Chapter 28
Serena
The days following my appointment blurred together in a way I hadn't experienced since my undergraduate thesis on Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro.
I arrived at my new office before seven each morning, the glass walls still dark, the city below just beginning to stir.
The space was mine—truly mine—with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking lower Manhattan, a standing desk I never used because I preferred to spread documents across every available surface, and access to databases that made my fingers itch with possibility.
I didn't feel tired. How could I, when I was finally doing what I'd trained for? What I'd loved before Wesley convinced me that art history was a "hobby" and I should focus on being decorative at his networking events?
The Grey Estate collection was staggering. Over four hundred pieces spanning three centuries, from Dutch Golden Age paintings to contemporary installations. Each piece required authentication, provenance research, condition assessment, and market valuation.
I'd spent two months as a research assistant at the Frick, another summer cataloging a private collection in Florence, but this—this was different. This was mine to command, mine to prove myself with, mine to either triumph or fail spectacularly.
I was cross-referencing a disputed Vermeer attribution when my phone buzzed. Mother. I silenced it without looking, my eyes already back on the infrared analysis report. The phone buzzed again. And again. And again.
By the tenth call, I finally glanced at the screen.
Mother. Elena. Mother. Elena. The pattern was almost comical in its desperation. I let the eleventh call ring out, my jaw tight, but when the twelfth started, something in my chest twisted. They never called this many times. Not even when I'd "embarrassed" them by refusing to wear the dress they'd chosen for Wesley's firm's gala.
I answered. "What."
The sound that erupted from the speaker made me jolt so hard I nearly dropped the phone. Crashing. Shattering. My mother's voice, shrill and raw: "Serena! You need to come home right now! Your father—he's going to kill himself! He can't take it anymore! You have to come talk to him!"
The words hit like a physical blow. I was on my feet before I'd consciously decided to move, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What? What do you mean—"
"He's destroying everything! He's talking about jumping! Serena, please!" My mother's voice cracked, and in the background I could hear more breaking glass, Elena's high-pitched pleading, my father's incoherent shouting. "You have to come home! Now!"
My hands were shaking as I grabbed my coat. I hated them. God, I hated them for what they'd done to me, for what they'd tried to make me. But suicide—that was different. That was a line I couldn't ignore, no matter how much I wanted to.
"I'm coming," I said, already moving toward the door. "Keep him calm. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
My assistant, a efficient woman in her forties named Margaret who'd been assigned to me by Eleanor's people, looked up from her desk in the outer office. "Ms. Vance? Is everything all right?"
"I have to leave." I was pulling on my coat, my fingers fumbling with the buttons. "Family emergency."
"Should I notify Mr. Lawson? He specified that if you needed to go anywhere—"
"No." The word came out sharper than I intended. "Tell him I had to handle something personal. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Margaret's expression shifted into something almost sympathetic. "Ms. Vance, Mr. Lawson was very clear that—"
"I don't care how clear he was." I grabbed my bag, my pulse still racing. "This is my business, not his. If he has a problem with it, he can take it up with me when I get back."
I was out the door before she could respond, my heels clicking against the marble floor as I headed for the elevator. My phone buzzed again—Elena this time—but I ignored it. Twenty minutes. I just needed to get there, make sure my father wasn't actually going to do something catastrophic, and then I could leave. I could go back to my office, back to my work, back to the life I was finally building.
The thought that this might be another manipulation, another scheme to drag me back into their toxic orbit, didn't even occur to me until I was already in the taxi.
---
The house looked the same as it always had—grand facade, immaculate lawn, the kind of old-money elegance that screamed "we belong here" even as the foundation crumbled beneath. I'd always hated this place. The way it felt like a museum, like we were all just exhibits in my parents' desperate performance of respectability.
I paid the driver and hurried up the front steps, my heart still hammering. The front door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stopped dead.
The foyer was a disaster. Shattered vases, broken picture frames, scattered papers everywhere.
My father was on his knees in the middle of it all, his face a mess of bruises and cuts, his hair wild, his hands clutching at his head as he rocked back and forth. My mother sat on the sofa, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, but her gaze was sharp, calculating.
And Elena stood near the window, her arms crossed, wearing a designer dress that was at least two seasons old—a detail that would have mortified her a year ago.
"Dad!" I rushed forward, reaching for his arm. "Dad, get up. Please, just—"