Chapter 2
The gala ended early for the Ashfords.
Guests remained upstairs drinking champagne beneath strings of winter lights, but the family retreated to a private conference suite two floors below.
Alessandra sat at one end of the table.
Gavin, Vanessa, Sybil, and Ethan sat at the other.
Ethan held an ice pack against his cheek.
Nobody mentioned the punch.
Not yet.
Gavin began badly.
“Vanessa and I knew each other before you and I got serious.”
Alessandra stared at him.
“How serious?”
“One weekend.”
Vanessa looked away.
“Seven years ago,” Gavin continued. “Then she moved to Boston. We lost touch.”
“And Milo?”
Gavin hesitated.
“Was born about nine months later.”
There it was.
Not certainty.
Possibility.
Alessandra leaned back.
“When did you find out?”
“Three months ago.”
Vanessa corrected him.
“Four.”
Gavin closed his eyes briefly.
Alessandra noticed.
“How did you find out?”
Sybil folded her hands over her pearls.
“I found Vanessa.”
“You?”
“I heard from someone that she had a child the right age.”
“You tracked down one of my husband’s old girlfriends?”
“She wasn’t merely a girlfriend.”
Vanessa flinched at the judgment in Sybil’s tone.
Alessandra looked between them.
“And somehow this became a reason to empty Tobin’s bedroom?”
Sybil’s mouth tightened.
“That suite was Gavin’s childhood room before the renovations. If Milo is his first son—”
“Tobin is his son.”
“No one said otherwise.”
“You just threw his clothes into a trunk.”
Gavin rubbed his forehead.
“Mom took it too far.”
Alessandra looked at him.
“You helped her pack.”
Silence.
Tobin’s words had already removed that escape.
Gavin finally nodded.
“I thought moving his things would force us to have the conversation.”
“You needed my three-year-old crying on a gala floor to start a conversation?”
“No.”
“But you did it.”
Gavin’s face changed.
Shame, perhaps.
Or fear.
It no longer mattered enough.
Alessandra asked the question that had been sitting beneath everything else.
“Are you sleeping with Vanessa now?”
Vanessa looked at Gavin.
That was answer enough.
“How long?”
Gavin’s voice dropped.
“Eleven months.”
Alessandra stared at him.
Three months ago, according to him, he discovered Milo might be his son.
But the affair had restarted eight months before that.
“So Milo didn’t bring you back together.”
Gavin said nothing.
Vanessa’s fingers closed around one of her rings.
Alessandra stood.
“You were already cheating on me.”
“Alessandra—”
“And then somebody conveniently discovered her son might be yours.”
Sybil’s chair shifted.
“You’re twisting this.”
“No. I’m finally separating the dates.”
She looked at Vanessa.
“Has there been a DNA test?”
Vanessa glanced at Sybil.
Only for a second.
It was enough.
“Yes,” Sybil said.
May you like
Alessandra turned toward her.
“I didn’t ask you.”
