Page 7 of The Sexy Ex's Brother
“No. She hasn’t called.” Not a lie, but not the truth, either.
He shakes his head, eyes flaring with something close to panic. “She’s being dramatic. She always forgives. She’ll come back. She has to.”
I stay quiet and watch him unravel. He exhales hard and steps away from the desk, pacing in a tight loop. I move to pour myself a glass of water, needing something in my hands.
“You’re worried about what people will think,” I say. “Not about what she’s feeling.”
“I’m worried about everything,” he snaps. “The wedding. The fallout. The merger. The image.”
There it is. The real priority. He doesn’t love her. He never did. Ivy was a symbol. A socially elegant, business-savvy match. The final piece in the Wilson family puzzle. A merger wrapped in a dress. A deal sealed with a ring.
Perhaps, in Derek’s mind, he thought he was offering her something solid, a name, a future, a place at the table. But it was never affection. Never depth.
“If she reaches out, you’ll let me know?”
I nod once.
He hesitates for half a second, then turns and leaves without another word.
Minutes later, my phone rings. I check the caller ID and feel that familiar tension rise in my shoulders.
Elizabeth.
“Mother,” I say, stepping toward the window.
“Is it true?” Her voice is crisp and cold, even through the phone. “Ivy left Derek?”
“She did.”
Silence sharp enough to cut glass.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Another partial truth. “She hasn’t contacted me.”
“You let this happen.”
“No, Mother. Derek did.”
Another silence, longer this time.
“This could ruin everything.”
“Maybe it should.”
She inhales sharply. “If you cared about this family, you’d help fix it.”
“I am fixing it. Just not in the way you want.”
I hang up before she can respond.
The stillness afterward wraps itself around me like static. My mother has always operated like a strategist, every call, every compliment, every reprimand a calculated move in a larger game. To her, family is branding. Love is leverage. Derek played by her rules and was rewarded. I broke them, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. Growing up under her roof meant learning to hide your emotions before you even knew what to call them. It meant rehearsing strength before you ever felt it. Derek absorbed her gospel. I learned how to smile while bleeding.
***
When I return home that evening, the building is wrapped in the kind of stillness only wealth can manufacture, engineered quiet that settles like velvet. My shoes echo against the polished marble floors. The hallway lights stretch long shadows as I pass her door. A line of soft light glows from beneath it. She’s in there.
I stop. Pull out my phone. Open a new message to Rhys.
