Page 32 of Iridescent
Now his wife watches him with open adoration, and something twists inside me.
I can’t stop myself from imagining Xavier in his place, balancing a dark-haired, honey-eyed toddler on his arm.
Our toddler.
I force the thought away and focus on the simple sweetness of the moment. The little girl’s giggle cuts through the formal atmosphere like sunlight through glass.
“Lucien,” Alejandro calls, beckoning him over. “Come tell them about the Singapore deal.”
He gestures for him to join the cluster of guests, his chest swelling with pride. Lucien steps into the circle, and Alejandro rests a hand on his shoulder.
“My son just closed one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history,” he says, beaming with pride.
I see my husband’s expression turn cloudy. His smile slips, just a fraction, before he schools it back into place.
I know that look too well.
Lucien is everything the Navarro family ever wanted in a son—the pride of the family, the golden heir who stepped into Sereno, the Navarro family’s billion-dollar shipping and real estate empire, at twenty-three and never once looked out of place.
Xavier chose a different path. By the time we started dating, his “office”was a cramped room above a laundromat, furnished with a dying laptop and a couch that could swallow you whole if you leaned back too far. I used to bring him takeout after training and fall asleep to the sound of him fighting for a future no one was ever going to hand him—arguing with banks, chasing investors, and proving himself to men who heard his accent, saw his secondhand suit, and decided he did not belong in the room.
Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and find him still there, working, as if he stopped for even a second, everything he’d built might collapse.
But the part that always stayed with me was what happened after the wins.
He’d go quiet. His eyes would drift to his phone with this terrible hope, like some part of him still believed it might ring. Like maybe this time his father would call and say he was proud.
It never happened.
There was no safety net. No family investment. No hand reaching back for him. Just a man driving himself past exhaustion, trying to prove that walking away from his father’s world had not been a mistake.
Alejandro didn’t seem to remember he had a second son until Xavier made his first millions and the magazines started calling his firm a rising powerhouse.
Even now, the only time he seems to acknowledge my husband is in magazine profiles and business interviews, when Xavier’s success makes the family look good. Here, with no cameras watching, he barely looks at him.
I wish I had left him with a broken arm that day. He and Guinevere are living proof that parenthood is wasted on some people.
I tear my gaze away before the anger in my chest shows on my face.
Near one of the marble pillars, Xavier’s younger sister, Élise, stands with her back almost pressed to the stone.
She is dressed entirely in blush pink, from the satin bow pinned at the crown of her pale hair to the delicate tulle sleeves gathered around her wrists. The color should make her look soft. Sweet. Untouched by anything ugly.
Instead, it makes her look like a doll someone placed too close to the edgeof a shelf.
Her fingers worry the seam of her clutch, twisting and untwisting the fabric until I wonder how long it will take before she tears it open. She keeps her gaze fixed on the string quartet, but there is nothing interested about her expression. Her eyes move too quickly for that, darting from the musicians to the terrace doors, then toward Guinevere before dropping again.
My chest tightens.
She catches me looking and stills, panic flashing across her face before recognition softens it. After a moment, she gives me the smallest wave, barely more than a tremor of her fingers.
I smile gently and lift my glass in silent greeting.
Élise doesn’t smile back. Not fully. But some of the panic drains from her shoulders, and the sight makes me want to cross the room and pull her out of this place myself.
But knowing Guinevere, she would rather gouge out her own eyes than let her daughter anywhere near me.
Élise and I speak sometimes when she calls Xavier. Brief, careful conversations stolen through the receiver before Guinevere finds a reason to intervene.
