I clicked the play button, and the world
ended all over again.
The video opened in what looked like
Elena's private study in our apartment, the room I'd converted for her when she
claimed she wanted to "pursue writing." The timestamp showed three
weeks ago, while I was in preliminary meetings in Tokyo, believing I was
building our future.
Elena sat cross-legged on the white chaise
lounge I'd bought her for Christmas, her laptop balanced on her knees, phone
pressed to her ear. She was wearing my Columbia University t-shirt, the one she
always stole when I was traveling because she said it smelled like me and made
her feel less lonely.
Now I knew why she really wore it.
"Roman, you're being paranoid,"
she was saying, her voice carrying that patient tone she used when she thought
someone was being silly. "He suspects nothing. He texted me this morning
about how much he missed us both." She laughed, a sound that used to make
my chest warm but now felt like acid in my veins. "He actually said 'us
both,' Roman. Like we're some happy little family."
Marcus had turned up the volume, and I
could hear Roman's voice through Elena's phone, tinny but clear enough to
understand.
"The transfers need to be
smaller," Roman was saying. "If he comes back early and checks the
statements…."
"He won't," Elena interrupted,
examining her manicured nails with casual indifference. "Alex doesn't
micromanage the household accounts. He trusts me completely." The way she
said 'trusts' made it sound like a character flaw, something pathetic and
naive.
"That's what I'm afraid of,"
Roman's voice crackled through the speaker. "What if his trust runs out?
What if he starts asking questions?"
Elena's laugh was sharp and dismissive.
"Roman, have you met your brother? The man bought me a three-carat diamond
ring after dating me for six months because I mentioned once that I liked
vintage settings. He's not exactly suspicious by nature."
She was talking about my grandmother's
ring, the one I'd had reset for her because she'd admired it in old family
photos. I'd spent weeks working with the jeweler to recreate the art deco
setting exactly as it had been in 1920, wanting to give her something that
connected her to the only family I had left.
She'd worn it every day for five years,
and now I understood it had always been a prop in her performance.
"Besides," Elena continued,
typing something on her laptop, "we're so close now. The Takahashi deal
closes next week, and then we can accelerate everything. Alex will come home to
nothing, and by the time he realizes what happened, we'll be untouchable."
The video showed Elena turning her laptop
screen toward her phone's camera, presumably showing Roman something that made
him laugh. I couldn't see what was on the screen, but Elena's expression was
triumphant, like a cat showing off a captured mouse.
"God, you should see this bank
statement," she said, grinning. "I transferred another fifty thousand
yesterday for 'art consultation fees.' He's funding his own destruction, and he
doesn't even know it."
Marcus paused the video, watching my face
with the careful attention of someone monitoring a patient's vital signs.
"Do you want to stop here?" he asked quietly.
I shook my head, though speaking felt
impossible. The Elena in that video was a stranger, someone who looked like my
wife but talked like a predator discussing prey. Where was the woman who used
to cry at commercials about lost dogs? Where was the wife who'd held me through
nightmares about the car accident that killed my parents?
Had she ever existed at all?
"Keep playing," I managed to
say.
Marcus clicked the mouse, and Elena's
voice filled the room again.
"The funniest part," Elena was
saying, "is how romantic he thinks he's being. Yesterday he sent me a
photo of his hotel room service breakfast with a note saying he ordered extra
strawberries because he knows I love them." She rolled her eyes
dramatically. "As if I give a shit about strawberries. I've been throwing
them away for five years."
I remembered that text. I'd been sitting
in my Tokyo hotel, jet-lagged and missing home, thinking about all the small
ways I could show Elena I loved her. She'd responded with a heart emoji and
"You're so sweet, thinking of me even when you're busy changing the
world."
Even her responses had been lies.
"Roman, sometimes I think your
brother is still twelve years old emotionally," Elena continued, settling
back against the cushions like she was getting comfortable for a long gossip
session. "All that money, all that power, and he still writes me love
notes like we're in high school. It's almost embarrassing."
"He's always been like that,"
Roman's voice came through the speaker, and hearing my brother's voice agreeing
with her character assassination felt like being stabbed in a fresh wound.
"Even as kids, Alex would save his allowance for months to buy me birthday
presents I didn't even want. He thinks grand gestures equal love."
"The teddy bear," Elena said
suddenly, and both she and Roman burst into laughter.
My stomach dropped. The teddy bear had
been a surprise I'd arranged for our second anniversary. Elena had mentioned
once that she'd never had a stuffed animal as a child, that her parents thought
they were frivolous. So I'd had a custom bear made, hand-sewn by an artisan in
Vermont, dressed in a tiny replica of the wedding dress Elena had worn when we
married.
She'd cried when I gave it to her, told me
it was the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given her. She kept it on our
dresser, and sometimes I'd catch her looking at it with a soft smile that made
me think I'd done something right.
"I cannot believe you kept that
ridiculous thing," Roman was saying, his laughter making the phone speaker
crackle. "A grown woman with a teddy bear in a wedding dress. How did you
not die of secondhand embarrassment?"
"It's evidence," Elena replied,
grinning like she'd just told the world's best joke. "Evidence of how
desperately Alex wants to be loved. Do you know what he said when he gave it to
me? He said he wanted me to have something that would remind me every day that
I was someone's princess."
The way she said 'princess' dripped with
such mockery that I felt physically ill. That night, giving her the bear, had
been one of the happiest moments of our marriage. I'd thought I was showing her
how much she meant to me, how carefully I listened to everything she said.
Instead, I'd been handing her ammunition.
"Jesus Christ," Roman muttered,
though he was still laughing. "No wonder you fell for him so easily. He
practically gift-wrapped his own heart and handed it to you."
"The best part," Elena said,
leaning forward like she was sharing a secret, "is that he still believes
in soulmates. Can you imagine? A thirty-two-year-old billionaire who thinks
there's one perfect person out there for everyone, and he's lucky enough to
have found his."
She stood up from the chaise and walked to
the window, the same window where she used to stand in the mornings, watching
the sunrise while I got ready for work. I'd always thought she looked beautiful
in that light, contemplative and serene.
Now I could see she'd been calculating.
"He tells me at least once a week
that meeting me was destiny," Elena continued, her voice carrying across
the room as she gazed out at the city I'd conquered for her. "That the
accident that put him in the hospital was worth it because it brought us
together. He's turned our entire relationship into some kind of fairy
tale."
The accident. The reason I'd met Elena,
the foundation story of our entire relationship. I'd been inspecting a
construction site for a new research facility when faulty scaffolding
collapsed, crushing my left leg and keeping me hospitalized for three months.
Elena had been my night nurse, the one who'd held my hand through the worst
pain and talked me through the nightmares when the morphine wore off.
Or at least, that's what I'd believed.
"You know what the really pathetic
part is?" Elena said, turning back toward her phone with an expression of
genuine pity. "I think Alex actually believes I fell in love with him
while he was unconscious and helpless. He's constructed this whole narrative
where I saw past his money and his success to the 'real man underneath.'"
She laughed again, but this time it was
colder, crueler.
"The real man underneath is just a
scared little boy who's been abandoned by everyone he's ever loved," she
continued. "His parents died, the foster system failed him, and he's spent
his entire adult life desperately trying to create a family that won't leave
him. It's honestly kind of sad."
Marcus paused the video again, his hand
hovering over the mouse. "Alex, maybe we should…."
"No," I said, my voice barely
recognizable to my own ears. "I need to see all of it."
The next section of video jumped forward
several days. Elena was in Roman's office now, the one that I'd helped him
decorate when he'd been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. She was sitting in
his chair, feet up on his desk, looking completely at home in a space that was
supposed to be about business, not betrayal.
Roman was standing behind her, his hands
on her shoulders, both of them looking at his computer screen. The timestamp
showed this was just five days ago, while I was in the final stages of
negotiating the Takahashi merger.
"The art collection transfer goes
through tomorrow," Roman was saying, pointing at something on the screen.
"That's another twelve million in assets moved to the shell company."
"What about the Hampton house?"
Elena asked, leaning back against Roman's chest with the casual intimacy of
long-time lovers.
"Quit-claim deed is already filed. As
far as the law is concerned, you own half of everything, and what you own, you
can transfer to me."
Elena tilted her head back to look at
Roman, smiling with genuine affection. "You know, when we started this, I
thought it would just be about the money. I didn't expect to actually fall for
you."
Roman leaned down and kissed her forehead,
a gesture so tender it made my chest ache with recognition. I'd kissed Elena
the same way a thousand times, thinking it conveyed love and protection and
commitment.
"You're nothing like Alex,"
Elena continued, reaching up to touch Roman's face. "You see the world
clearly. You understand that love is a luxury people in our position can't
afford."
"Alex never learned that
lesson," Roman replied, his voice carrying a note of what sounded almost
like regret. "He still thinks the world is fair, that good things happen
to good people, that loyalty means something."
"It's almost sweet," Elena said,
though her tone suggested it was anything but. "In a completely delusional
way."
The video jumped again, this time to what
looked like a hotel room I didn't recognize. The timestamp showed yesterday
evening, just hours after I'd called Roman to share the news of the Takahashi
deal's completion.
Elena and Roman were in bed together,
champagne glasses in their hands, looking like they were celebrating something
momentous. Elena was wearing a silk robe I'd bought her in Paris, and Roman was
shirtless, both of them flushed with satisfaction that clearly had nothing to
do with alcohol.
"To the end of Alexander Kane,"
Elena said, raising her champagne glass in a toast.
"To the beginning of us," Roman
replied, clinking his glass against hers.
They drank, kissed, and then Elena said
something that stopped my heart completely.
"Do you think he knows yet?"
"About us, or about the money?"
Roman asked, running his fingers through Elena's hair with possessive
familiarity.
"Either. Both." Elena shrugged,
settling against Roman's chest. "Part of me almost wants him to find out.
I'm getting tired of pretending to be the devoted wife."
"What do you mean?"
Elena was quiet for a moment, staring at
the ceiling with an expression I'd never seen before, cold and calculating and
completely devoid of the warmth I'd associated with her for five years.
"I mean I'm tired of acting like I
care about his feelings," she said finally. "Do you know how
exhausting it is to pretend to miss someone? To fake excitement when they come
home? To respond to love letters and romantic gestures like they actually mean
something?"
She sat up, turning to face Roman
directly.
"Yesterday he sent me that photo from
Tokyo, the sunrise picture with the message about missing us both. And I had to
text back about missing him more, when honestly? I haven't missed Alex a single
day since we started this. If anything, I'm happier when he's gone."
Roman laughed, pulling Elena back down
beside him. "Well, after tomorrow, you'll never have to pretend again. The
divorce papers get served, the board meeting happens, and Alex Kane becomes a
cautionary tale about trusting the wrong people."
"What do you think he'll do?"
Elena asked, and for the first time, I heard something that might have been
concern in her voice. "When he realizes what we've done?"
Roman was quiet for a long moment,
considering the question with the same careful attention he'd once given to
business problems we'd solved together.
"Honestly?" he said finally.
"I think he'll break. Completely. Alex's entire identity is built on being
the man who provides for his family, who protects the people he loves. When he
realizes that his family was never real, that everything he's worked for is
gone..." Roman shrugged. "I don't think he'll recover from
that."
"And you're okay with that?"
Elena asked. "Destroying your own brother?"
"Elena, Alex stopped being my brother
the day he had more than me." Roman's voice carried a bitterness I'd never
heard before, a resentment that must have been building for years while I
thought we were partners. "Do you know what it's like living in someone's
shadow? Always being the little brother, the sidekick, the one who executes
Alex's vision instead of having his own?"
He sat up, reaching for the champagne
bottle to refill their glasses.
"I've spent ten years watching Alex
get credit for ideas I helped develop, watching him make decisions about our
company without consulting me, watching him play the generous big brother while
treating me like his employee instead of his partner."
"But he loves you," Elena said,
though she didn't sound like she thought that mattered.
"Love isn't enough," Roman
replied firmly. "Love doesn't pay for this hotel room, or your jewelry, or
the life we're going to build together. Alex's love comes with conditions, with
expectations, with the assumption that I'll always be grateful to be included
in his success story."
Roman stood up and walked to the hotel
room window, looking out at the Manhattan skyline that Alex had conquered and
Roman was about to inherit.
"Besides," he said without
turning around, "what kind of love is built on lies? Alex doesn't love the
real Elena, he loves the character you've been playing. And he doesn't love the
real me, he loves his idealized version of the grateful little brother who owes
him everything."
"So this is justice?" Elena
asked, joining Roman at the window.
"This is evolution," Roman
replied, putting his arm around her waist. "The strong survive, the weak
adapt or die. Alex was too trusting to survive in our world."
The video ended there, the screen going
black, leaving me alone with the sound of my own ragged breathing and the
complete destruction of everything I'd believed about the two people I'd loved
most in the world.
Marcus closed his laptop and sat back in
his chair, watching me with the careful attention of someone monitoring a
potential suicide risk.
"That's not all of it," he said
quietly. "There are hours more, going back months. But Alex, I think
you've seen enough for now."
I couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could
barely breathe.
Everything I'd believed about my life had
been a performance, carefully orchestrated by people who found my love pathetic
and my trust laughable. The teddy bear, the strawberries, the love notes, the
romantic gestures, all of it had been ammunition they'd used against me while
planning my destruction.
But worse than the theft, worse than the
lies, was the realization that I'd never known who Elena and Roman really were.
The people I'd loved were fictional characters, and the real people behind
those masks had found my devotion not just inconvenient, but genuinely
contemptible.
I'd spent five years married to a woman
who threw away the strawberries I ordered for her.
I'd spent ten years partnering with a
brother who resented every moment of our shared success.
And both of them had been counting the
days until they could be free of Alexander Kane and his pathetic romantic
delusions.
The man I'd been that morning was truly
dead now.
The question was: who would rise from his
ashes?