Chapter 3: The Corridors of Power
I didn't wait for Julian to reach out his hand or for security to make a scene. Pushing down hard on the arms of the gold chair, I stood up, smoothing the front of the gold silk slip dress with trembling fingers. The artificial weight of the sofa pillow shifted awkwardly against my thigh, reminding me of the sheer absurdity of my situation. Without a single word, I turned and walked toward the heavy velvet drapes masking the service exit on the side of the ballroom.
"Clara! Where the hell do you think you're going?" Julian's voice hissed behind me, sharp and low. Heavy footsteps pounded against the floorboards as he caught up, grabbing my bare elbow with a grip that bruised. He spun me around just as we cleared the threshold into the dimly lit, vaulted service corridor behind the ballroom.
The contrast was jarring. Gone were the crystal chandeliers and the scent of champagne; here, the walls were bare concrete, humming with the low vibration of the building's industrial HVAC system. A solitary fluorescent tube flickered overhead, casting a harsh, clinical light over Julian's contorted features.
"Let go of me, Julian," I said, my voice barely a whisper, though it steadied with every second away from the crowd. I pulled my arm from his grasp, rubbing the red imprint his fingers had left on my skin.
"Do you have any idea what you've just done?" Julian whispered fiercely, leaning in close so his face was inches from mine. His chest heaved beneath the black tuxedo jacket. "The endowment board is out there. The matching grant from the Henderson Foundation depends entirely on my image as a stable, traditional family man. If they find out the pregnancy is a fake—if they find out you faked it—I'm ruined. My firm, the directorship, everything I've spent ten years building—gone."
"Your firm?" I echoed, a bitter, humourless laugh escaping my lips. "Is that all you care about? Not the fact that I've been drowning in your expectations for two years? Not the fact that you made it clear a barren wife was useless to your social circle?"
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Julian didn't answer immediately. He pulled his smartphone from his breast pocket, his thumb swiping frantically across the screen as notifications began to ping in rapid succession. The blue light illuminated the panic in his eyes. He wasn't listening to my reasons; he was calculating the damage control.
"We need to get to the private VIP suite upstairs before the reporters back out of the ballroom," Julian said, his voice dropping into a cold, transactional register. "We lock the door, we deny everything, and we figure out how much money it's going to take to buy that kid's parents into silence."
