“His career,” he said, “is about to be the least of his problems.”
Mark dropped whatever was left of the charming husband act and let the rest of himself show.
Fine.
I’d never seen it so clearly before. The coldness underneath the polish. The impatience. The belief that explanation was for people beneath him and that eventually, with enough pressure, everyone would return to the roles he preferred.
“Yes,” he said flatly. “I used it. Because I handled it. Because I know how to grow capital and protect long-term value. Claire doesn’t even like dealing with numbers.”
I stared at him.
The hospital room went fuzzy around the edges. I could hear my pulse in my ears. There was a world where that sentence would have made me defend myself, explain, apologize for misunderstanding. There was a version of me—last week’s version, maybe yesterday’s—who would have rushed to calm things down.
But I had a newborn daughter asleep on my chest and an unpaid hospital bill on my tray table and my grandfather sitting two feet away looking like something inside him had cracked open.
My husband had just admitted to stealing my life in front of witnesses.
“Pack a bag,” my grandfather said to me.
I looked at him.
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