Celeste looked at him.
“You wouldn’t sell the waterfront property because Mara liked the old church next door. You refused to expand the casino partnership because Mara hated gambling. You cancelled three construction deals because she asked what would happen to the tenants.”
Mara stared at Roman.
She had not known.
Celeste’s voice cracked.
“My father said you could be controlled through money, fear or grief. None worked. Then he realized the only person who could make you choose against your own interests was your wife.”
“So you decided to remove her,” Roman said.
Celeste’s face twisted.
“I decided to show you what life looked like without her.”
Roman looked around the sterile conference room.
At his pregnant wife in borrowed hospital clothes.
At the evidence bags.
At his dead brother’s files.
“You succeeded.”
Celeste’s hope flickered.
Then Roman continued.
“You showed me.”
Her expression fell.
Mara asked, “Did you put something in my tea?”
Celeste looked at her.
“No.”
Mara waited.
Celeste’s gaze shifted away.
“I gave you sleeping drops twice.”
Roman rose.
Mara grabbed his wrist.
This time she held on.
Not because she was comforting him.
Because she was stopping him.
Celeste recoiled.
“They were supposed to make her sleep! She kept wandering the house at night. She kept trying to get into your office.”
“I was trying to find my phone!” Mara shouted.
Celeste flinched.
Mara’s whole body shook.
“You watched me cry. You watched me hold my stomach and beg you to tell my husband I was pregnant.”
Celeste’s eyes filled.
“I didn’t know my father was planning the transfer.”
“Did you know about the forged signature?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Silas would collect me?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Roman stopped breathing.
Mara asked one final question.
“Why?”
Celeste cried then.
Not elegantly.
Not beautifully.
Her face collapsed.
“Because I spent my entire life watching men like Roman choose women like you.”
Mara frowned.
“Women like me?”
“Women who make goodness look effortless.”
Mara stared at her.
Then laughed once.
A raw, astonished sound.
“You think this was effortless?”
Celeste said nothing.
“I scrubbed floors in my own house because you convinced everyone I asked to. I ate alone. I slept behind a locked door because someone kept searching my room. I carried a baby while wondering whether his father wished the child didn’t exist.”
Her voice broke.
“And you still think I had something you didn’t.”
Celeste covered her face.
Mara leaned back.
For months she had imagined the woman destroying her life as powerful.
Now she saw something uglier.
A frightened woman who had mistaken another woman’s destruction for elevation.
It did not excuse her.
But hatred suddenly felt too intimate.
Mara was tired of giving Celeste pieces of herself.
She stood carefully.
Roman immediately rose but did not touch her.
Mara looked at Celeste.
“You didn’t steal my husband.”
Celeste lowered her hands.
“You found a marriage already bleeding and kept cutting it.”
Then Mara looked at Roman.
“And he handed you the knife.”
Roman took the words without flinching.
That mattered.
May you like
Not enough.
But it mattered.
