Chapter 9 - The Nursery
The sun had set by the time Ethan’s cab pulled up to the curb outside the limestone townhouse on East 74th Street.
It wasn't their old apartment. It was the ancestral Vance home—the townhouse Thomas Vance had bought in the nineties and where Grace had spent her childhood. Ethan hadn't lived here in three years; they had moved to Park Avenue because Ethan wanted something “more contemporary.”
The front door wasn't locked.
Ethan pushed it open, stepping into the high-ceilinged foyer. The house was silent, smelling faintly of lemon oil and fresh paint. On the second floor, a sliver of warm light cut across the dark hallway.
He walked up the grand staircase, his footsteps silent on the thick Persian runner.
The door to the back nursery—a room Ethan had never bothered to paint or furnish, leaving it as a storage room for old boxes—was open a few inches.
Grace was inside.
She was sitting in a low white rocking chair, her fingers moving rhythmically as she knitted a small blue cashmere blanket. The room had been completely transformed. Pale gray walls, a hand-carved crib, shelves lined with classic children’s books bound in leather.
She didn't look up when Ethan stopped in the doorway.
“You shouldn't be here, Ethan,” she said, her voice completely calm, devoid of the theatrical anger he had half-expected.
“I went to see Marcus Thorne,” Ethan said, his voice cracking slightly.
Grace’s knitting needles paused for half a second. Then she resumed her rhythm—clack, clack, clack. “Smart. I figured you would track him down eventually. It takes you a while to connect dots that aren't spelled out in a corporate memo, but you eventually get there.”
Ethan stepped into the room, his hands trembling at his sides. “You knew about the 2020 accounts before we even got married, didn't you? Not all of it... but you knew I was skimming.”
Grace stopped knitting. She placed the blanket gently in her lap and turned her head to look at him. Her expression was infinitely sad, yet utterly resolute.
“I found out three weeks before our wedding,” Grace said quietly.
Ethan stared at her, the room tilting slightly. “You... you knew? And you married me anyway?”
“My father loved this firm,” Grace said, her eyes glistening slightly in the warm lamplight, though she refused to let a single tear fall. “He believed you had talent, Ethan. He believed that if you had security, if you had a family, if you had someone who believed in you, your ambition would turn into loyalty. I gave you four years to prove him right.”
She stood up slowly, her hand supporting her lower back, her emerald maternity dress catching the light from the floor lamp.
“You didn't fail because you were tempted by Vanessa,” Grace said, stepping closer to him until he could smell the faint scent of lavender and rain on her skin. “You failed because you believe that love is just another transaction—something to be managed, manipulated, and traded when a better deal comes along.”
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, to offer an excuse, a defense, a promise, anything—
The front doorbell chimed downstairs.
May you like
Grace didn't blink. “That’ll be Declan. We have an investor dinner in Tribeca to finalize the international restructuring of the firm’s European assets.”
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