Chapter 2 — The Cocoa Trap (2)

I stood there for a long time. Then, before I could think better of it, I did the thing I always did when the world got too strange: I called my mother.

She answered on the third ring. "Scarlett. I've been trying to reach you for a week. Your father is furious. The Rosses are—"

"Mom." I kept my voice level. "I'm not calling to be lectured. I'm calling to ask you one question, and I need you to answer it honestly."

A pause. "What question?"

"Did you know?" I asked. "About Lena and Elliot. Before the wedding. Did you know?"

The silence on the line was longer than it should have been. Then my mother said, in the clipped voice she used when she was lying: "Of course I didn't know, Scarlett. How could you even ask—"

"Because I need to know who I'm dealing with," I said. "In my whole life, you've never once asked me what I wanted. You've only ever told me what I should want. And I've just spent three months building a wedding I never wanted, for a man you picked, with a future you planned. So I'm asking you, Mom — straight. Was the wedding ever about me?"

The silence stretched. Then my mother said, very quietly: "The wedding was about the family."

I closed my eyes. "That's what I thought."

"Scarlett—"

"Goodbye, Mom." I hung up.

I stood in the studio, in the quiet, and I looked at the folder — the atelier, the budget, the future a stranger had offered me. And I felt the crack in my armor widen into a decision.

"Broken wedding, better life," I said, tasting the words. "Let's find out if that's true."

I opened the folder and started reading.

Zoe found me an hour later, still holding the cup, still staring at the folder.

"Told you he was suspicious," she said.

"He brought me cocoa," I said.

"He brought you cocoa. That's how the trap works, bestie." She took the cup, sniffed it, handed it back. "First it's cocoa. Then it's an atelier. Then it's 'let me watch you build your empire.' And then you look up one day and he's in every corner of your life."

"Zoe."

"Yes?"

"I think I'm in trouble."

"You've been in trouble since the cathedral." Zoe sat down across from me. "The question is whether this is the good kind."

"What's the good kind?"

"The kind where the cocoa is real." She looked at me, and her eyes were serious. "Read the folder, Scarlett. Get a lawyer. I'll look at the fine print myself. And if it's clean — if it's actually clean — then take the atelier. Build the empire. And if the suspicious man turns out to be a trap, we'll burn him down like we burned down the wedding."

I looked at the folder. I looked at the cocoa.

"Broken wedding, better life," I said.

"Exactly." Zoe grinned. "Now drink your cocoa. We've got a contract to dissect."