Spencer was in the middle of the room. Paisley, clinging to his arm, kissed his cheek in front of everyone, and he didn’t pull away.
A young businessman approached me. “I’ve never seen her before. What family is she from?” he murmured to his friend.
I didn’t answer them. The man followed my gaze to Spencer and smiled.
“Ah, Mr. Conway,” the man said to me. “They say he’ll soon announce something with Paisley Daley. Although, according to rumors, he has a secret wife, a woman who can’t be shown in public.”
I looked at him with a cold smile. “Is that what they say?” I asked.
Then I walked toward my husband, and people made way for no apparent reason. Spencer raised his head and froze.
“Mr. Conway,” I said, raising my glass. “What a coincidence.”
His face paled instantly. Paisley opened her eyes in anger.
“What are you doing here?” Paisley hissed. “You didn’t get an invitation.”
I didn’t look at her at all. “Spencer, is this how you greet your wife?” I asked.
The entire room fell silent at my words. He grabbed my arm roughly and dragged me towards a pillar.
“You’re crazy,” Spencer hissed. “Leave in three minutes or I’ll drag you out myself.”
Paisley arrived behind him with a glass of red wine. “You don’t understand, Phoebe. He’s mine,” she said, and she threw the wine against my dress.
I grabbed her wrist before she could enjoy it. The glass fell onto the marble and shattered loudly. Spencer shouted my name in front of everyone.
“Excuse me,” Spencer said afterward, forcing a smile to the crowd. “My wife isn’t quite right in the head. I’ll send her home.”
Then I saw the door to the ballroom open behind him. A gray-haired man walked in with four bodyguards and three of the country’s most powerful businessmen behind him.
My father had arrived, and nobody was prepared to hear what he was going to say.
PART 3
The silence that fell over the room was not normal. It wasn’t that awkward silence that appears when someone breaks a glass, but a heavy silence that makes even the powerful lower their gaze.
Raymond Harrell walked through the guests, his back straight, his face cold, his eyes fixed on me. As he passed, men who had been speaking arrogantly just moments before stepped aside, and women who had looked at me with pity stopped smiling.
Spencer reacted first. He adjusted his jacket and walked toward him with a businesslike smile.
“Mr. Harrell, what an honor to have you here,” Spencer said. “If you had let us know, I would have prepared everything.”
My father walked past him as if he did not exist. Spencer’s hand hung suspended in mid-air, his smile froze, and for the first time, I saw him feel invisible.
Raymond stopped in front of me. For a second, the tycoon disappeared, and only my father remained. His eyes were red, his lips trembled slightly, and his hand rested on my shoulder with a tenderness that disarmed me.
“Phoebe,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I’m here.”
Tears filled my eyes. Three years of silence, pride, loneliness, and humiliation came together in those words, because it was all I had needed to hear for far too long.
Then my father turned toward the living room. The tenderness vanished from his face, replaced by a coldness that made more than one person recoil.
“Let me give a presentation that, it seems, many here need to hear,” my father announced. He took my hand and raised it slightly. “This is Phoebe Harrell. My only daughter.”
The room erupted in whispers. “Raymond Harrell’s daughter?” someone muttered. “Spencer’s secret wife?” another gasped.
Paisley let out a sharp, desperate laugh. “That’s a lie!” she screamed. “I investigated Phoebe. She doesn’t have any important family. She’s an ordinary woman, a kept woman!”
Nobody dared to laugh with her.
One of the men who was following my father, Mr. Douglas Cooke, who happened to be the president of a national bank, stepped forward. “I met Miss Phoebe years ago at a private meeting in Geneva,” he said coldly. “She was wearing that same ruby necklace. If you say she’s lying, Miss Daley, then you’re calling me a liar too.”
Paisley turned white, realizing her own relative was defending me. Another businessman, owner of a hotel chain, looked at Spencer with contempt.
“Boy, you had gold in your house and you treated it like dust,” the older man said. “That’s not a lack of information. That’s a lack of class.”
Spencer swallowed hard. I could see his mind racing, and his face no longer showed anger, but desperate calculation.
My last name had just changed his world. The deal his group had been negotiating with the Harrell Group for months depended on my father, and it was a multi-billion-dollar alliance that he needed to pay off debts.
Then he did what he had never done before. “Dad,” he said, looking at Raymond.
I felt nauseous. In three years, he never asked about my father, and now he dared to call him Dad.
Raymond raised a hand to stop him. “Mr. Conway, don’t change the agreement,” my father said. “I didn’t come here to acknowledge you as my son-in-law.”
Spencer turned pale. “Mr. Harrell, I didn’t know,” he stammered.
“Didn’t you know what?” my father interrupted. “That my daughter had a last name? That she had dignity? Or that a woman who is humiliated in private can have a family capable of defending her in public?”
Spencer opened his mouth, but found no answer. Paisley, trembling with rage, pointed at me.
“If you really were the daughter of such a powerful man, why did you put up with it for three years?” Paisley yelled. “Why did you wear old clothes?”
I looked around the living room, and then I looked at Spencer and Paisley.
“Because I thought loving meant disappearing a little so the other person could shine,” I said firmly. “Because I thought if I didn’t flaunt my last name, Spencer would love me for who I am. But today I understood something, because whoever needs you to fade away to feel important never loved you.”
Nobody said anything. My father squeezed my hand tightly.
