She swallowed the wine and smiled innocently at the horrified faces, "I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?"

"Just let it go," Madison said, a strained smile on her ruby red lips. "I think we're all getting a little bit tired of talking about Marco."

​​

"Funny that you say that now," Catherine said. "He used to be your favorite topic of conversation."

"Only because you were so smitten with him," Madison hissed. "Once you met him, it was Marco this and Marco that."

"You're not remembering clearly," Catherine said. "He was your friend first, remember? He was in your class at prep school, and you introduced him to me."

"Come now, girls," Melanie said. "We have Sean here as our special guest, and I don't think he's interested in your school days or in Marco."

Catherine pretended not to see the pointed glare her aunt leveled at her across the table. Her throat felt warm from the sip of wine, and her heart hammered in her ears. The three of them were sitting at her dining room table in her living room in her house, eating a disgusting feast paid for with her money, and they had the nerve to make up lies about her life while they did it. She wanted to rip them all to shreds.

"I just want to settle this once and for all," she said. "There have been so many misunderstandings and messes, and I want to make it clear to everyone in this room that everything that happened with Marco was a big mistake. Everyone has told such different stories, and my own understanding of what happened has changed, so I just want to say that—"

"I believe you," Sean said abruptly.

She turned to look at him, "You do?"

His face was calm, but his eyes shone with a fierce but soft light, "I do."

"Oh," she said, feeling her cheeks flush.

She quickly looked down at her plate. All-day he'd been acting differently. He didn't look at her with the same suspicion or mistrust as before. He was still distant and aloof, but some of his coldness had thawed away. What had changed?

She shook her head—she was getting distracted from the point. She needed to expose her family or, at the very least, get them to agree to a single version of events. She didn't want to continue to have the same conversation every time she saw them—she had bigger issues to worry about.

"Well," she said. "I appreciate that, but I still want to clear the air. Marco and Madison were classmates. But unlike me, they were good students and never got held back. One day, Madison started to talk to me about Marco—the way she described him made him sound like a great guy: smart, friendly, ambitious, and handsome. I thought she was interested in him herself until she introduced me to him."

"That's not true," Madison hissed. "I only talked about Marco as much as I talked about any of my classmates, but you constantly begged me for information about him. I only got closer to him, so I could answer all of your questions."

She took a deep breath to steady herself and said, "Madison, I was too busy trying to be cool to worry about boys. And honestly, if I had wanted to pick a boy to enhance my status, Marco wouldn't have been the guy. You have to admit, he was almost too nerdy for my crowd."

"If that's true, why did everyone at our school think you had a massive crush on him?" Madison asked.

"You know exactly why, Madison," Catherine said.

Madison exchanged a glance with Melanie, and Melanie's thin lips curled into a vicious smile. "If you insist on continuing with this subject, please open it up to the table," she said. "None of us here know what you're talking about."

"With pleasure, Mum," Madison said. "It was quite a silly school scandal, I'm afraid. One day this very romantic poem dedicated to Marco was pinned to the school bulletin board. Silly Catherine had, of course, signed her name to it, so both she and Marco were called to the headmaster's office."

Catherine chewed her lip. She remembered the incident, but she couldn't remember what the poem had said. Had she really written such a poem about Marco? She'd gone through a phase where she wrote a ton of really bad poems, but she couldn't remember the specific poem on the board.

"A romantic poem?" Catherine asked. "I don't remember writing anything like that for Marco specifically."

"But it had his name in it," Madison insisted.

"Well, if having your name in a poem makes it romantic, you can say I was in love with half the people in our school," she said. "Back then, I wrote poems about everything and everyone."

"Well, this was some pretty intense stuff," Madison said, shooting a sideways glance at Sean. "I mean, it got both of you called to the headmaster's office after all."

"You remember this so well," Catherine said. "You must remember the actual poem. Why don't you recite it now? If nothing else, we can have a good laugh at my terrible but short writing career."

Madison opened her mouth as if to begin and then shut her lips with a sudden pop. A flaming blush spread up her cousin's cheeks, and her aunt and uncle shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

With one quick glance at Sean, her family's reactions made sense. His face was a mask of pure rage. He pressed his lips together in a flat line, and a vein throbbed in his temple, but his eyes were the worst part. They flashed with pure, inhuman hatred.

Lawson cleared his throat and mumbled, "Well, let's leave the past in the past, right? Bury it back where it belongs. Besides, the food is getting cold."

Catherine took another long sip of wine. She'd been too impulsive in arguing with her family. She'd wanted to make them uncomfortable, but she hadn't thought about how Sean would feel. A family conversation about the bride's ex-lover would make any man uncomfortable, but with Sean's pride, it must have been intolerable. It had been stupid to let herself get carried away like that. Absolutely stupid.

The silence in the dining room was overwhelming. No one touched their food or wine—Madison stared down at her plate in silence, her uncle sat with his fork and knife poised in midair, and her aunt played with a large ruby ring on her pointer finger. Catherine chewed her lip waiting for someone to say something, but none of her family dared.

"Honey," she finally said, remembering the pet name Sean put in her phone. "Have some more fish." She stood and reached for a steaming platter of herb baked salmon. Using a silver tong, she grabbed a small fillet and slipped it onto Sean's plate.

Sean stared at her, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. His fierce eyes bored into her, but she kept her eyes locked on his. Finally, he looked away and took a small bite of the salmon. Nervously, the rest of the family returned to their meals.

In the silence of the room, knives and forks clinked against the China plates, and the meal ended quickly. Everyone seemed to have lost their appetites, and no one reached for seconds. Catherine stared at the grand feast and imagined the kitchen staff scraping the food into the trash cans.

"Well, Catherine, you left a few things here," Melanie finally said. "Why don't you go look through your old room and see if there's anything you want to take with you."

"Sure," she said. Then she paused and turned to Sean, "Is that okay with you?"

He nodded, and she rose from the table. Before she could leave the room, she saw her aunt and uncle exchange a look.

"Actually," Melanie said. "Madison and I will come to help you. We don't want to keep poor Sean waiting too long."

Catherine paused by the door. She didn't want to be alone with her aunt and cousin, and she didn't want to leave her uncle with Sean either, but she didn't have much choice. She left the dining room and climbed the familiar stairs to her old room.

***

Sean leaned back in his chair at the table. The herbs on the salmon tasted bitter in his mouth, and he stared in disgust at the tacky display of food on the table. He wanted to get up, grab Catherine by the arm, and drag her away from the house and the people inside it. He had just made up his mind to do exactly that when Lawson began to talk.

"Listen, Sean, my girls are impulsive," he said. He smiled chummily and added, "Aren't all women, though?"

Sean frowned and stared at the man. Though he was only middle-aged, his hair was thinning across his temple, and his face had become flabby and defeated. A sheen of sweat shone on his large forehead, and his eyes darted back and forth.

"What I mean to say is that they don't mean any harm," Lawson said. "They grew up together, and they're practically sisters. When Catherine's father died, Madison really took Cathy under her wing and helped her out. With Madison's care, no one dared to bully our Cathy."

He took a long sip of wine and continued, "I don't know much about this Marco business, but I always thought it was just your typical teenage nonsense. After a while, I grew a bit worried—you know, a young girl without her father is easy prey for a certain type of man. I decided it would be best to send Marco out of the country and to end the little infatuation there.

"That's where you came into the picture, and I had no idea that Madison and Catherine were planning that little stunt for the wedding day. It was stupid, but it was just the silly stuff of young women, caught up in their own fantasy world dramas. I'm sorry I didn't intervene sooner—I should have kept them under closer supervision."

Sean grits his teeth. Did Lawson think he was stupid?

"What do you want, Lawson?" he asked.

"I want this family to be happy and peaceful," Lawson said.

Sean narrowed his eyes and glared at the older man.

"I also wanted to ask you a question about the investment," Lawson said.