She wanted him here to witness her triumph, to serve as living proof that she had made the right choice in leaving him. And he had walked right into it, dragging his daughter along, subjecting Lily to the same judgment and pity that he had tried so hard to shield her from. Nathan stared at the ground, his vision blurring slightly, and let himself feel the full weight of his failure. He wasn't angry at Rachel, not really. She had made her choice years ago, and he had accepted it.
He wasn't even angry at Brandon, whose smugness was just the predictable behavior of a man who had never been tested. He was angry at himself for hoping, for trying, for believing that putting on a new suit and showing up with his head held high would somehow change the way the world saw him. It wouldn't. It never would. He was Nathan Reed, the secretary, the ex-husband, the single father who couldn't give his wife the life she wanted.
That was his story, and no amount of pretending would rewrite it. He sat there for what felt like hours, though it was probably only minutes, listening to the muffled sounds of the reception drifting through the garden. Music, laughter, the clink of glasses raised in celebration. Inside that ballroom, life was going on without him. People were dancing and drinking and making toasts to the happy couple.
And out here, in the dark, he was exactly what everyone expected him to be. Alone. Nathan made a decision. He would go back inside, find Lily, and take her home. There was no point in staying any longer.
No dignity left to salvage. No reason to subject either of them to more of this. He would apologize to his daughter for bringing her to a place where she had to watch her father be diminished. He would tuck her into bed and read her a story, and pretend that none of this had happened. And tomorrow, he would wake up and go back to work, and continue being the person he had always been.
Reliable, responsible, invisible. He stood up from the bench, brushing off his jacket, preparing to walk back into that ballroom as the man everyone expected him to be. A failure. A footnote. Someone to be pitied and forgotten.
And then he heard the sound of a car pulling up to the hotel entrance. Nathan turned toward the sound, expecting nothing. Perhaps a late-arriving guest, perhaps a caterer's delivery van. What he saw instead made him freeze where he stood. A black sedan had pulled up to the hotel's main entrance, sleek and expensive, the kind of car that belonged to someone who didn't need to impress anyone.
The driver stepped out and opened the rear passenger door, and a woman emerged into the glow of the entrance lights. She was wearing a black evening gown, simple but elegant, the kind of dress that whispered wealth rather than shouting it. Her hair was swept back from her face, and she moved with the quiet confidence of someone who had walked into boardrooms full of hostile executives and walked out with everything she wanted. Victoria Ashford stood at the entrance of the Grandview Hotel, scanning the grounds with sharp, deliberate eyes. Nathan watched from his hidden spot in the garden, his heart pounding against his ribs, unable to move or speak or even breathe.