Chapter 2 - Our Beautiful Life Had Started Depending on Mia
Ryan took Mia upstairs.
He helped her wash frosting from her hair while Vanessa argued through the locked bathroom door.
“You’re frightening her more than we did.”
Ryan ignored her.
When Mia finally stopped crying, he packed enough clothes for several days and drove her to his older sister Allison’s house in Roswell.
He did not take Vanessa.
By midnight, the beautiful life Ryan had spent years financing looked completely different.
The Buckhead mansion was heavily mortgaged.
Ryan’s commercial landscaping company paid most household expenses, but Vanessa’s online business had become significant too.
Her social accounts once focused on interiors, fashion, and entertaining.
Then videos featuring Mia began outperforming everything else.
A Christmas baking disaster.
A school-morning argument.
Mia crying after losing a board game.
Vanessa called them “real motherhood moments.”
Ryan had disliked some of them.
He had still let them stay online.
That bothered him now.
Allison sat across from him at her kitchen island.
“How much money is involved?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re married to her.”
“I know what the company reports on our taxes. I don’t know what each video makes.”
Allison stared at him.
“That’s not the same thing.”
No.
It wasn’t.
Ryan had convinced himself Vanessa’s business belonged to Vanessa.
As long as Mia seemed happy, he rarely asked questions.
The next morning, Mia’s pediatrician confirmed she had no physical injuries.
Ryan explained exactly what he had witnessed.
The doctor recommended a child therapist and told him not to repeatedly question Mia about what Vanessa had said.
Let her speak naturally.
Do not rehearse her.
Do not make her responsible for proving anything.
Ryan followed the advice.
That afternoon, while they drove back to Allison’s house, Mia asked from the back seat, “Am I in trouble because the video got ruined?”
Ryan looked at her in the mirror.
“No.”
“Aunt Nicole said it had to look real.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“What had to look real?”
Mia looked down.
“The crying.”
Ryan felt cold.
Then she added something else.
May you like
“Vanessa said brands don’t pay when I look fake.”
That was the first time Ryan understood his daughter had learned the language of sponsorships before she had learned multiplication.
