Chương 8
Aaron turned.
“I asked a question.”
“And I am telling her not to answer it.”
His temper finally surfaced.
“This is my company.”
Ruth’s voice remained calm.
“Not today.”
He shoved his chair back again.
This time he walked toward the door.
Two security employees were waiting outside.
Aaron stopped.
He looked at them.
Then at Ruth.
“You called security?”
“I called corporate security.”
“For me.”
“For everyone.”
Aaron stood in the doorway for several seconds.
The security men did not touch him.
That made it worse.
There was no physical drama he could resist.
No villain he could overpower.
Only procedure.
Only consequences.
He stepped back inside.
“I need to speak to my wife.”
Ruth looked at me.
“That is Alyssa’s decision.”
Aaron’s eyes met mine.
“Privately.”
Every instinct told me not to.
Then another part of me, the older part, the one that had once known his coffee order before I knew my own, wanted one final look at whatever truth he still believed belonged between us.
I nodded.
“Five minutes.”
Marcus spoke from the monitor.
“Not about company evidence.”
“I know.”
Ruth pointed toward a smaller conference room across the hall.
“Door stays visible.”
Aaron’s mouth tightened.
“Of course it does.”
We crossed the corridor.
People tried not to stare.
Most failed.
Inside the smaller room, there was a round table, four chairs, and a bowl of wrapped mints nobody ever ate.
Aaron shut the door.
Not hard.
That surprised me.
For a moment, he simply stood there.
Then he loosened his tie.
His hands were shaking.
“You planned this.”
“No.”
“You had lawyers ready.”
“I had lawyers protecting my family’s interests.”
“You knew the company was vulnerable.”
“I knew compliance notices were being ignored.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I did.”
“Not like this.”
“What would have counted?”
He looked at me.
“Making me understand.”
I stared at him.
The words were so revealing that I almost missed their cruelty.
“You needed me to make you understand.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
“I had a thousand things happening.”
“So did I.”
“You were not running the company.”
“No.”
I sat down.
“I was only keeping parts of it alive.”
He looked at me sharply.
I continued.
“You remember the bridge financing in year two?”
“Yes.”
“You remember who introduced you to Bellweather Capital?”
“Your father.”
“No.”
He frowned.
“Then who?”
“Me.”
His face changed slightly.
“You told me your father made the call.”
“I told you my family office made the call.”
“You never said you did.”
“You never asked.”
He stared at the table.
I almost felt cruel.
Then I remembered the cabin.
Remember your place.
He looked up.
“What do you want?”
The question hurt more than it should have.
Four years of marriage.
Billions of dollars.
A secretary crying in another room.
And finally, negotiation.
“What do you think I want?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“That makes two of us.”
He sat across from me.
His voice dropped.
“Do you want me gone from the company?”
“I want the truth.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
He leaned forward.
“The Mercer structure was supposed to be temporary.”
“Why Mercer?”
“Because they had access.”
“To what?”
“Private credit.”
“Then why hide the relationship?”
He looked away.
My stomach tightened.
“Aaron.”
“Because the board would have slowed it down.”
“So you bypassed them.”
“We were going to lose the acquisition.”
“Then lose it.”
“You don’t understand.”
I laughed softly.
He looked offended.
“No,” I said.
“I understand perfectly.”
“You don’t.”
“You wanted the deal badly enough to gamble with assets you did not own.”
“It was not a gamble.”
“Then why are we here?”
His mouth tightened.
He stood and went to the window.
Below us, the jet was still on the tarmac.
Ground crew had removed the luggage.
The sight of it made the morning feel like something that had happened to someone else.
Aaron spoke without turning.
“The acquisition mattered.”
“To the company?”
“Yes.”
“To you?”
He was silent.
I waited.
Finally, he said, “Both.”
That was at least honest.
“What were you afraid would happen if you lost it?”
He turned.
“Everyone would know we weren’t invincible.”
I studied him.
There it was.
Not greed.
Not exactly.
Fear.
The company had become so large that weakness itself felt like failure to him.
“You risked everything to avoid looking weak.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You think your family never does that?”
“They do.”
That answer caught him off guard.
“My father has made terrible decisions for pride.”
“And you still defend him.”
“No.”
“I’ve watched you.”
“You watched me protect the company from his mistakes.”
Aaron stared at me.
He looked exhausted suddenly.
Older.
Less like the man from magazine covers.
“I didn’t sleep with Jasmine.”
I said nothing.
His expression tightened.
“I didn’t.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know what this looks like.”
“Yes.”
“She flirted.”
The words disgusted me more than a confession might have.
“And you enjoyed it.”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He gave a small shrug.
It was pathetic and human.
“She admired me.”
“I admired you.”
“Not anymore.”
“No.”
The word came easily.
He flinched.
I hated that I noticed.
He sat again.
“I liked being around someone who didn’t know everything I had gotten wrong.”
I looked at him.
“That is almost an honest sentence.”
He gave a humorless smile.
“Almost?”
“You still made her responsible for what you enjoyed.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“Fine.”
He looked at the table.
“I liked that she looked at me the way you used to.”
Something in my chest ached.
Not because I wanted him.
Because once, I had.
Once, he had been a man eating cold noodles over a laptop, asking if I thought anybody would ever take him seriously.
May you like
I had looked at him then like the future was already his.
Maybe that was part of the problem.
