He Chose His Secret Family So I Destroyed His World Chapter 02

He Chose His Secret Family So I Destroyed His World Chapter 02

The Novels Starts From Here

Chapter 1

I messaged my brother, Gideon: “Do you know where Damon is?”

Then I copied the identical question over to my best friend, Odette.

Both answers surfaced on my screen almost at the same second.

My brother, the lawyer: Sis, Damon’s up in New Hampshire for a charity foundation meeting. He told us.

My best friend, the therapist: Sabine, Damon drove out to New Hampshire for a meeting. Stop projecting your anxiety onto everyone around you.

The two stories lined up, word for word, as though they’d rehearsed the lie together beforehand.

A dry laugh slipped out of me as I opened the location app on my phone. Damon’s dot was drifting slowly through Greenwich, Connecticut.

That “foundation” he was supposedly sitting in on was a fiction I’d planted for him a week earlier.

All I’d wanted was to confirm one thing — whether my fiancé of seven years, my own brother, and my best friend had truly banded together to make a fool of me.

Now I knew.

I called Damon.

“Sabine? What’s wrong, baby?” He sounded hurried.

“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know something blew up at the firm, so I probably won’t make it out this weekend,” I said, keeping my voice level.

I could hear the relief in his answer. “That’s okay. Focus on your work. I’ll come see you once the meeting wraps up.”

Right before he ended the call, I caught it clearly — a baby crying somewhere behind him, and then a woman’s soft voice hushing it.

That voice belonged to Seraphina, the “ex-wife” Damon had always sworn was long gone from his life.

The line went dead.

I didn’t waste a second. I booked an Uber and pulled up the tracking app. The AirTag I’d tucked into his Gieves & Hawkes garment bag a few days back was pulsing on the map.

The signal came to rest at a private yacht club on the Greenwich waterfront.

I paid the driver and stood outside the club, next to a bed of white roses, looking in through the soaring floor-to-ceiling windows.

Inside, a lively baptism luncheon was in full swing. The guests were flawlessly dressed, and I knew half their faces from Boston and Greenwich society.

At the heart of the crowd stood Seraphina. She cradled a newborn swaddled in white, her smile an easy, unbothered mask.

A brilliant diamond necklace lay at her throat. I recognized it instantly. Last month, Damon had taken me to Cartier to choose it, claiming it was a birthday gift for his mother.

I kept sweeping the room, and soon I caught sight of something even more grotesque.

My own brother, Gideon, was smoothing the cashmere shawl that had slipped off Seraphina’s shoulder, his touch tender and practiced.

And my best friend, Odette, hovered near the entrance, welcoming the arriving guests with a hostess’s well-worn smile.

Then Damon appeared.

To a burst of cheers, he crossed to Seraphina, lifted the baby from her arms with ease, and leaned down to kiss her on the lips.

Applause broke out all around them.

In that single instant, it all became clear. The godparents at this baptism were my brother and my best friend. They were guarding Damon’s new family with another woman. And my seven-year engagement had been nothing more than a laughable fig leaf draped over their flawless lie.

My phone buzzed. A fresh email slid down the screen.

It was the final decision on the Annual Award from the Historic Preservation Society — the one I’d been holding my breath for.

I hadn’t won it.

At the very bottom of the message ran a line of fine print: Due to an anonymous report raising concerns about your professional ethics, the panel, after careful deliberation, has decided to revoke your finalist status.

Their handiwork.

The humiliation and the raw sting of betrayal rose in me at once, and I laughed.

Fine.

It was time to say goodbye to every last piece of it.

I turned to go when a voice, dripping sweetness, called after me.

Seraphina had spotted me. She hurried out, wearing a perfect expression of surprise, as if she’d only just realized I was standing there.

“Miss Fenwick? Did you come all this way for our baby’s baptism luncheon?” 

Chapter 2

She seized my arm, her nails biting into my skin, a nauseatingly warm smile fixed on her face as she towed me into the celebration.

“Come on, let me introduce you around.” Seraphina’s voice was sickly sweet, as though she were genuinely ushering in a guest of honor who’d turned up fashionably late.

The chatter and laughter in the banquet hall died the instant we crossed the threshold.

Every head swiveled toward us.

Seraphina steered me over to Gideon and Odette.

“This is Gideon, one of my dearest friends. And this is his wife, Odette — a truly gifted therapist. The two of you haven’t met, I take it?”

Gideon’s face went rigid. He wouldn’t look at me, and his voice came out dry. “Hello, Miss Fenwick.”

Odette produced a polished, professional smile, but her eyes stayed frozen. Both of them regarded me as if I were a total stranger.

Seraphina looked delighted. She drew me on toward Damon.

“And this is my husband. He’s —”

I cut her short.

“Damon Crane, private equity partner at Halcyon Capital.”

I hadn’t raised my voice, yet it carried through the sudden hush.

Seraphina went still, then blinked with theatrical confusion, her gaze flicking between Damon and me. “You two know each other?”

Damon fixed me with a stare, warning flaring in his eyes.

I held his look and finished, biting off each word.

“Because he’s my fiancé. We’ve been together seven years, and we’ve been planning our wedding.”

I paused, letting my eyes travel over the room, settling on faces that were either stunned or savoring the spectacle far too openly.

“The Back Bay townhouse we own together had its restoration featured in Architectural Digest last month. I’m sure some of you saw the spread.”

A collective gasp went through the crowd.

Seraphina’s face drained of color.

But only for a heartbeat. She gathered herself, even summoning a smile.

“Fiancé? Miss Fenwick, I think you’re confused. Damon and I were never divorced. We were only separated for a little while. And now we’re back together.”

She pronounced back together with pointed precision.

Damon panicked. He didn’t so much as glance my way — he simply spun to Seraphina in a rush.

“Seraphina, sweetheart, let me explain —”

In that moment, the last flicker of warmth inside me went out.

I was the one who’d been betrayed.

And still, I wasn’t the first person he moved to comfort.

I smiled. And then I began to speak, unspooling every secret that had once belonged to the two of us alone — the ones I’d assumed I would carry to my grave.

“He has a three-inch scar on the right side of his back, just beneath his shoulder blade. He got it playing hockey in college.”

“In his study, he keeps a model of a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. Serial number E-0815. Everyone assumes that car was blue. Only I know his was a custom red.”

I stared at Damon, my voice wavering a little.

“So you’re the woman he’s been hiding from me for seven years.”

“Sabine, enough!”

All three of them shouted it in the same breath.

Damon’s face was flushed a deep, blotchy red.

Gideon and Odette let the act drop, their eyes brimming with accusation, as though I were the one wrecking everything.

Odette moved closer and dropped her voice into that condescending therapist register of hers.

“Sabine, you’re emotionally unstable. You need help.”

I looked at the three of them.

“You did this, and now you’re too much of a coward to own it?” I turned on Seraphina. “You knew he had a fiancée, and you got involved with him anyway. You’re the one who destroyed our engagement!”

The words had barely cleared my lips before two hulking security guards in club uniforms appeared behind me.

One of them spoke, polite but immovable. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’re disrupting a private event. I need you to leave.”

They took hold of my arms and started hauling me toward the door.

I fought them, my heels dragging across the polished marble with a harsh, screeching sound.

No one came to my aid.

Gideon looked away. Odette stood with her arms folded, watching coldly. Damon held a shaking, sobbing Seraphina, his back turned to me.

Just as I was pushed through the banquet hall doors, a woman’s sharp voice rang out from the crowd, thick with scorn.

“Wake up.”

“You’re the one who got thrown away, not Seraphina.”