Chapter 2 Face to Face
Xiomara shrieked. It was not the refined sound Veyra expected from someone so polished. It was raw and loud and it cut through the cabin like a siren.
A flight attendant appeared between them before Veyra could lower her hand. The woman’s face was all professional calm, but her eyes were sharp. She placed herself squarely in front of Xiomara, blocking Veyra from view, and spoke in a low, urgent voice that Veyra could not quite hear.
Xiomara recovered quickly. She always recovered quickly. That was the type of woman she was. She pressed her hand to her cheek with deliberate drama, her fingers spread wide like she was holding her face together. When she looked at Veyra over the flight attendant’s shoulder, her expression was not pain. It was disgust. The look you give something you stepped in.
“You bitter old thing,” she said. Her voice carried. People were watching now. Heads turned in every row. “I understand now. Your husband has someone on the side, doesn’t he? That’s what this is about.”
She smiled when she said it. The smile was small and mean and perfectly shaped.
Veyra poured her drink on her.
The champagne went everywhere. It splashed across Xiomara’s white blouse, ran down her neck, dripped from her chin onto her lap. Xiomara gasped and jerked back, her hands fluttering uselessly at her chest. The flight attendant stepped aside to avoid the spray. A woman across the aisle made a sound of pure shock.
For a moment, Xiomara just sat there. Her hair was wet. Her blouse was ruined. The champagne stain from earlier had company now. She looked like something that had been caught in a storm.
Then the chief purser arrived.
He was tall and thin with silver hair and a face that had seen everything. His name was embroidered on his lapel in gold thread. He took in the scene with one sweep of his eyes: Xiomara dripping in her seat, the wet champagne glass in Veyra’s hand, the passengers pretending not to stare. His expression did not change. It was smoothly, professionally appalled, and somehow that was worse than if he had looked angry.
“Madam,” he said to Veyra. His voice was quiet. Authoritative. “I must inform you that Ms. Vell is a VIP guest on this flight. She is affiliated directly with Caspian Thorne, CEO of Thorne Technologies, one of our highest value corporate accounts.”
He said it like it was an indisputable fact. Like the name should mean something to her. She supposed it did.
“I am going to advise you, very firmly, to keep your distance from Ms. Vell for the remainder of the flight.”
Veyra did not argue. She sat back down.
Her hands were shaking. She put them in her lap and pressed them flat against her thighs. Her phone was in her bag. She pulled it out and turned off airplane mode.
She typed: Where are you right now?
The response came fast. A photo. His office desk. Half eaten takeaway box. His monitor on, showing a spreadsheet. The caption: Making money for my wife.
She stared at the word. Wife. He had written it like it meant something.
She typed another message. A question about the flight. Something about what time he was landing. She did not remember exactly what she wrote. He did not reply.
Because he was, at that moment, calling Xiomara.
Veyra heard it. Xiomara answered beside her, and Caspian’s voice came through the speaker. Veyra knew his voice. She had known it for seven years. It was warm and low and it was nothing like the way he had spoken to her in months. Months. Maybe longer. She had stopped counting.
He called Xiomara baby.
He said she should not let anyone upset her. He said whoever it was did not matter. He said he was transferring five hundred thousand to her account right now, just to make up for the turbulence she had endured. Turbulence. His word. He said it without irony. He promised her a villa. An evening that would make everything better.
Veyra gripped the armrest. Her knuckles went white.
She tried to remember the last time Caspian called her anything soft. She went back through the months in her mind, searching for it. A birthday. An anniversary. A night when he came home and looked at her like she was something he wanted. She could not find it. It was not there.
There had been a time after his transfer. That was when things changed. He was always exhausted. Always just about to feel better. She had been patient. She had told herself it was stress. That she loved him. That marriage went through seasons. She had believed that because she needed to believe it.
She understood now that it was not a season.
Her phone buzzed. Caspian.
He said he would take her to her favorite restaurant to make up for working through the holiday. The one with the noodles she liked. He said he was sorry he had been so busy. He added a small heart.
She read the message twice. She did not respond.
A flight attendant appeared at Xiomara’s seat. She was holding a velvet box. She handed it to Xiomara with a small bow. Xiomara opened it without looking away from Veyra. Inside was a necklace. Prada. Gold and mother of pearl. It caught the cabin light and threw it back in soft pieces.
Xiomara pulled a note from the box. She read it aloud, maybe without realizing she was doing it. Her voice was light.
“Be bold. Be you. I am always behind you.”
She looked at Veyra when she finished. Her smile was back. It was the smile of someone who had already won.
The chief purser returned. He stopped beside Veyra’s seat. In his hand was another velvet box. Smaller than the one he had given Xiomara. He opened it.
Inside was a diamond.
It was round and brilliant and it sat on a bed of black silk like a drop of frozen light. Veyra did not know diamonds, but she knew what six figures looked like. She had worked for money like that. She had saved it. She had given it to Caspian.
“Mr. Thorne sent this,” the chief purser said. His voice was carefully neutral. “With a request.”
She waited.
“He asks that you apologize to Ms. Vell.”
He added the rest almost as an aside. His voice dropped. Like he was doing her a favor.
“Mr. Thorne earns the equivalent of several such diamonds in a single day.”
Veyra looked at the diamond. She looked at it for a long time. The light moved inside it. She thought about three years of a cramped apartment. Skipped meals. Cheap face cream. Double shifts. She thought about her mother’s surgery. The money that was there and then was not. She thought about a Chanel clutch the color of dried blood.
She agreed to apologize.
She stood up. She walked the three steps to Xiomara’s seat. Xiomara looked up at her with that lazy, satisfied expression. Her hand was still pressed to her cheek. The pose was theatrical. She knew it.
“I want you to be slapped twice,” Xiomara said. “In return.”
Veyra said no.
She dropped the diamond on Xiomara’s tray table. It landed with a sound that was heavier than it should have been. A solid, final sound. It rolled once and stopped against the champagne glass.
Xiomara slapped her.
Her hand came fast and hard across Veyra’s face. Veyra’s head snapped to the side. Her cheek burned. Flight attendants converged again, three of them this time, their voices overlapping. Xiomara was already turning away, her hand reaching for the diamond.
Veyra slapped her back.
She did not think about it. She just did it. Her hand connected with the same cheek as before. The sound was clean and sharp. Xiomara’s head turned the other way. Her hair swung forward. She did not shriek this time. She just sat there, very still, her face red on both sides.
The rest of the flight passed in a blur. Veyra did not remember the landing. She remembered the wheels hitting the tarmac. She remembered standing in the aisle with her bag, her body moving while her mind stayed somewhere else. She was still processing the specific texture of humiliation. The way it sat under your skin. The way it made you feel like you were wearing someone else’s body.
She walked into the arrivals hall.
And then she saw them.
Xiomara had run to Caspian. Her face was arranged into something small and wounded. Her hand was pressed to her cheek. She was leaning into him like she needed him to hold her up. Caspian’s arms went around her with a speed and tenderness that Veyra recognized. She had not seen it directed at her in a very long time.
He was panicking. She could see it in the way his hands moved over Xiomara’s back, the way his head bent toward hers. He was more visibly afraid for Xiomara than he had been the night Veyra lost their child. That night, he had been calm and very controlled. He had held her and told her everything would be okay.
He was not calm now.
He was mid sentence. Something about dealing with whoever did this. His voice was hard. Protective. The voice of a man who would burn something down for the woman in his arms.
Veyra stepped forward.
“Hello, Mr. Thorne,” she said.