Chapter 7: I Might Have Wronged Her

Elena's POV

What had I done?

I had fought for my marriage — that was all. I had wanted my husband to stay by my side, so I taught that woman a lesson. Was that truly so absurd, so unforgivable in his eyes?

Before I could say a word in my own defense, Lucas had already crossed the room to her side and pulled her up from the floor.

"Daisy, I'm apologizing on Elena's behalf. She didn't mean it."

Daisy. Of course it was her. The woman who had spent the past several days bombarding me with suggestive photos of herself and my husband, provoking me with message after message. The woman behind the rose-icon profile who had sent Lucas that late-night message just the night before — that was her, standing right in front of me.

Daisy and Lucas had grown up together, childhood sweethearts in every sense of the word. Even now, I still couldn't fully understand why Lucas had chosen me over her. But he had. And she had never forgiven me for it.

I watched her fake a twisted ankle, stumbling conveniently into Lucas's arms, her eyes wide and glassy with manufactured tears as she began to lay out her grievances against me.

"Lucas, you have no idea how rude she was. She screamed at me, said the most horrible things — and then she threw her tea on me." Her voice dropped into something small and wounded. "She's completely out of control. Honestly, I don't know how you put up with her."

She didn't get to finish. Lucas cut her off, his voice flat and cold. "Apologize."

Daisy blinked. "What?"

I was just as stunned — because he wasn't speaking to me. He was speaking to her. His meaning was unmistakable. He took Daisy's wrist, not gently, and steered her until she was standing directly in front of me.

"Elena is my wife," he said. "I will not allow anyone to insult her, bully her, or speak about her that way. No one."

For all her usual arrogance, Daisy seemed to shrink in his presence. In front of Lucas, she was nothing but a supplicant. She lowered her eyes and said, quietly, "I'm sorry, Elena. I shouldn't have said those things."

I said nothing. There was nothing to say to a woman who had tried to dismantle my marriage from the outside — no version of forgiveness I was willing to offer her.

"Know your limits," Lucas told her. "Don't do things you have no business doing." Then he dropped her wrist like he was setting down something he no longer wanted to touch, and he told her to leave.

I watched her go, and I found myself more confused than satisfied.

If Daisy was truly the one behind all of it — the photos, the taunting messages, the rose-icon midnight texts to my husband — then why had Lucas turned on her so completely the moment things came to a head? Was this real? Was this him choosing me, protecting me, meaning every word he said? Or was he simply that good at playing both sides?

"Elena." He came to me then, taking my hand in his. "I won't have Daisy coming to the house anymore. Not for anything."

I tested him, keeping my voice neutral. "But she's your friend, isn't she, Lucas?"

He exhaled slowly, then pulled me into his arms. "If she makes you unhappy, then she's not worth keeping around. I'd rather cut off contact entirely."

Did he mean it? Did Lucas genuinely put me first — even above Daisy, the girl he'd known his entire life?

I let him hold me, but my eyes drifted past his shoulder to the window. Outside on the other side of the glass, Daisy stood hugging her tea-soaked blouse against her chest, shoulders shaking as she cried. She looked small and wrecked and nothing like the confident woman who had been tormenting me for days.

In this fight for my marriage, Daisy had lost. She'd lost to me, and she'd lost to her own overconfidence.

I was just about to close my eyes and let myself sink into the warmth of Lucas's arms when my phone buzzed against the cushion. I glanced over. A friend request notification — from a profile with a rose avatar, display name listed as Sweet An.

My eyes snapped back to the window. Daisy was still out there, wiping her face with the back of her hand, walking away in her ruined clothes. She'd only just left. She was too upset, too consumed with leaving, to have pulled out her phone and sent me a friend request already.

A cold, quiet thought settled over me. Had I gotten it wrong? Had it never been Daisy at all?

"Elena." Lucas's voice drew me back.

I shoved the thought down and moved fast — pushed away from him and dropped onto the couch, palming my phone and slipping it into my pocket before he could see the screen. "Lucas," I said, redirecting, "how did you even know I was with Daisy? How did you know to come back?"

He glanced toward the ceiling. "The house is monitored. I was nearby handling something when I checked the feed and saw things were getting out of hand, so I came home."

I looked up. There it was — a small camera mounted near the ceiling of the living room. I turned slowly, scanning the room, and felt the air leave my lungs. They were everywhere. Every corner, every angle covered. I hadn't noticed before, or maybe I simply hadn't wanted to.

For the first time, something about Lucas's tenderness felt different to me — less like love, more like a hand keeping me exactly where he wanted me. His protection, his attentiveness, his always knowing where I was and what I was doing. It wasn't warmth. It was grip.

"Elena, you've been off lately." He was watching me, his hands framing my face, tilting it toward his. "What's going on with you?"

His eyes were dark and deep — the same eyes I used to lose myself in without any resistance, the ones I had loved so completely I'd stopped being careful around them. Now, looking into them felt like standing at the edge of something I couldn't see the bottom of. An abyss dressed up as intimacy. Step too close, and you wouldn't know you were falling until you'd already hit the ground.

I faked a yawn, slow and convincing. "I haven't been sleeping well. I think I'm about to crash."

He sat down beside me and guided me back against the arm of the sofa, then lifted me slightly so that my head came to rest on his arm. "Then sleep here. I'll stay with you."

There had been so many times before when I would have given anything for an afternoon like this.

Lucas was always working, always somewhere else, always just out of reach. Moments like this — quiet, close, unhurried — had been a luxury I almost never got to have. And yet here I was, my cheek against his sleeve, his heartbeat steady and strong beneath my hand, and it felt wrong. Not warm. It felt like a dream already fraying at the edges, the kind you reach for the moment you wake and find nothing left to hold.

Love turning cold was its own particular cruelty. Worse, in some ways, than losing someone all at once.

"Lucas," I said quietly, "you promised you'd love me forever."

My arms tightened around his waist — not enough to hurt him, not with the difference in our size, but with everything I had. Like if I held on hard enough I could keep the moment from becoming the past.

He laughed softly and pressed his lips to my hair. "Of course I will. You're my everything, Elena. That's never going to change."

I fell asleep faster than I expected — probably the cost of a near-sleepless night finally coming due.

When I opened my eyes, sunlight was still pouring through the windows, bright and unchanged. I sat up slowly, rolling my shoulders, and tried to get my bearings. One of the housekeepers appeared in the doorway almost immediately.

"Ms. Bennett, breakfast is ready whenever you'd like."

Breakfast. I'd only been asleep for an hour or two in the early afternoon — hadn't I? I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Morning. The following morning.

I had slept through the entire night on the sofa.

I looked around. Lucas was gone, off to the office already at this hour. I had no way to ask him why he hadn't woken me, hadn't carried me to bed. The question would have to wait.

My phone lit up again — the same rose-icon profile, Sweet An, sending another friend request.

I'd nearly forgotten. I was about to accept when a message came through from an anonymous number. I opened it first.