Chương 10
“Is that why you asked to meet?”
“I am warning you.”
“No. You are trying to make my failure useful to you.”
“Your failure is already useful to every plaintiff’s lawyer in New York.”
He was right.
Khloe felt the baby move, a slow pressure beneath her ribs.
Julian’s eyes followed her hand.
His expression softened, and for a second she saw grief.
Not for the child. For the life he imagined should still belong to him.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
The question sounded almost honest.
Khloe considered lying.
“Sometimes,” she said.
He looked surprised.
“Not all the time?”
“No one is happy all the time.”
“You look happy in the photographs.”
“Photographs are very brief.”
He lowered his gaze.
“I could have been better,” he said.
It was not an apology. It was the outline of one, drawn from a safe distance.
“Yes,” Khloe said. “You could have.”
After the meeting, Priya walked with her to the elevator.
“He presented a legitimate risk,” Priya said. “A sudden company failure could complicate recovery.”
“I know.”
“He also threatened you.”
“I know.”
“Those facts can exist together.”
The elevator arrived.
Khloe stepped inside and pressed the lobby button.
“That may be the worst thing about facts,” she said.
Dalia called that evening.
Khloe considered not answering. Then she remembered the look on Dalia’s face when Julian asked whether the baby was his.
They met the next morning at a small hotel café where public figures went to be unseen by pretending to be ordinary. Dalia wore large sunglasses, a beige coat, and no jeweled headband. Without pageant makeup, faint freckles crossed her nose.
She removed the sunglasses but kept looking toward the entrance.
“I have twenty minutes.”
“I did not ask for the meeting.”
“I know.”
A waiter brought tea. Dalia added honey, changed her mind, and asked for coffee instead.
“Julian says you’re trying to ruin him because he left you,” she said.
Khloe waited.
Dalia looked irritated. “You could deny it.”
“I am tired of answering accusations designed by him.”
“He says you knew about the settlement delays.”
“I knew some transfers were late. I did not know where the money went.”
“He has emails.”
“So do I.”
Dalia stirred coffee she had not tasted.
“I handled some of the charitable partnerships,” she said. “Not finance. Public campaigns. Videos, donor events, my foundation’s name.”
“What foundation?”
Dalia’s mouth tightened. “The Fontaine Futures Initiative.”
Khloe had seen the logo. Scholarships for girls entering public-service careers. The foundation existed mainly through galas and sponsored posts, but it had distributed real money.
“Julian offered to process our donations for free,” Dalia continued. “He said the platform would give us better reporting.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
Before their engagement.
Before Julian publicly admitted the relationship had begun.
Dalia saw Khloe calculate.
“We weren’t together then,” she said quickly. “Not officially.”
Khloe did not respond.
“He advised me,” Dalia said. “We became close later.”
“All right.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“It does not matter what I believe.”
“It matters to me.”
The answer held more vulnerability than Khloe expected.
Dalia opened her handbag and removed a tablet.
“Two weeks ago, Julian’s team asked me to record a video saying our foundation had received every dollar processed through Duval Nexus without delay.”
“Had you?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you record it?”
“Yes.”
Khloe looked at her.
Dalia flushed. “They said it was a routine confidence statement. I read what they wrote.”
“Was it released?”
“Not yet.”
She opened an email chain.
The request came from Julian’s communications director. Attached talking points stated that all Fontaine Futures funds had been settled according to contract. A later message from an internal finance employee warned that two transfers remained under reconciliation and advised against the statement.
Julian replied to the chain himself.
Dalia’s credibility is the asset. Finance can resolve the language later.
Khloe read it again.
“He called me an asset,” Dalia said.
“People use that word in business.”
“Not about someone they plan to marry.”
Khloe handed back the tablet.
“What do you want me to do with this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then do not give it to me.”
Dalia stared.
“If you provide evidence,” Khloe said, “do it through counsel. Understand what becomes public, what may be subpoenaed, and what it means for your foundation. Do not hand me a screenshot because you’re angry at him this morning.”
“I am not angry.”
Khloe raised an eyebrow.
Dalia looked down at her ring.
“I left the apartment,” she said. “I’m at this hotel. He keeps calling. Sometimes he apologizes. Then he says I am abandoning him during a crisis.”
“Both can be true.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“It is still true.”
Dalia’s eyes filled but she did not cry.
“He told me you hated public life. He said you were cold with people and jealous of women who enjoyed attention. He said he chose me because I was generous.”
Khloe felt an old humiliation return.
“I did hate some of it,” she said. “I was jealous sometimes. Not of your crown or your photographs. Of how easily he admired you in public while treating my competence as furniture.”
Dalia looked at her.
Khloe continued. “You do not need me to tell you he lied about everything. He probably did admire you. He also used what people admired about you.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It may be.”
Dalia picked up the engagement ring between two fingers and twisted it.
“I thought you would enjoy this.”
“I have had ugly moments.”
“But not now?”
Khloe looked toward the café window. Outside, a hotel employee struggled to fit a luggage cart through the revolving door. A child in a red coat pressed both palms against the glass and laughed.
“Not as much as I expected,” she said.
May you like
Dalia met with Priya that afternoon.
She turned over the email chain, the unreleased video, and access records from her foundation’s Duval Nexus account. The records revealed that three scholarship donations had been moved through the East River reserve.
