Elena Ashcombe had once been Elena Varga.
Before she married Julian, she worked for him.
Not as a secretary, as Caroline liked telling people.
Not as “the girl from the office,” as Henry called her when he was angry.
Elena had been Julian’s operations director for seven years.
She reorganised a company he had nearly expanded into bankruptcy, closed two disastrous property deals before they collapsed, negotiated with creditors and eventually became the person Julian called before making decisions he pretended were his own.
She was forty-eight when she married him.
Julian was sixty-eight.
The age difference gave his children all the vocabulary they needed.
Gold digger.
Opportunist.
Calculated.
Convenient.
Caroline once called her “the pension plan in heels” after too much champagne.
Elena had heard.
She never mentioned it.
For the next nine years, she attended birthdays to which nobody really wanted to invite her, Christmases where Caroline deliberately seated her away from Julian, and summer weekends during which Henry spoke to his father privately about “protecting the estate.”
Elena had learned something about wealthy families.
They could be extraordinarily rude while maintaining excellent table manners.
Julian usually ignored it.
That was one of the things Elena had never forgiven him for.
He would squeeze her hand under the table afterward and say:
“They’ll come around.”
They never did.
