Shattered Illusions: The Wife He Left for Dead novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fireworks
On their third anniversary Mireille watches the harbor fireworks light up for Chantal and her son, finds her bracelet is glass, and is shoved to the marble by Killian, who calls it faking. She wakes in a hospital bed as he claims the boy on the news.
At nine o'clock the harbor fireworks started, and every phone in Boston lit up with the same headline.
A BILLIONAIRE LIGHTS UP THE SKY FOR THE WOMAN HE LOVES.
I stood at the dining room window with one candle burning down behind me.
It was our third wedding anniversary.
At eight Killian had texted: "Stuck at a dinner. Home by eleven. Your gift is on the dresser. Happy anniversary."
I had read it six times, and I believed every word.
The fireworks climbed over the water, and I laid my palm on the cold glass and smiled.
I had loved Killian Hayes my whole life.
For three years I had waited for him to do one loud thing that said I was his.
I thought he had finally done it.
My phone buzzed with a link to a live stream from the harbor, and I tapped it.
The camera showed a rooftop terrace strung with white lights.
Killian stood in the middle of it in his shirtsleeves, holding a knife over a three-tier cake.
Chantal Lowell stood beside him in a cream coat.
Chantal was his first love, and she had left Boston five years ago, before he ever married me.
She had sent a card to our wedding that said, "Take care of him. He never says what he needs."
I had kept that card.
A little boy in a blue coat stood between them, blowing out sparklers.
He had dark hair with a pale streak at the hairline, and he was laughing.
A reporter's voice said, "Hayes Holdings chairman Killian Hayes has surprised his first love, Chantal Lowell, and her five-year-old son, newly home from Milan."
Chantal raised a glass to the camera.
"He baked it himself," she said. "He always did, since we were kids."
Killian had never made me so much as a piece of toast.
Four million people were watching, and I read the number in the corner twice.
Chantal lifted her wrist to toast, and a chain of diamonds threw light across the screen.
The clasp was a tiny silver ship.
I looked down at my own wrist.
I had put on my gift at seven, from the box on the dresser.
It was the same bracelet, with the same tiny silver ship on the clasp.
A caption slid across the screen: "Chantal's custom bracelet, one of a kind."
One of a kind.
I walked to the window and pressed the stones of mine against the glass.
I dragged them hard.
A diamond cuts glass.
Mine left no mark.
The candle went out, and I sat in the dark with the bracelet still on and watched my husband cut her son a slice of cake.
At one in the morning the front door opened.
Killian came into the hall with his tie in his hand and frosting on his cuff.
I was waiting under my father's portrait, the only thing from the Peabody house he had let me keep.
My father looked down from the wall, his white forelock combed back as it had been since he was young.
"You're still up," Killian said.
I held out my wrist. "Whose bracelet is this?"
He looked at it, and his face went still.
"It's yours."
"It's glass. Hers is real. Four million people saw hers."
"Mireille, it's late."
"I watched you bake her a cake."
"Chantal had nowhere to go tonight. The boy needed me."
"He's five," I said. "Chantal left before we were married. Whose son is he, Killian?"
"Mine."
He said it at once, without looking away.
"He's mine, and I won't discuss it."
I waited to feel it, and I did not feel it yet.
"I want a divorce," I said.
"No."
I took my coat from the hook. "I'm leaving tonight."
He caught my wrist, the one with the bracelet, and the glass stones bit into my skin.
"You are not walking out of this house."
"Let go of me."
"We'll talk when you've calmed down."
I pulled.
He shoved me.
It was one hard push with both hands, and the floor came up.
My head hit the marble, and the hall went white, then black.
When I could hear again, his voice was far above me.
"Stop faking it, Mireille."
I could not make my mouth work.
"We'll talk when you've calmed down."
His shoes crossed the marble past my face.
The door shut, and a car started in the drive, and then the sound was gone.
I lay with blood running into my ear, and my father looked down at me.
I waited for the car to come back.
It did not come back.
So I got up.
It took a long time, and I held the wall the whole way to the hall table.
I called an ambulance myself.
"What's your name, ma'am?"
"Mireille," I said. "Mireille Peabody."
I had not said that name aloud in three years.
I woke under white lights with ten stitches in the back of my head.
The doctor said concussion, and said I was lucky.
"Should we call your husband?" a nurse asked.
"No," I said. "Nobody calls him."
I worked the ring off my finger and set it on the tray beside the glass bracelet.
At seven the television on the wall switched to the morning news.
Killian stood outside the harbor terrace in yesterday's shirt, with a microphone in his face.
"The boy is my son," he said. "I won't hide him anymore."
The reporter asked if he had anything to say to his wife.
He walked away without answering.
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