Part 10
“Yes,” she said.
Damien blinked.
“I liked it,” Elara continued. “I’m not proud of that, but I won’t let you use my honesty to make us equal.”
His mouth tightened.
“I didn’t mean for you to fall.”
“You meant to move me with your hands because words weren’t working.”
“You were blocking the door.”
“I was walking through it.”
“You had been provoking Celia for twenty minutes.”
“I asked why she was wearing earrings I bought her.”
Damien looked away.
Elara had not known until the sentence left her that she still wanted an explanation for that.
He rubbed his jaw. “She didn’t know where they came from.”
“You gave them to her?”
“She saw them in my office.”
“And?”
“She liked them.”
The simplicity of it was almost obscene.
“They were in my desk because the clasp needed repair,” Elara said.
“I know.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
Outside the conference room, an assistant pushed a cart of bottled water past Naomi. The wheels rattled over the threshold. For a few seconds, no one spoke.
Elara looked at Damien’s face and found no stranger there. That was the horror of it. He was still the man who warmed her side of the bed with a heating pad when she had the flu. Still the man who could not tolerate cilantro and pretended it was an allergy. Still the man who had taken her jewelry from a drawer and given it to his lover because she liked it.
“Why?” Elara asked.
Damien’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why what?”
“Any of it.”
He gave a tired laugh. “You want one answer.”
“I want yours.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“My father spent my entire life promising that one day I would be trusted,” he said. “Every promotion came with supervision. Every gift came with conditions. Every success became evidence that he had trained me correctly. Every mistake proved I was exactly who he feared.”
“That explains Gideon.”
“It explains the company.”
“It doesn’t explain Celia.”
“No.”
“Or me.”
His gaze returned to her.
“With you, everything became another test I was failing,” he said. “The marriage. The baby. That house. You were good at being what he respected.”
“I barely tolerated him.”
“He respected that too.”
“That is not my fault.”
“I know.”
The answer was quiet and immediate. It removed the defense she had prepared.
Damien pressed his fingers against the table. “Celia didn’t know my father. She didn’t look at me and see the person I was supposed to become.”
“She saw the person you paid her to protect.”
“That came later.”
Elara looked toward Naomi.
“Did you love her?”
Damien’s expression closed.
The delay answered more than a quick denial would have.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was the first uncertain thing she had heard him admit in years.
She hated him less for several seconds, which felt like a betrayal of herself.
Then she remembered the floor.
“You need to arrange a time to collect your belongings,” she said. “Through Naomi.”
“Elara—”
“The five minutes are over.”
His face hardened again. The familiar person returned because anger was easier for him than exposure.
“You’ll make mistakes,” he said.
“I already have.”
“You have no idea what’s coming.”
“No,” she said. “But neither do you.”
The investigation began badly.
Employees leaked internal messages. A lender requested additional information. A trade publication reported that Whitmore Holdings faced a “succession crisis complicated by domestic allegations.” Orders in the appliance division slowed. Two senior executives threatened to resign if the board did not clarify who controlled long-term strategy.
Elara spent ten hours a day in meetings and another three awake at night, reading documents she understood only after searching half their terms.
Her mother stayed at the mansion and complained about the kitchen’s coffee maker.
“It has a touchscreen,” Claire said. “No machine that makes brown water needs a touchscreen.”
Martha showed her how to use it.
Claire ignored the instructions and continued making coffee in a small plastic cone she bought at a grocery store.
The ordinary irritation helped. It gave Elara something harmless to resist.
At her obstetric appointments, her blood pressure remained slightly elevated. Dr. Romero warned her that stress was not a moral failure but did have physical consequences. Elara was instructed to reduce her schedule.
She nodded and attended a four-hour finance committee meeting that afternoon.
Two days later, she experienced contractions during a call with the forensic accountants.
They stopped after rest and hydration, but the hospital kept her for observation.
Claire sat beside the bed peeling an orange with unnecessary violence.
“You are not indispensable,” she said.
“I’m the controlling beneficiary.”
“That is a legal condition, not a personality.”
“The company is unstable.”
“The company existed before you woke up rich.”
“And Damien was running it into the ground.”
“Then perhaps a pregnant woman with a bruised pelvis should not personally catch it.”
Elara looked toward the fetal monitor.
“You think I’m doing this to punish him.”
“I think you don’t know why you’re doing it because you haven’t been quiet long enough to hear yourself.”
“That sounded like something from a mug.”
“I teach chemistry. We have worse mugs.”
Elara smiled despite her irritation.
Claire separated the orange into sections and handed her one.
“I liked the phone message,” Elara said.
“I would have had it printed on a billboard.”
“Mom.”
“I’m not a good person before lunch.”
“It was nine at night.”
“Then I have no defense.”
Elara ate the orange section. Juice ran over her thumb.
Claire handed her a napkin. “Enjoying one moment does not require you to organize your life around it.”
“I don’t know what my life is.”
“Most people don’t. They just have smaller houses in which to be confused.”
May you like
The independent investigation produced its first report three weeks after the gala.
Some of Damien’s decisions were defensible. The Ohio appliance plant was losing money faster than the board had been told, but the losses came largely from outdated equipment and a failed product launch approved before Damien became CEO. His proposed sale of the division had attracted a legitimate buyer.
