Chapter 69 Chapter 69: Decision Made
Cathy’s P.O.V
The pain hit slowly and deep across my cheek, radiating outward like something had been cracked open beneath the skin. My head had snapped to the side with the force of it and for a moment the room tilted, the furniture blurring at the edges, the fireplace light swaying.
I blinked. And when my vision steadied, the first thing I focused on was Caroline.
She was sitting exactly where she had been, her hands folded in her lap, but the corners of her mouth had shifted. Just slightly. Just enough. A small, private curve that she wasn't even trying to fully hide. She caught me looking and her eyes stayed steady on mine, unbothered and amused, the way someone watches a scene they have already seen the ending of.
That look told me everything.
This had not been an ambush born from Lydia's concern or Xavier's frustration. This had been arranged. They had sat in this room and waited for me to walk through that door and this, all of it, had been theater. And I was the only one who hadn't been given a script.
Xavier was still standing in front of me. He had lowered his hand but his posture hadn't softened. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard and he looked at me the way someone looks at a problem they have decided they are finished being patient with.
"You went too far," he said. "You need to learn your place, Cathy."
Something cold and final moved through me.
I wanted to hit him back right then and there. I wanted so badly to give him a taste of his own medicine, to show him that the slap had killed the final straw between us. But then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the tiny camera focused directly at us from the pillar near the kitchen…and I knew I had just captured evidence of domestic violence. Hitting back would ruin my case in court.
So I grit my teeth and straightened, my hands clenched into fists at my side and I had to do everything in my power not to retaliate.
"My place?" I repeated, as I turned my head back to look at him fully, ignoring the throb in my cheek. "Xavier, you chose to sleep with another woman while you were still married to me. You brought her into our home. You sat across from me at our table and you lied to my face for however long this has been going on." My voice was quiet but it did not shake. "You are the one who forgot your place. Not me."
"That is enough of this nonsense," Lydia cut in sharply, stepping forward. "You are blowing this completely out of proportion. Caroline was drugged that night. My son had no choice in what happened. It was not his fault."
I looked at Lydia slowly.
"If Caroline was drugged," I said, "then the person who drugged her is Mr. Hawthorn. That man had placed the drink on the bar, clearly meant for me. But instead, he endangered a pregnant woman, according to your own version of events." I kept my eyes on hers. "So why isn’t he facing the consequences for his crime? Why is he still walking around freely? If the story you are both telling me is true, shouldn't he be facing charges right now?"
The room went very quiet. Lydia's mouth opened like she was about to spit something but it also closed immediately.
“Or is it…” I leaned closer to Lydia, “that consequences only apply when I’m involved in the equation?”
Xavier looked sideways and said nothing. But I wasn’t done just yet.
“Maybe think about consequences before you come at me the next time,” I told them both, loud enough that even Caroline could hear. “Because if I start digging for the truth of that night…I might end up uncovering something both of you tried to bury long ago.”
Both Lydia and Xavier’s head snapped to me at that moment, eyes wide like deer caught in the headlight. I couldn’t tell exactly which part got to them, but mother and son had enough skeletons in the closet that they couldn’t decide which one I might end up unearthing.
I watched them both for a moment, the silence stretching out long enough to say everything that none of us were saying aloud. Then I picked up my bag from the floor where it had fallen and walked out of the living room without another word.
I heard footsteps behind me almost immediately.
"Cathy, wait. Please, just listen to me. This is all a misunderstanding."
Caroline's voice was soft and urgent in the hallway, pitched low enough that it wouldn't carry back to the living room. I kept walking. The staircase was ahead and my room was just down the hallway and all I needed was to get behind a closed door.
I reached the guest room, pushed it open and stepped inside. But before I could turn and shut the door, Caroline was already there.
She stepped through the gap, one hand on the frame, and pulled the door closed behind her.
I turned to face her, eyes narrowed.
The soft, anxious expression she had been wearing in the hallway was gone. Completely. Like a mask that had served its purpose and been set aside. What replaced it was something I had only glimpsed in fragments before, in the smirk from downstairs, in the ease with which she moved through this house, in the way she laughed when Xavier had called me plain.
She looked at me now with full, open amusement and not a trace of apology.
"Get out of my room," I said.
She laughed. A light, unhurried sound, like I had said something mildly entertaining.
"You're throwing a tantrum," she said, tilting her head slightly. "In a battle you have already lost."
I stared at her. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me." She moved further into the room and looked around it slowly, taking her time, like she was evaluating the space. "You've been fighting so hard to hold onto something that has already slipped through your fingers. Xavier's attention. His mother's approval. The Dalton name." She looked back at me and her eyes were completely flat. " And soon, I’ll have all of that. Every bit of it."
"You are in my room," I forced through gritted teeth. "And I am telling you to leave."
"Xavier gives me his full attention," she continued as though I hadn't spoken. "His mother loves me. Do you know why?" She smiled slowly. "Because I can give them what you never could. What you will never be able to give them." She paused just long enough to make sure the next words landed cleanly. "A barren woman has no value in a family like the Daltons, Cathy. You couldn't give them what they needed most. And it won't be long before you are removed from this house entirely and I take your place properly."
The words hit exactly where she had aimed them. I felt my hands tighten at my sides. My cheek was still burning. But my eyes were completely dry and void. I opened my mouth to speak, but Caroline cut me off.
"Don't," Caroline said.
Her voice had shifted again. Not louder. Sharper. Like a door being shut.
"It's better if you stay quiet," she shrugged, her smirk widening. "Because one scream from me, one word to Xavier or his mother about anything you might try to do or say, and the Daltons will make sure you are removed from this house in a way that leaves you with nothing. Absolutely nothing." She held my gaze for a long, unhurried moment. "So keep your mouth shut. It's the smartest thing you can do right now."
Then she turned, opened the door, and walked out. The door clicked closed behind her. I stood in the middle of the guest room and didn't move.
The quiet settled around me and I let it. I let it press in from every side because I needed a moment to let everything that had just happened find its place inside me before I could think clearly again.
Xavier's hand against my face. Lydia's silence when Mr. Hawthorn's name came up.
Caroline's smile from across the room. ‘One scream from me and the Daltons will stop at nothing.’
I sat down on the edge of the bed slowly and stared at the floor. The day came rushing back through me in one long wave, not just this morning but everything, six years of it. The woman I had been when I first walked into this family, open and willing and full of a love I had believed was being matched.
The slow and quiet ways that love had been dismantled, piece by piece, without me fully noticing until the structure was already gone and I was standing in the rubble wondering what had happened.
Xavier was showing me exactly who he was now. No more careful management, no more measured words. He had raised his hand to me. In his own house. In front of his mother and the woman he was sleeping with.
And Lydia had not said a single word about it.
I pressed one hand against my still-burning cheek and held it there. They wanted me gone. All three of them. And they would not stop pushing until I was.
Six years. I had given six years to this love and to this family and to a man who had looked at all of it and decided it meant nothing.
It felt like Sophia’s unfinished story was being repeated through my life. And that thought itself scared me like nothing else.
I took a slow breath. And then, quietly and completely, the decision was already made.
No more waiting. No more hoping. No more trying to hold together something that the other person had already walked away from.
It was time to walk away. And it was time to end things on my own terms.