The key feels heavier than it should as I slide it into the lock.
It's just metal and teeth, a simple mechanism designed to grant access to spaces where you're wanted. Funny how objects can become symbols of everything you're about to lose—like holding a tiny golden reminder that someone once trusted you enough to let you in, right before you realize you were never meant to stay.
My hands are steady, which surprises me. The rest of me feels like it's vibrating at a frequency only betrayed women can detect.
The penthouse door swings open, and there he is.
Maverick is pacing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, phone clutched in his hand like a lifeline, silhouetted against the Manhattan skyline like some tortured hero in a cologne advertisement.
His hair is disheveled—actually disheveled, not the artfully tousled version he usually presents to the world. When he sees me, relief floods his face—genuine, overwhelming relief that softens every sharp angle I've memorized over these months. For one heartbeat, he looks at me like I'm the answer to every question he's ever asked.
Then he registers my expression, and the softness falters.
"Floris." He moves toward me, concern replacing relief with alarming speed. "Thank God. I've been calling you for an hour. Where have you been? I need to explain—"
"When were you going to tell me?" My voice comes out flat. Dead. Like someone removed all the color from my words and left only grayscale behind. "About the wedding. In three weeks. Were you planning to mention that, or was I supposed to read about it in the society pages while serving champagne to your guests?"
He exhales like I've punched him, running a hand through his hair in that gesture I've seen a hundred times—the one that means he's processing something he'd rather not face. "I just found out this morning. Harrison called me in, told me the timeline, and I came straight here. I've been trying to reach you since noon. Where were you?"
"Having tea." I laugh, and the sound is hollow enough to echo in this cavernous apartment with its ridiculous ceiling height and museum-quality art.
"With your fiancée. The real one. She was very informative, actually. Covered all the topics you somehow forgot to mention—wedding dates, venue preferences, how many children she's planning to have with you. Very thorough briefing. I should send her a thank-you note for doing your job."
His face darkens, jaw tightening with something that looks like fury—though whether it's directed at Priscilla or himself, I can't tell. "She knew before I did. Harrison must have told her first. He's orchestrating this entire thing like some demented puppeteer, and I—"
"That's not what matters right now." He reaches for me, and I step back like his touch might burn. Maybe it would. Maybe I'd let it, and that's exactly the problem.
"The heir clause, Maverick." The words taste like poison on my tongue. "Were you going to tell me about that too? Or was that another convenient detail you planned to reveal sometime between never and too late?"
The silence stretches between us like a chasm, vast and impossible to cross. I watch him struggle—watch the words form and dissolve, watch him search for an explanation that doesn't exist because there isn't one that could possibly make this better. His shoulders drop, and when he speaks, his voice is raw in a way I've never heard.
"I've always known," he admits, and each word sounds like it's being torn from somewhere deep inside him. "About the heir requirement. I knew from the beginning."
"From the beginning." I repeat it slowly, letting the betrayal sink into my bones like ice water.
"Before the arrangement. Before you kissed me. Before you traced my scars and made me think I was something more than a convenient distraction. You knew you'd need a baby with someone appropriate, and you just—what? Forgot to mention it while you were inside me?"
"I kept it from you because I didn't want to lose you." He steps toward me again, desperation cracking through his careful control. "Because I was figuring it out, trying to find a way around it. I thought if I could just have more time—"
"Figuring it out?" I cut him off, voice rising despite my best efforts to stay calm. "What exactly was there to figure out? The math seems pretty straightforward to me. You need a wife and an heir to keep your precious company. Priscilla provides both.”
My voice cracks embarrassingly, but I don’t care anymore. “So what was I supposed to be, Maverick? The warm body you visited between fertility appointments? The secret you kept in a separate drawer until it became inconvenient?"
"That's not—" He reaches for me again, and I back away until my shoulders hit the wall. "Floris, you have to understand. Everything I told you was true. What we have is real. I never meant for any of this to—"
"To what? To hurt me? To make me fall in love with you while you planned a future with someone else?" The words escape before I can stop them, raw and bleeding and far too honest for someone who prides herself on keeping things light. "You let me believe I had a chance. You let me hope, knowing the whole time that hope was built on sand."
"I was trying to protect you." His voice cracks on the last word.
"No." I shake my head, tears burning behind my eyes that I refuse to let fall. "You were protecting yourself. There's a difference, and I'm tired of pretending I can't see it."
His phone buzzes in his hand—loud, insistent, impossible to ignore. He glances at the screen, and I already know who it is before he speaks. Harrison. The puppet master himself, pulling strings from his mahogany throne, demanding attendance from his favorite chess piece.
Maverick silences it. The phone buzzes again immediately, more insistent this time, vibrating with the weight of expectations and obligations and everything that will always matter more than me.
"Go." My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else entirely. "Go plan your wedding. Go secure your inheritance. Go build your legacy with someone your grandfather actually approves of. I'm sure Priscilla has excellent genetic material for producing Finley heirs."
"Floris—" He says my name like it's breaking him, like those two syllables contain everything he can't say and everything I can't bear to hear.
"Just go, Maverick." I turn away, staring at the windows, at the skyline I'll never see from this angle again. "There's nothing left to figure out."
He hesitates at the door. I feel him there—feel his presence like a physical weight, waiting for me to turn around, to give him something to hold onto. My name hovers in the air between us, unspoken and devastating.
I don't look at him. I can't.
The door clicks shut, and the silence that follows is absolute.
I stand alone in his penthouse, surrounded by his things—the expensive art I never understood, the furniture that costs more than my annual salary, the carefully curated life I was never meant to be part of.
The evening light catches the crystal decanters on his bar, throwing rainbows across walls that have witnessed every moment of our impossible arrangement.
I was a guest here. A visitor. A pleasant distraction from the real life he was always going to return to.
The realization settles over me like a shroud, heavy and final. I never belonged here at all.