Chapter 27
I exhaled.
"Good."
I meant it.
I wanted fairness.
Not a favor.
Not revenge disguised as procedure.
I wanted Preston judged according to the truth he had spent years trying to bury.
Gideon glanced at my gown.
"Do you regret coming?"
I looked down at the silk.
Then toward the dark reflection in the balcony glass.
I could see the outline of my scars.
I could see my bare shoulders.
I could see a woman who had entered a room full of powerful people and refused to shrink.
"No," I answered.
"Not even a little."
The equity review concluded several weeks later.
Preston did not receive the partnership stake he had expected.
The committee's findings were clear.
His management contributions had value, but the record did not support the level of individual strategic credit on which his proposed grant depended.
The firm corrected the attribution of several major projects and reassigned responsibility for the portfolio I had developed.
Preston challenged the findings.
He argued.
He insisted his leadership had been misunderstood.
But the reports existed.
The original drafts existed.
The project histories existed.
And unlike our marriage, the review couldn't be controlled by raising his voice until I stopped speaking.
Eventually, his position at Ashford Capital ended.
Not because Gideon had waved a hand at the gala.
Not because I had made an emotional accusation.
Because, after a formal review, Preston could no longer support the professional image he had used to demand an ownership stake.
Cassidy's conduct at the gala also came under internal review.
Her attempt to impose a humiliating dress code had been inappropriate, and her personal relationship with a senior executive had compromised her judgment.
She left her communications role not long afterward.
I didn't celebrate either departure.
I didn't need to.
Their choices had finally become their own responsibility.
My divorce took longer.
There were legal documents, financial disclosures, difficult conversations, and the strange grief of dismantling a life I had once believed would last forever.
Preston tried several times to speak with me privately.
Sometimes he was angry.
Sometimes he apologized.
Once, he told me he'd been under enormous pressure.
Another time, he said the fire had changed both of us.
That part was true.
But pressure didn't explain years of contempt.
And trauma didn't excuse cruelty.
I told him that through my attorney.
I would be fair about the property we had built together.