The Hidden Goddess Who Made Him Beg novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Severance Cheque
At his engagement party Lucian orders his secret lover to take a severance cheque in front of the staff, and Del tears it up and resigns. The venue manager calls her Miss Orme, and Leopold drops his glass.
Lucian Bulfinch announced his engagement at nine o'clock, and I held the microphone for him.
That was my job.
I had run his calendar for two years and shared his bed for eight months.
Nobody in the ballroom knew about the second part.
"Thank you all for coming," he said, and took Imogen Eustis's hand.
She wore white silk and the Bulfinch family ring, which I had once watched his mother's old jeweler resize.
Applause rolled through the Aldrich Room.
I stood by the service door in my plain grey dress, clipboard against my ribs.
Seven hours earlier Lucian had put his mouth against my ear in his office and said, "Come to the penthouse after. We'll talk."
I had decided something in the elevator that morning.
If he said my name tonight, in any form, I would stop.
I would walk away from the whole plan and let the dead stay dead.
He looked straight past me at the cake.
"Marsh," he said, when the clapping thinned. "A word."
He steered me behind the bar, where the waiters kept their trays.
Six of them stood within earshot, and he did not lower his voice.
He took a cream envelope from his jacket and held it out.
"Severance. Six months, and a letter that will get you a job anywhere in the city."
I looked at the envelope.
"You're firing me," I said.
"I'm ending an arrangement that has run its course."
His voice was the one he used on vendors.
"Imogen doesn't like the history. I'd like this to be clean."
Imogen had drifted up beside him.
"Oh, Lucian, don't be so brutal," she said. "She's been so useful."
She smiled at me with every tooth.
"Eight months, darling. The help does talk. Fetch my wrap, would you? It's on the third chair."
The waiters had stopped pretending to polish glasses.
My face went hot, and I let it.
For two years I had been Delphine Marsh, who ate lunch at her desk and never raised her voice.
I had slept in this man's arms and learned the exact weight of his sleeping hand.
I had stood in his father's study at midnight with a phone and a stolen key, copying files.
And he had never once asked me where I came from.
I took the envelope.
Lucian's shoulders eased, just slightly.
Then I tore it in half.
I tore it again, and the cheque inside, and let the pieces fall on the bar between the lemons.
"I'm not leaving because you've paid me," I said.
The ballroom noise outside the bar had gone quiet enough to hear a fork drop.
"I resign, effective now. You can find your own calendar."
Lucian's jaw tightened.
"Del, don't make a scene."
"You're the one who made the scene," I said. "I'm just the last person in it."
I took off the staff lanyard and laid it on the torn paper.
Imogen laughed, high and bright.
"Look at her. She thinks she's leaving with something."
I turned and walked out through the main doors, past the tables and the white roses and the cake with their names piped on it.
Heads turned as I passed.
Someone muttered, "That's the girl who handled his schedule."
At the coat check the attendant looked up, then froze.
I had never spoken to him in two years, and he knew me.
He knew my face from a portrait that hung in a house on Beacon Hill, and he knew the grey eyes.
Behind me, the venue's manager hurried out of the ballroom with her hands out in front of her.
"Miss Orme," she said, loud enough to carry. "Forgive us. Your car is at the front. Your grandmother, Hester Orme, has been holding the table since eight."
The silence that fell on the lobby was the kind that comes before a roof does.
I did not look back at Lucian.
I heard him say, "What did she call her?"
And behind him, Leopold Bulfinch's champagne glass hit the marble and burst.
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