“It is our anniversary, Gideon,” she had said, and he realized now that he had heard her perfectly clearly. He had heard her and he had chosen to walk out the door anyway because he thought she would always be there waiting.
When he reached the airport, he abandoned his car at the curb and sprinted through the terminal with his shirt wrinkled and his eyes red from panic. People recognized him immediately and began to point their phones at him like weapons.
“That is the man from the scandal,” someone shouted, and he heard the word “cheater” being whispered as he shoved through the crowd. By the time he reached Gate B12, his lungs were burning and his heart was pounding violently in his throat.
The gate was empty except for a single attendant who was in the process of closing her computer for the evening. “The London flight, I need to get on that plane right now,” he gasped as he reached the desk.
The woman looked at him with professional regret and informed him that the doors were already closed. He stepped closer and demanded that she open them, offering to pay whatever fine was necessary to get on that aircraft.
“Sir, the aircraft has already pushed back from the gate and I cannot do anything to help you,” she replied firmly. Gideon turned toward the glass window and watched as the plane moved slowly away under the cold runway lights.
For the first time in his life, Gideon Knightley found himself on the wrong side of a door that he could not force open. He pressed both of his hands against the cold glass and whispered Penelope’s name as if she could hear him.
Behind him, strangers were filming his breakdown and live-streaming the moment to thousands of viewers online. Barrett reached him twenty minutes later with a replacement phone and told him that a woman named Talia was on the line.
“Who is that?” Gideon asked without turning away from the window where the plane had disappeared into the night sky. Barrett explained that she was Penelope’s attorney, and Gideon snatched the phone away to demand answers.
A woman’s voice came through the line and introduced herself as Talia, the legal representative for Penelope Banks. She informed him that Penelope had granted her full authority over the divorce proceedings and had a message to deliver.
“What is the message?” Gideon asked, his voice sounding hoarse and defeated. Talia told him that for three years, Penelope had cooked for him while he never once sat down to truly eat with her.
“Tonight she threw your dinner away, and from now on, you will never taste what she made for you again,” Talia said sharply. She added that he would spend the rest of his life hungry for the love he had so carelessly discarded.
The line went dead and Gideon’s hand dropped to his side as the reality of his situation finally took hold. Onboard the plane, Penelope sat in the first-class cabin with her phone powered off and her glass of champagne untouched.
The city lights shrank beneath the clouds until the place she once called home became nothing more than a glittering wound in the distance. She expected to cry, but she found that her eyes remained dry and her heart felt strangely light.
She leaned back in her seat and breathed deeply as if someone had finally opened a window in a house that had been burning for years. When the flight attendant offered her dinner, Penelope almost laughed at the irony of the question.
“No, thank you, because I have already thrown my dinner away today,” she said with a polite smile that confused the woman. She looked out the window and thought about the envelope in her purse which contained all the evidence she needed.
It held bank records and proof that Gideon had diverted their marital assets to buy Felicity a luxury apartment through a shell company. For six months, Penelope had not been silent out of weakness, but because she was preparing for this very moment.
Her only mistake had been loving Gideon long after it had become a source of humiliation for her. His mistake had been thinking that her love made her harmless, but he was about to learn just how wrong he was.
Back in Boston, the Knightley Corporation was descending into a state of total war before the sun had even risen. The boardroom was filled with men in expensive suits who were pale with panic over the five-billion-dollar collapse in market value.
Cassandra Knightley stood at the head of the long table wearing a black blazer and diamonds that looked like shards of ice. “My son has caused a disgrace that we cannot ignore, so let us not pretend this is merely a family matter,” she declared.
No one dared to speak while she informed them that Lawrence had suffered a stroke and was currently in the hospital. She had received that news without flinching because she knew that the survival of the company was the only thing that mattered now.
“We are suspending Gideon as CEO effective immediately and separating the company from his personal scandal,” she instructed the board. She also decided that they would cooperate with an independent review and make Felicity Vane the focus of the story.
One director pointed out that Felicity had just given birth, but Cassandra’s eyes moved to him with a terrifying coldness. “Then she should have chosen a less public way to destroy our family name,” she replied before ending the meeting.
At the hospital, Felicity discovered exactly what Cassandra meant when the internet began to open every locked drawer of her past. People found out about her past settlements with developers and a child support dispute she had in another state.
Old photographs and old truths she had buried beneath designer dresses were being dragged into the light for everyone to see. When Cassandra entered Felicity’s hospital room with two security officers, the younger woman clutched her baby tighter.
“You cannot just come in here,” Felicity cried out, but Cassandra walked right to the side of the bed without showing any softness. She told Felicity that while the child might have Knightley blood, Felicity herself was not part of the family.
Felicity’s lips trembled as she claimed that Gideon had promised her a life together, but Cassandra brushed the comment aside. “Gideon has promised many things to many women, but his promises carry no weight here,” the older woman said.
She placed a stack of documents on the bed that made Felicity go still as she realized her secrets were no longer safe. Felicity shouted that they would not take her son from her, but Cassandra looked at the baby with a brief flash of something human.
“If the DNA confirms he belongs to Gideon, we will provide for him, but you will never use him as a key to our door,” Cassandra warned. Felicity screamed as Cassandra reached for the child, and nurses rushed in while security stepped forward to intervene.
The baby began to cry as if he understood he had been born into a war zone before he even knew how to open his eyes. “You cannot steal my son from me,” Felicity shrieked as the door began to close behind the matriarch.
Cassandra paused for a moment and told Felicity that she had given birth while the world called her a mistress. She reminded Felicity that the father had left the child in a nurse’s arms just to chase after the wife he had betrayed.
By the time Gideon returned from the airport, his face was on every television screen and his breakdown at the gate was playing on every news cycle. Analysts were debating whether the company could survive the damage while talk shows discussed Penelope’s elegant revenge.
Gideon sat in the back of Barrett’s car and stared at nothing while his assistant told him that his mother wanted him at headquarters. He refused to go, and when Barrett asked where they were heading, Gideon looked at the London ticket in his hand.
“We are going back to the airport,” Gideon said, but Barrett reminded him that his father was in the hospital and the company was in crisis. Gideon’s voice was hoarse as he admitted that he had already left the only person who had ever truly stayed by his side.
