Part 2:
Julien didn’t let go of Elise’s hand until they were in the car, the heavy doors of the restaurant sealed behind them. He sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead at the rain slicking the windshield, his chest rising and falling in shallow, sharp breaths.
Elise looked down at her own hand. The angry red welt was beginning to fade, but the sting remained, a physical echo of Vivienne’s cold fury.
“Julien,” she started, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Don’t,” he interrupted gently, finally turning to look at her. The fracture she’d heard in his voice earlier was visible in his eyes now. “Don’t apologize. Don’t try to smooth this over. You have nothing to apologize for.”
He reached out, his thumb tracing the unbroken skin near her wrist. “She’s never… she’s usually so careful. So calculated. This was desperate.”
“She’s terrified,” Elise said, the realization settling over her like a heavy cloak. “She thinks she’s losing you.”
“She lost me a long time ago,” Julien muttered, starting the engine. “She just never realized it because I never walked out the door.”
They drove in silence for a long time. The city lights blurred past, a chaotic smear of neon against the dark sky. Elise watched his profile, the hard set of his jaw. He had stood up to the matriarch of the Beaumont empire, a woman who commanded fear and respect in equal measure across the city. He had done it for her.
“What happens now?” she asked finally, the question hanging heavy in the quiet car. “Saturday?”
“Saturday, we get married,” he said, his voice firm, leaving no room for doubt. “And if she shows up, she shows up on our terms. If she doesn’t… then we start our lives without her.”
He pulled the car to a stop in front of her apartment building. He turned to her, his expression serious.
“Elise,” he said, taking both of her hands in his. “There’s something you need to know. Something I haven’t told you. About my family. About… why she is the way she is.”
Elise felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the damp night air. “Julien, what is it?”
“My father,” Julien began, the words seeming to catch in his throat. “He didn’t die in an accident.”
He took a deep breath, his eyes locking onto hers, dark and serious. “And Vivienne knows exactly what happened. Because she was there. And so was someone else.”
Elise stared at him, the silence stretching between them, thick with the weight of a secret kept for decades.
“Who?” she whispered.
Julien’s grip tightened slightly on her hands. “The person who is going to officiate our wedding on Saturday.”
The streetlights cast long, distorted shadows across the car’s interior, and Elise realized that the real battle hadn’t happened in the restaurant tonight. It was just beginning.
