Chapter 4 - The House of Paper
Beneath the glittering facade of the upcoming Montgomery-Carter nuptials, Ryan Montgomery’s life was an unraveling nightmare.
In the bridal suite of the St. Regis, forty-eight hours before the ceremony, Ryan stood before a floor-to-ceiling mirror, rubbing his temples as a migraine throbbed behind his eyes.
“You’re useless, Ryan!” Vanessa shrieked from across the room, hurling a crystal perfume bottle against the wall. It shattered into a thousand glittering shards, filling the suite with the suffocating scent of tuberose. “My father is not writing a check for thirty million dollars until that ring is on my finger! He thinks your mother is an overbearing harpy and your company is an empty shell!”
“Vanessa, please,” Ryan pleaded, his voice raspy from exhaustion. He looked ten years older than the day he had thrown me out. The hairline at his temples had receded, and dark circles were bruised beneath his eyes. “The Newport project will clear ninety million once the environmental review is approved. We just need to close the Vance loan.”
“Vance Global hasn't even replied to your calls!” she snapped, crossing her arms over a lace negligee. Her figure was bone-thin—she had spent the last three years starving herself to maintain her socialite status, flatly refusing to entertain the idea of pregnancy. *“A baby will ruin my waistline, Ryan. We have twenty years for that. Don’t push me.”*
Every time she said those words, an ugly, phantom pang hit Ryan’s chest.
He had traded an eleven-year marriage for youth and fertility, only to find himself trapped with a woman who treated motherhood like a disease.
Rebecca entered the suite, her face drawn tight by too many facelifts and sheer anxiety. “Ryan, darling, the press has arrived. Every major outlet from San Francisco to San Diego is in the lobby. If Vance Global doesn't show up today to sign the term sheet, the banks will issue a notice of foreclosure on the estate by Monday morning.”
“They will show, Mother,” Ryan lied, his palms sweating. “Their representative confirmed they would attend the reception. The Vance family has ties to my father's old shipping routes. They won't let Montgomery Enterprises fail.”
“They better not,” Rebecca hissed, adjusting her diamond necklace. “I will not be humiliated in front of the Carters. I sacrificed that pathetic girl Mariana so you could have a real dynasty. Don't you dare fail me now.”
Ryan flinched at my name. Over the last three years, he had tried to scrub every memory of me from his life. But sometimes, in the dead of night, in that cavernous, cold house where Vanessa slept in a separate bedroom to preserve her sleep cycle, he remembered the smell of the rosemary bread I used to bake, the quiet warmth of my hand on his shoulder when his father died, the way I had looked at him before the misery stole my light.
*“Where did she go, Mother?”* he had asked once, six months after the divorce.
*“Who cares?”* Rebecca had snapped back. *“Probably slunk back to some damp hovel in Vermont. She was nobody, Ryan. Forget her.”*
Downstairs in the Grand Ballroom, four hundred of California’s elite were gathering under chandeliers dripping with white orchids and cascading wisteria. The string quartet was tuning their instruments.
Outside the resort gates, a convoy of three sleek black vehicles pulled past security. The lead car was a vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom, followed by two black Cadillac Escalades with security details.
Inside the Rolls-Royce, Leo looked out the tinted window at the palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze.
“Mommy,” the little boy asked, adjusting the silk bow tie Alexander had tied for him, “are we going to a party?”
I looked at my son. His slate-blue eyes—so terrifyingly identical to Ryan’s—looked back at me with absolute innocence and pure love.
Beside him, Noah was quietly smoothing the lace trim on Maya’s emerald velvet dress. Maya was holding my thumb with her tiny, warm fingers.
May you like
“Not a party, my love,” I said softly, smoothing down Leo’s dark curls. “A reckoning.”
***
