Chapter 3

I pointed at Winona.

For an instant, her gaze flicked toward the unfinished documents. Then her face crumpled.

“Ms. Maxwell, how could you?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them away.

“Because Mr. Delgado gave me flowers? Because he appreciates my work?”

She looked at Philip, then back at me.

“You gave me a deadline you knew I couldn't meet. Now I understand why.”

I waited.

“You couldn't finish the software for tomorrow's bid. You needed someone to blame when it failed.”

Her voice broke.

“So you chose me. I'm just an intern. I can't defend myself against someone in your position.”

Philip's jaw tightened.

“Was that the plan?” she whispered. “Ruin my career so you could keep finding reasons to be close to him?”

The woman beside her nodded as though a difficult puzzle had finally been solved.

“Mr. Delgado's been asking the technical division to fix that system for a year.”

“Exactly. Now suddenly it's ready, but the intern ruined everything by not printing it fast enough?”

Someone gave a disbelieving laugh.

“She must think we're idiots.”

“It wouldn't have mattered what was on those pages. All she needed was a missed deadline.”

I looked around at them.

Not one had asked to examine the report. Not one understood enough of the work to judge it.

They didn't need to.

Philip had decided who was innocent, and they were supplying the reasons.

His gaze settled on me.

“You planned this.”

“No.”

“You volunteered to take over the technical side. You shut yourself in that lab for weeks, barely spoke to anyone, and this is what you were doing?”

I thought of the missed calls I'd returned after midnight. The progress reports his assistant acknowledged because he never did.

“You have my updates.”

He shoved me.

My heel caught on the scattered paper. I fell hard, one hand striking the floor beneath me.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Philip stepped closer.

“Apologize to her. Right now. Or don't come back.”

I sat among the pages he'd torn apart.

When he'd first opened this office, there had been six of us. No assistants. No dedicated support staff. Just borrowed money, secondhand equipment, and Philip's promise that the Delgado family would finally take him seriously.

I'd worked my own job during the day and come here afterward.

I answered calls. Prepared invoices. Fixed the network. Printed and assembled hundreds of pages before meetings with men who wouldn't tolerate being kept waiting.

An hour had always been enough when he was asking me.

For Winona, it was cruelty.

I got to my feet.

Philip watched me brush paper from my trousers. He seemed to expect the familiar surrender, the quiet apology that let him save face.

Instead, I unclipped my badge.

It landed beside his shoe.

“Then I won't be back.”

His expression changed.

“Cora.”

“I quit.”

I walked to my desk and pulled an empty archive box from beneath it. My mug went in first. Then my notebook, a framed photograph turned facedown, and the few personal things I'd accumulated during all those late nights.

Behind me, someone whispered that I was being dramatic.

I opened a document on my computer, sent it to the printer, and waited.

Nobody complained about the printer this time.

When the pages emerged, I signed where I needed to and carried them to Philip.

“Sign these. I'll send you an address for the originals.”

He took them impatiently.

Then he saw the heading.

Marital Settlement Agreement.

Below it, in plain type, were our names.

His eyes moved over the first page. The anger left his face so abruptly that, for a second, he looked almost unfamiliar.

I picked up my box and turned.

His hand closed around my arm.

“Wait.”

A few employees began to clap.

They thought he'd accepted my resignation.

“Finally.”

“Good luck finding somewhere else that puts up with this.”

Winona wasn't looking at the papers.

She was looking at his hand.

Her expression tightened, and she hurried over, placing her fingers around his wrist.

“Mr. Delgado?”

He didn't answer.

“Are you bringing her back to apologize?”

She gave him an explanation he could use in front of everyone.

“If resigning is her way of accepting responsibility, I suppose that's enough. I don't want to make this harder than it needs to be.”

Philip glanced at the watching employees.

I saw the decision happen.

Whatever had frightened him mattered less, in that moment, than admitting she'd misunderstood.

“Of course,” he said.

Winona relaxed.

Philip's grip tightened.

“She doesn't get to cause this much damage and walk away.”

He pulled me back. My box struck his chest, and he forced me against the wall beside the executive corridor.

The men stationed at its entrance watched him.

Neither intervened.

He put both hands on my shoulders.

“Tomorrow is the Eastern Pacific bid.”

“I know.”

“If I win it, every family on this coast will have to do business through a system we control. Do you understand what that means?”

I'd explained it to him months ago.

“The old men won't be able to shut me out anymore,” he said. “Everything I've worked for is right there.”

His fingers dug into my shoulders.

“And you're choosing now to leave?”

I studied his face.

He looked almost desperate.

Perhaps he was afraid of losing the technology. Perhaps seeing our marriage reduced to a few printed pages had finally disturbed him.

Once, I would have searched for the answer. I would have clung to the smallest sign that he still wanted me.

Now I only wanted him to move.

“You've just told everyone I'm incompetent,” I said. “You think I sabotaged the bid and bullied your girlfriend.”

His eyes flicked toward Winona.

“So why do you want me to stay?”

“Don't twist this.”

“I'm using your words.”

“This is about misconduct. You don't get to abandon your responsibilities because you've been called out.”

He raised his voice slightly, making sure the others could hear.

“And leave my personal life out of it.”

His personal life.

Seven years of marriage, and apparently I had no place in that conversation.

Then he bent toward my ear.

“Is that what this is really about?” he whispered. “I've been busy. We haven't had much time in bed, and now you're punishing me?”

I went still.

“You're really going to tear our lives apart over flowers?”

I shook my head.

There were too many answers. The cut on my cheek. His hands on my shoulders. The woman standing behind him, waiting for him to finish humiliating me.

I was too tired to give him any of them.

“Let go.”

“Cora.”

I shoved him away.

The box slipped against my forearm. I tried to catch it, but the bottom tilted and everything spilled.

My mug broke against the floor.

Pens rolled beneath a desk. My notebook fell open.

Before I could bend down, Winona reached for the small photograph album lying on top of the scattered things.

“Give me that.”

She opened it.

Her eyes moved across the first page, then the next. A smile formed slowly at the corner of her mouth.

“Oh.”

She turned the album toward the others.

“So that's why you're in such a hurry to leave.”

I stepped forward, but she moved behind Philip.

“Things weren't working out with Mr. Delgado, so you've found someone else?”

The nearest employee leaned in.

Train tickets were tucked beside the photographs, their dates carefully written underneath. Faces and station names flashed past as Winona turned the pages, showing strangers pieces of a life they knew nothing about.

One woman laughed.

“Look at all those trips.”

Another shook her head.

“She couldn't get so much as a bouquet out of Mr. Delgado, so she's already trying her luck elsewhere.”

“That's a lot of effort for a man who probably doesn't want her either.”

Winona held the album just beyond my reach.

Around her, the laughter grew.

“God, Cora. How many trains did you catch chasing this one?”