His Final Betrayal Was My First Move Chapter 03

His Final Betrayal Was My First Move Chapter 03

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was enough for everyone around us to hear.

People exchanged knowing looks. Someone chimed in, half-joking, “Looks like Daphne still knows Griffin best.”

Daphne’s smile deepened. As if she felt the fire wasn’t burning hot enough, she added casually, “Yes, he’s like that. When he gets busy, he forgets everything. Even the economic forum in Switzerland next week, I had to remind him before he remembered to have his assistant book the flights.”

“You two really are inseparable,” another alumna’s wife said, raising her champagne flute with a pointed smile. “But Amelia has always been broad-minded. After all, you were the one who brought them together back then, Daphne. She was the safest choice for a wife. Of course she wouldn’t get jealous over something like this.”

“Exactly. If Daphne hadn’t recommended her back then, how would Griffin ever have met our Amelia?”

Their words were like poisoned needles, pricking my skin. My fingers tightened around my glass, my nails digging into my palm.

Hearing this, Daphne became even more smug. She swirled her mimosa, the ice cubes clinking crisply against the glass.

“Oh, I only made a suggestion. Griffin has never had much initiative when it comes to relationships. If I hadn’t given him a push, he’d never have known how to settle down.”

She paused, her gaze drifting toward me, the corner of her mouth curving into a perfect arc.

“Come to think of it, even that proposal in the Boston Public Garden was my idea. I told him Cartier’s Solitaire 1895 would suit your obedient temperament best, and he went and placed the order. If you didn’t know better, you might think I was the one pulling the strings.”

With a roar, the last taut string in my mind snapped.

I had always thought that proposal was because Griffin had been moved by my devotion, that it had been his choice. That diamond ring, lying in its velvet box, had been the only sweetness in our barren marriage, the one memory I could revisit again and again.

And even that had been Daphne’s charity.

My chest felt crushed. I could barely breathe. I turned away in humiliation and walked quickly toward the restroom. I splashed cold water on my face and looked at my pale reflection in the mirror, feeling an absurdity unlike anything I had ever known.

My marriage had been a carefully designed fraud from the very beginning.

And I had been the stupidest actor in the play.

When I composed myself and returned to the lounge, the atmosphere had grown lively. Someone had suggested a game of Truth or Dare.

The bottle spun and finally pointed at Daphne.

She drew a truth card.

The person asking read the question aloud. “Name the craziest thing a suitor has ever done for you.”

My lashes trembled. I instinctively looked away.

Daphne smiled, slipping into a lazy, sweet reminiscence.

“The craziest? There are so many. Let me think.”

She took a small sip of her cocktail. Her gaze swept the room, then landed deliberately on me.

“There was this one guy who chased me for almost twenty years. He gave me his family’s antique cuff links and said they were for the future mistress of the house. I casually mentioned liking a certain band, and he got into a bar fight for me until his head was bleeding. Oh, and a few years ago, I impulsively decided to stay in Paris for a while. Every single week, he flew from Boston just to bring me fresh Ladurée macarons…”

Every word was a precisely aimed blade, stabbing into my heart.

I remembered the night before our wedding, when Griffin’s mother asked him to give me the family’s symbolic cuff links. He’d said he had accidentally lost them at a dinner.

I remembered the many times he came home smelling of alcohol and covered in bruises, wearily explaining that he’d had too much to drink at a client dinner and gotten into a minor scuffle. Like a fool, I’d cleaned his wounds and brought him hangover remedies.

I remembered an entire winter when he came home at dawn every Monday, claiming his international flights had been delayed over the weekend. I would thoughtfully prepare fresh clothes and breakfast for him.

I had believed every excuse, felt sorry for every one of his “unavoidable” difficulties.

So his helplessness, his wounds, his “lost” family heirlooms—they had all been for another woman.

And I had known nothing.

My heart ached so badly it felt like it was spasming. My fingertips were as cold as if they’d been dipped in an icy sea. Around me, the alumni were eating it up, pressing for more.

“My God, Daphne, who is he? That’s so devoted!”

“Do we know him? Come on, tell us!”

“If you two ever get together, you have to bring him so we can see for ourselves!”

Daphne glanced at me with a half-smile, the look of a victor admiring a masterpiece she had just shattered.

“Fine,” she said with a grin. “At next month’s Halloween party, I’ll bring him and introduce him to everyone.”

Just as she finished speaking, the lounge door was pushed open.

Griffin walked in, a smile on his face, still wearing the trench coat from that morning. His eyes found Daphne in the crowd with perfect accuracy.

“Introduce who? Why wait until next month?” He strode toward her, his tone familiar and intimate. “Are you done? I thought we were going to the Boston Symphony.”

When his gaze swept past me to land on Daphne, his voice stopped abruptly.

For an instant, panic and surprise were written plainly across his face. He even took an instinctive half-step back.

“Amelia? Why are you… here?”

I looked at him, remembering the gentle hug he’d given me when he left that morning, and the bald-faced lie he’d told me: “Darling, I’m meeting a very important investor. The meeting might run late. Don’t wait up.”

So the important investor was Daphne.

The late-night meeting was a symphony.

I smiled silently and met his evasive eyes. My tone was so calm it even surprised me.

“As you can see, I’m at an alumni event.”

He seemed to seize on a lifeline, nodding repeatedly as he tried to regain control of the conversation.

“Perfect. I’ll take you home when it’s over.”

I took my phone from my clutch and opened the Uber app.

“No need.” I lifted my head, looked him dead in the eye, and said, word by word, “I’ve called a car. You two should get to the symphony. Don’t be late.”