Chapter 6
I did not want to destroy Wolfe Meridian.
Thousands of people worked there.
Thousands more depended on its projects.
I did not want construction workers losing jobs because I hated my ex-husband.
I did not want pension funds absorbing losses.
I wanted one thing.
The truth placed in a room where Damian could no longer order it to leave.
My phone vibrated.
A text from an unknown number.
Clara, this is Raymond at the building.
Your box is downstairs.
Mr.
Wolfe instructed me that it must be collected before 5.
I stared at it.
Eight years of marriage.
One box.
Mara watched my face.
“You can still stop.”
I thought about Damian in the courthouse.
Beg.
Do it now.
I thought about the office door clicking shut eleven months earlier.
Leave Harbor Crown to the adults.
Then I remembered something he had said at a dinner six months ago.
One of the investors had asked whether Harbor Crown’s title chain was fully settled before the next funding release.
Damian had smiled across the table.
“There is one owner, one title chain, and one collateral package.”
One owner.
I looked at Mara.
“Send it.”
She pressed the screen.
Nothing exploded.
No alarm sounded.
No dramatic music played.
A progress bar crossed the tablet.
Delivered.
Mara exhaled.
I stared out at the rain.
Somewhere in Manhattan, probably within minutes, a lawyer would open an email.
They would read the first attachment.
Then the second.
Then they would compare two parcel numbers.
And somebody would ask the question Damian had spent almost a year making sure no one asked.
Why does the biggest project in Wolfe Meridian’s history have two owners on one piece of collateral?
My phone rang twelve minutes later.
Damian.
I let it ring.
He called again.
Then again.
On the fourth call, I answered.
For three seconds, there was only breathing.
Then Damian said my name.
Not Clara.
Not sweetheart.
Not some cold little nickname.
My full name.
“Clara Bennett.”
I looked at Mara.
She was watching me.
“What did you do?”
For the first time in eight years, Damian Wolfe sounded afraid.
Chapter 2: The First Question - DailyFeed
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Chapter 2: The First Question
I had imagined that moment so many times that the reality felt almost quiet.
No screaming.
No shattered glass.
No crowd watching justice arrive.
Just Damian’s voice through a phone speaker and the soft sweep of windshield wipers across rain.