Chapter 2

The Calloway family ran most of their legitimate operations out of a building on State Street—sixteen floors, marble lobby, the kind of address that made city officials return calls promptly.

Ryan's older brother, Garrett, ran the day-to-day. He was methodical, humorless, and deeply suspicious of me in the particular way that people are suspicious of things they don't control.

Ryan floated. He had a title—Director of External Relations—which meant he went to parties, made introductions, and occasionally closed deals that Garrett's people had already spent months building.

He was good at the party part.

I had worked in that building for two years after we married—quietly, behind the scenes, managing the financial records that couldn't be entrusted to outside accountants. I had a gift for numbers, for patterns, for seeing where things didn't add up.

Ryan thought it was cute. Garrett tolerated it because I was useful. Margaret Calloway, Ryan's mother, pretended I didn't exist.

I stopped going in about six months ago. No one asked me why.

The morning after I signed the divorce papers, I went back.

I dressed carefully. Black blazer, dark trousers, heels that made the right sound on marble. I hadn't worn these clothes in months. They still fit.

The lobby receptionist looked up when I walked in, visibly uncertain whether to greet me or call someone.

I smiled at her and took the elevator.

……

The conference room on the fourteenth floor had glass walls.

I could see Lexi before I opened the door.

She was standing at the head of the table, holding a pale pink box tied with ribbon, offering chocolates to each of the men seated around it. She was wearing a white dress—impractical, deliberate—and she moved through the room like she'd been doing this for years.

Some of Ryan's men accepted the chocolates. A few looked uncomfortable. One of them—Marco, who had known me since I was nineteen—met my eyes through the glass and looked immediately at the floor.

I pushed open the door.

The room shifted.

The men who knew me stood. That happened automatically, like a reflex—a remnant of the years when I had been Mrs. Calloway in a way that actually meant something.

Lexi turned.

For just a second, something moved across her face. Then she reset—and what replaced it was worse than hostility.

It was pity.

"Sophia." She tilted her head. The ribbon on her chocolate box fluttered. "I wasn't sure you'd be in today. Ryan mentioned you've been... keeping to yourself lately."

She held out the box.

"It's my birthday. Ryan's taking everyone to dinner tonight—company tab. You should come."

I looked at the box.

Then at her wrist. A Cartier bracelet, rose gold, the one she'd photographed three weeks ago with the caption unexpected gifts hit different. Ryan had expensed it under client entertainment.

I didn't take the chocolate.

"My husband," I said, clearly, so that everyone in the room could hear, "is throwing a birthday dinner for his mistress on the company account."

The room went very still.

Lexi's smile curdled.

"Excuse me?" Her voice climbed. "I am not his mistress. There is nothing going on between us. He mentors me. He believes in my potential. How dare you walk in here and—"

"Lexi."

I stepped toward her.

One step. Measured.

She stopped talking.

"Three weeks ago," I said, "you texted Ryan at 2 a.m. and told him your cramps were unbearable and you had no one. He drove to your apartment, made you ginger tea, and sat with you until 4 a.m."

Her face went white.

"He has signed off on more life-or-death contracts than you've had exams," I continued. "And he spent those two hours rubbing your stomach with the same hands."

Someone at the table made a sound that wasn't quite a cough.

"That's—that's not—he was just being kind—"

"And the apartment on Commonwealth Avenue." I let that land. "The one under Calloway Holdings LLC. The one you've been living in rent-free for eight months."

"That was a business arrangement—"

"And the bracelet." I nodded at her wrist. "Cartier, rose gold, retail forty-two hundred. Expensed under client entertainment. I know, because I reviewed those accounts for two years." I paused. "I approved some of them."

The silence in the room was absolute.

Lexi's eyes were bright with tears now—real ones, or something close enough to real. Her lips pressed together. She looked young. She was young.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said, quieter now. Shakier. "I like him. I'm not ashamed of that. And whatever you think you know about us—"

"I know everything about you," I said.

Not unkindly. Just as fact.

"I know you grew up in Newton. I know your father left when you were twelve. I know you've been telling people you come from money because the alternative is harder to say." I kept my voice level. "I'm not your enemy, Lexi. But I need you to understand something."

I looked at the bracelet one more time.

"Everything in this room—including that bracelet, including that apartment, including every dinner and gift and 2 a.m. rescue—belongs to the Calloway estate. And as his wife, for exactly thirty more days, I have full authority over every asset in this building."

I let that breathe.

"So when Ryan tells you he's giving you things," I said, "make sure you understand: he's not giving you anything that was ever really his to give."

……

The door opened.

Ryan walked in.

He'd caught enough to know. His jaw was tight, that specific tension I recognized from a hundred arguments—the look he got when he felt he was being outmaneuvered in public.

"Erika—Sophia." He crossed to me, hand on my shoulder, voice low and placating. "Lexi closed the Whitmore deal last week. The dinner's a team thing. You're overthinking this."

His hand on my shoulder felt like a stranger's.

"She's leaving in a few days," he murmured, close to my ear. "Think of it as a farewell. Do me this one favor."

One favor.

After eight months of this. After the apartment, the bracelet, the 2 a.m. calls, the birthday texts, the forgotten anniversaries.

After he'd handed me divorce papers and called them just for show.

He wanted a favor.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I turned and walked out.