"You need to see this."
Caspian materializes outside Harrison and Associates like he's been waiting for hours, which—knowing him—he probably has.
His hand closes around my elbow before I can pretend I haven't seen him, steering me toward the alcove between the building entrance and a pretentious coffee shop that charges nine dollars for a latte.
"I'm late for a meeting. "Whatever this is can wait until—"
"It can't."
He pulls out his phone, and something in his expression makes my protest die in my throat.
"The night you called me. The night Genevieve answered."
My stomach clenches at the name.
"I told you, I know what I heard. I'm not going to stand here and let you gaslight me into believing I imagined the whole thing."
"I'm not asking you to believe anything."
He scrolls through his phone with fingers that tremble slightly.
"I'm asking you to look at the evidence and draw your own conclusions, because I've spent ten months replaying that conversation in my head and I finally understand what happened."
He turns the screen toward me, then reaches into his jacket and pulls out a second phone.
"Two phones," he says. "Work and personal. The number you called that night was my personal cell."
He holds up the first phone—the one with the messages.
"This is my work line. These are the texts I sent from it the night everything fell apart."
Text messages. Dozens of them, time-stamped and dated, sent to "Miranda - Assistant" on the exact night my world shattered.
8:47 PM: Left phone at the Whitmore gala. Track it through Find My.
9:15 PM: Any luck? Need it back before the keynote.
10:32 PM: Miranda, this is urgent. I have calls coming in that I can't answer.
11:58 PM: Found it. Anonymous return to coat check.
"I wasn't with her."
His voice is raw, stripped of all the careful control I've come to expect.
"I was at a charity event on the Upper East Side, giving a speech about corporate philanthropy. By the time I got it back, whoever answered your call was long gone."
The ground shifts beneath my feet.
"That doesn't prove anything. You could have fabricated these messages, paid someone to create a paper trail after the fact. The Voss family has enough money to rewrite history."
"I could have." He doesn't flinch from the accusation. "But I didn't. Call Miranda yourself if you don't believe me, she'll confirm every word. Or check the gala's guest list, the photographs, the dozens of witnesses who saw me on stage that night."
"Why would someone steal your phone just to answer one call from your wife?"
"Because they wanted you to hear exactly what you heard, believe exactly what you believed." His jaw tightens. "Someone orchestrated this, Elara. Someone who knew our marriage was fragile enough that one well-placed lie could shatter it completely."
I want to argue. I want to cling to the anger that's kept me warm for ten months, the certainty that my husband betrayed me and I was justified in running.
But the dates match. The timestamps align with a night I've replayed in my memory a thousand times.
"Even if you weren't with her that night," I say slowly, "that doesn't erase everything else. You disappeared into your work while I was drowning. You let your mother treat me like defective merchandise at that dinner. You chose your empire over your wife at every single opportunity."
"I know."
"You weren't there when I needed you most. When I was bleeding out on a bathroom floor, calling your name over and over, you sent me a text message like I was a minor inconvenience in your schedule."
The memory surfaces unbidden, sharp as broken glass.
"I will never be able to take that back." His voice breaks on the words. "I will never be able to undo the fact that I wasn't there when you needed me, that I let you go through the worst moment of your life alone because I was too consumed with work to answer my phone."
"Then why should I believe anything has changed?"
"Because I'm here now."
He steps closer, and I don't step back.
"Because I've spent ten months tearing apart every assumption I ever made about what matters, and the only conclusion I keep reaching is that none of it means anything without you."
His hand rises toward my face, hovers without touching.
"I never stopped loving you, Elara. I just forgot how to show it. I buried myself in work because it was easier than facing what we'd lost, and by the time I surfaced, you were gone."
His phone shatters the moment with a shrill ring that makes us both flinch.
"Ignore it," I say, but he's already checking the screen, and I watch the color drain from his face.
"I can't. This is the board's emergency line, they only use it when—"
He answers, and I hear fragments of a panicked voice on the other end.
"When did this happen? Which documents? All of them?"
He ends the call looking like someone just gutted him.
"What is it?"
"Someone leaked the acquisition plans to our competitors. Every detail, every projection, every strategic advantage we've been building for eighteen months. It's all over the financial news."
"Who would have access to that kind of information?"
"Only board members. And apparently one of them decided to burn our entire strategy to the ground. Margaret Wilson. She's the source."
The name lands like a punch to the sternum.
Margaret Wilson, who has been on the Voss Global board for fifteen years and never once stepped out of line.
"Why would Margaret do this? She has nothing to gain from destroying the company she helped build."
"That's exactly what I intend to find out."
He's already moving toward the street, hailing a cab with sharp gestures.
"I have to handle this. But Elara—" He turns back, and his eyes are fierce. "We're not finished. This conversation, everything I just told you, none of it changes because someone decided to firebomb my company."
The cab swallows him whole, and I'm left standing on the sidewalk with my thoughts spinning like debris in a hurricane.
That night, after Milo is asleep and the apartment has settled into darkness, I find an envelope on the kitchen counter. Junk mail, something about refinancing.
I flip it over and stare at the blank space.
Who benefits from destroying Caspian?
The pen moves almost without my permission, letters forming in my own handwriting like a confession I didn't know I was making.
Rowena.
Her name sits there, stark and damning, and I realize I'm not surprised at all.