Georgia's POV
The Pasadena Civic Auditorium carves itself against the night sky like a cathedral built to worship wealth.
I sit in our private box, another treasure in Josiah's collection. Catalogued, displayed, and ultimately abandoned like all beautiful things that cease to fascinate.
I wear Chanel and silence with surgical precision. Both are expected. Both are written in invisible ink on the contract I signed with my soul when I married him.
You knew what you were getting into. Don't pretend you didn't.
His cologne invades my space. Sandalwood and bergamot. A bespoke scent for a man who exists everywhere and nowhere in my life simultaneously.
"A fine turnout," he says, not to me but through me, his eyes dissecting the room's power dynamics.
"Yes, quite impressive," I answer.
My words dissolve between us like sugar in acid.
Tonight is Madama Butterfly. How appropriate. An American who uses a geisha, then discards her for a proper wife.
I crush the program between my fingers, feeling the glossy paper surrender. The only violence I'm permitted in my gilded cage.
When the lights dim, I cease to exist for him.
In darkness, I become what I've always been. Beautiful, silent, disposable.
The tragedy unfolding on stage is a mirror I can't escape. Cio-Cio San waiting for a man who will never return, her delusion wrapped in dignity until it suffocates her.
I know that feeling. The slow death of hope, one heartbeat at a time.
This is your life now. You chose it.
The soprano's voice fills the auditorium. Piercing, vulnerable, doomed.
Each note unravels something within me, something I've carefully buried beneath designer dresses and practiced smiles. Something raw and ugly and true.
Halfway through the first act, I feel it. That crawling sensation of being watched.
Not by Josiah, whose interest in me has always been ownership. No, this is different.
This is seeing.
I resist looking, until intermission makes resistance impossible.
And there he is.
Lord Carlisle Brocandale.
Our eyes lock across the theater like lightning finding its target. The recognition is instant, visceral. He sees me. Not the carefully curated porcelain version I present to the world, but the woman beneath.
He doesn't see you. He sees what he wants, just like everyone else.
He tilts his head. A gesture so subtle it might be imagined.
I return it before my survival instinct can intervene.
"I need to stretch my legs," Josiah announces, standing with casual arrogance.
"I spotted Senator Jenkins. Won't be long."
I nod, not bothering to mask my irrelevance.
As he leaves, I stare at the program, trying to ignore Carlisle's relentless gaze.
When I finally look up again, his box is empty.
The second act cuts deeper.
Cio-Cio San's desperate certainty that "one fine day" her husband will return brings tears I can't afford to shed. Josiah considers emotion a weakness. Something to be controlled, like an unruly child or a business rival.
When the heroine finally faces her abandonment and chooses death over living as a ghost of herself, I feel an ugly kinship with her.
The applause that follows seems obscene. Celebrating beautiful agony from a safe distance.
Is that what we've become? Entertainment for the comfortable?
"A bit melodramatic for my taste," Josiah says as we rise, straightening his tie.
"But it's important to support the arts. The foundation board will be pleased we attended."
I say nothing. I don't need to.
I'm his perfect ornament. Beautiful, silent, dead inside like a butterfly pinned behind glass.
But as we move toward the exit, I catch a glimpse of storm-dark eyes watching me from the shadows.
My pulse quickens beneath the weight of my husband's hand on my back. His grip possessive, warning.
I feel myself split in two. The docile wife and the woman awakening to dangerous possibility.
Some storms were worth weathering.
Others were worth creating yourself.