Chapter 50 Chapter 50: Incomprehensible
Cathy's P.O.V
The ground is being pulled from under my feet. I stood there in the kitchen, gripping the counter so hard my fingers ache, and try to make sense of what my mother just told me. Colton. My brother Colton. The same Colton who could barely sit still in class long enough to finish a single assignment. The same Colton who struggled so badly in high school that my mom had to beg three different teachers not to fail him. That Colton had somehow landed a job at Dalton Inc. Xavier's company. As an executive assistant.
It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. Colton had no degree, no experience, no qualifications that would ever get him through the door of a company like Dalton Inc, let alone into a position that paid well enough to renovate an entire house and buy a luxury car.
And then it clicks. Like a puzzle piece sliding into place, like a lock turning open after years of being stuck, everything suddenly makes sense.
Hunter. Hunter's insistence that I not rush into a divorce. The way he kept telling me to slow down, to think carefully, to read the prenup before making any decisions. At the time I had wondered what he was really after, what larger game he was playing.
This was it. This was the reason. Hunter knew about Colton. He knew my brother worked at Dalton Inc. He knew that if I went charging into Xavier's office demanding a divorce, I wouldn't just be destroying my own marriage. I would be putting Colton's job at risk too.
I turn to my mom slowly, a cold realization settling in my stomach.
"Mom," I say, and my voice is dangerously quiet. "Did you go to Xavier behind my back? Did you ask him for a job for Colton?"
My mother's face shifts. The proud smile she had been wearing just seconds ago falters, and for a brief moment, something flickers across her features. Guilt. It's there and gone so fast I almost miss it, but I don't miss it. I see it clearly.
She holds my gaze for a second longer, then looks away, picking up the dish towel again and folding it neatly, even though it doesn't need folding.
"So what if I did?" she says finally, her tone shifting into something harder, more defensive. She sets the towel down and crosses her arms. "So what, Cathy? What's the point of you marrying a rich husband if your own family still lives in the slums? We were barely surviving. Your father is gone, I work myself to the bone every single day just to keep a roof over our heads, and your brother had no future ahead of him. So yes, I went to Xavier. I asked him to help Colton. And he did. What's wrong with that?"
Something inside me snaps.
All the pain from last night, all the betrayal and humiliation and heartbreak that I've been carrying since I woke up in Hunter's apartment, all of it comes rushing to the surface at once. The tears are already falling before I can stop them, hot and angry, streaming down my cheeks as the words pour out of me.
"Xavier was cheating on me, Mom!" I cry out, my voice breaking apart. "He's been cheating on me with multiple women. For over a year. Possibly since the beginning of our marriage. There are photos, hundreds of them, of him with other women. And last night, he..." I choke on the words, pressing my hand over my mouth for a second before forcing myself to continue. "Last night he was with another woman. Right in front of me. He told me to leave and he just... he just did it, Mom. Like I wasn't even there."
My mother's expression doesn't change the way I expect it to. There's no shock on her face, no horror, no outrage on my behalf. She just watches me cry with an expression that looks almost... unsurprised.
"I want a divorce," I say, wiping at my tears with the back of my hand. "I want out of this marriage. I can't do this anymore. And now I find out that my own mother went behind my back to ask my cheating husband for favors, that my own family is benefiting from this lie. I can't even face him, Mom. I can't face any of this, because my own mother acted so greedy."
The word hangs in the air between us. Greedy. I didn't mean for it to come out that harsh, but I also don't take it back. Because right now, standing in this renovated kitchen that was paid for by the man who destroyed my life, that's exactly how it feels.
My mother stares at me for a long moment. Then she straightens up, her jaw tightening, and speaks in a firm, steady voice.
"You absolutely cannot divorce Xavier."
I blink at her, the tears still wet on my cheeks.
"What?"
"You heard me," my mom says, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Rich men from the upper class have affairs all the time, Cathy. It's how things work in that world. It's not a big deal. You just have to adjust to it. You keep him pleased, you keep him happy, and you make sure he doesn't look elsewhere. That's how you keep your marriage intact."
I stare at her like she's speaking a completely different language.
"Mom, are you insane?" The words leave my mouth before I can filter them. "Do you even understand what you're saying right now? Your daughter is standing in front of you, telling you that her husband has been sleeping with other women, and your advice is to just adjust to it?"
"Yes," my mother says simply. "That is exactly my advice."
"How can you say that?" I ask, my voice rising. "How can you stand there and tell me to just accept being cheated on like it's normal? Like it's something I should just live with?"
My mother moves toward me then, and I see something in her eyes that I can't quite read. It happens so fast I don't have time to react.
Her hand connects with my cheek in a sharp, clean slap. The sound echoes through the kitchen like a gunshot. My head snaps to the side and I stumble back a step, my hand flying up to cover my face. My mother has never hit me before. Not once in my entire life.
"If you had been enough for your husband," my mother says, and her voice is cold, colder than I have ever heard it, "then he wouldn't have had to go seeking pleasure elsewhere."
The words cut through me like a blade. I lower my hand from my cheek slowly, staring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"You can't even have children, Cathy," she continues, and each word is another stab, precise and deliberate. "That's the truth of it. You can't give the Daltons what they want. You can't give your husband what he needs. So what's the point of you being so irritated? What's the point of crying and screaming about divorce?"
She takes another step closer, and I take one back, my shoulders hitting the kitchen counter.
"If you had given the Daltons a child," my mother finishes, her voice dropping low, "you wouldn't be standing here crying like this."
The kitchen falls completely silent.
I stand there, frozen, my cheek still burning from the slap, tears streaming silently down my face. I look at my mother, this woman who raised me, who I thought loved me unconditionally, who I thought would be my safe place no matter what happened.
And I don't recognize her.
The woman standing in front of me isn't the mother who held me when my father died. She isn't the woman who worked two jobs just to keep us fed. She is someone I have never seen before, someone who looks at her own daughter's pain and sees only an inconvenience, a threat to the comfortable life she has built on the back of Xavier's money.
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. There are no words left inside me. Everything I have, every last piece of strength and emotion and fight, has been stripped away, one blow at a time.
First Xavier. Now my mother.
I press my lips together, swallow the sob rising in my throat, and just stand there. Silent. Shattered. Alone in a kitchen that doesn't belong to the house I grew up in, surrounded by things paid for by a man who never loved me, looking at a woman who just told me my pain is my own fault.