Zane ran after me the moment I walked away. I heard his footsteps behind me, quick and uneven, and before I could reach the lobby, his hand closed around my arm and stopped me. His grip was tighter than usual, almost desperate, but I didn't turn around. I was too exhausted to argue with him, too numb to care whether he wanted to explain himself anymore.
“Just let me drive you.”
I looked down at his hand around my arm before slowly pulling my gaze back to the doors ahead. I didn't have the strength to fight him over something as insignificant as a car ride, so I let him lead me outside and toward the sedan parked near the entrance.
The moment I opened the passenger door, the faint scent of Jovi's perfume reached me.
It was light and floral, the same perfume she had worn for years, the kind of scent that had once seemed so familiar that I barely noticed it. Now it filled the car with an intimacy I didn't want to feel. It clung to the leather seats, to the air between us, to the space where I had spent countless evenings beside my husband without ever realizing how much of another woman had already occupied our marriage.
Zane started the engine, and the sound seemed far too loud in the silence.
For the first few minutes, neither of us spoke. The city moved around us while I stared through the window, watching storefronts and traffic lights pass without really seeing any of them. I could still feel the weight of everything that had happened pressing against my chest, and I knew that if I looked at Zane, I would either start crying again or say something I could never take back.
“So... he's your new boss?” Zane finally asked.
I turned my eyes toward him. His hands remained fixed on the steering wheel, his attention carefully focused on the road as though he had been searching for something ordinary to say and had settled on the first thing that came to mind.
“Yes.”
He nodded, but the conversation died there. Another block passed before he spoke again.
“Nerissa, I'm so sorry.” His voice cracked slightly, and I watched his fingers tighten around the steering wheel.
“This is all my fault. All of it. But please... don't blame Jovi. She's fragile. She was scared of him. You saw how he is.”
A breath escaped me, somewhere between disbelief and exhaustion. I turned toward the window again and watched the city blur beyond the glass. “It always comes back to her, doesn't it?”
Zane glanced at me.
“How fragile she is. What she needs. What she's afraid of.” My voice remained quiet, but the bitterness underneath it was impossible to hide. “Even now, after I found you with her in our bed, you're still asking me to understand her.”
“She was our friend first,” he said, almost defensively.
I turned back toward him. “Was that the reason?”
He frowned.
“When you were with her in our bed, was it because you were trying to protect a friend?” I asked. “Was that what you were doing, Zane? Being loyal to someone who was fragile?”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes stayed on the road. “That's a cruel thing to say.”
“Cruel?” I almost couldn't believe the word.
“I was there when she left you for someone with more money. I was there when you couldn't get out of bed because she had chosen Vance. I listened to you talk about her for months. I watched you fall apart, and I stayed because I thought that was what someone who loved you was supposed to do.”
My voice shook then, although I fought to keep it steady.
“We built a life together, Zane. I married you. I learned how to live with the fact that a part of you would always belong to someone else, and I kept telling myself that maybe one day you would look at me and realize that I was enough.”
He swallowed.
“Was I just the backup plan?”
“Nerissa—”
“Was I the woman you kept around because she was gone?” I asked. “Someone to keep you company until she came back?”
“No.” His answer came quickly enough that it almost sounded convincing. “No, that's not what you were. I love you. Our marriage matters to me.”
I waited. He seemed to struggle with the words that followed, as though he knew there was no version of them that would make this easier for me.
“But... it's different with her.”
I looked at him.
“With Jovi, it's just...” He exhaled and shook his head. “It's always been her.”
He didn't need to say anything more.
I turned toward the window again, watching the reflection of my own face appear faintly in the glass.
It was always her.
For five years, I had tried to make a place for myself beside a man who had already given the deepest part of himself to someone else. I had convinced myself that love could grow in the space she left behind, that patience could change what loyalty and history had already decided. I had been so determined to prove that I could be enough for him that I had never stopped to ask whether he had ever truly wanted me to be.
Zane continued driving, unaware of how much his words had settled into me.
“I can't help it,” he said after a while. “When it comes to her, there's always this part of me that wants to protect her. I know what she can be like. She's sensitive. She gets hurt easily. When I see her upset, I can't just walk away.”
He spoke as though he were confessing something painful, something he wanted me to understand because perhaps understanding him would make what he had done easier to forgive.
Instead, every word seemed to cut deeper. He was telling me why he had betrayed me, and somehow he was still talking about how much he loved her.
I closed my eyes for a moment. “Stop the car.”
Zane looked at me. “Nerissa, we need to talk about this.”
“Stop the car.”
“We can't just leave things like this.”
“I said stop the car.”
Something in my voice finally made him understand that I wasn't asking. He slowed down and pulled toward the curb, and before the car had fully stopped, I had already reached for the door.
“Nerissa—”
I stepped out and closed the door behind me. The morning air was colder than I expected. I stood on the pavement for a moment, watching the car remain at the curb, but I didn't look back when Zane lowered his window.
I raised my hand when I saw a taxi approaching.
“Where to?” the driver asked once I was inside.
I looked through the windshield. “The Astera Spire.”
Not home. I couldn't even bring myself to call it that anymore. Home was supposed to be the place where I could go when everything else became unbearable, but the place waiting for me had my husband's betrayal written into every room.
So I went somewhere else.
The elevator at Astera moved smoothly through the building, surrounded by polished brass and mirrored panels that reflected every detail I didn't want to see. I looked exhausted. My eyes were swollen, my hair was disheveled, and there was still a faint trace of last night's makeup beneath my eyes. I had spent five years trying to look like the perfect wife, and now I looked exactly like what I was: a woman whose life had come apart overnight.
The argument with Zane replayed itself in my head despite my efforts to push it away.
It's always been her.
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. I wiped it away quickly, but another followed.
The elevator chimed. When the doors opened, Vance Blackwood was standing outside with his assistant.
He stopped the moment he saw me.
His assistant, a sharp-looking woman in her fifties, glanced at my face and then at him. She seemed to understand immediately that whatever conversation they had been having could wait.
Vance's eyes remained on me.
I lowered my gaze, suddenly embarrassed by the fact that he was seeing me like this. After everything that had happened between us the night before, the last thing I wanted was to stand in front of him with tears on my face.
“Give us a minute,” he told his assistant.
She nodded and walked away without asking questions. Vance stepped into the elevator.
The doors closed in front of us.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke. I stared at the changing floor numbers, trying to steady my breathing, while the memory of the hotel room returned with uncomfortable clarity. His mouth against mine. His hand against my face. The question he had asked before leaving.
'Are you kissing me because you want me, or because your husband betrayed you?'
I still didn't know why those words had unsettled me so much.
“Are you all right?”
His voice was quieter than usual.
I shook my head, unable to trust myself to answer.
He didn't immediately say anything else. I saw him in the reflection of the elevator doors, standing a short distance away, watching me without making it obvious that he was doing so. His expression had changed since the hotel. There was still the same control in his posture, but something about the way his eyes lingered on my face made me think he had noticed the tear I hadn't managed to wipe away.
Then he reached toward the control panel and pressed the emergency stop. The elevator came to a smooth halt between floors.
I turned toward him in surprise. “Mr Blackwood?”
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he shifted slightly until his body blocked the security camera in the corner of the elevator.
Only then did he look at me. “I don't think you need an audience right now.”
The words were simple, but something about the gesture made my throat tighten.
I looked away. For a moment, the elevator was completely silent except for the faint hum of the machinery.
Then Vance spoke. “Harrington is waiting in the boardroom.”
I looked at him.
“He's concerned about the Zenith data. You handled the Scandinavia reports.”
“Yes.”
“The raw data shows an efficiency gain they're not accounting for.”
I nodded slowly. “They're focusing on acquisition costs. They're not considering the long-term reduction in operational waste.”
“Exactly.”
He glanced at his watch. “You have twelve minutes.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“You're presenting.”
I stared at him. “Me?”
“You know the numbers better than anyone else on the team.”
“Harrington will expect you,” I said. “Or the CFO.”
“He'll get the person who understands the data.”
I hesitated. “I've never presented to a board before.”
Vance looked directly at me. “Can you do it?”
There was no sympathy in his voice and no attempt to make me feel better. He was simply asking me to decide whether I was capable of doing the job he had given me.
I looked at the floor beneath my feet, then back at him. “Yes.”
“Good.” He released the emergency stop, and the elevator began moving again.
As the doors opened on the executive floor, Vance stepped out first. He adjusted his cuff, his expression settling back into the composed one I had seen every day since he became my boss.
“Twelve minutes, Ms. Sullivan.”
Then he walked away.
I remained in the elevator for another few seconds, watching his reflection disappear from the polished doors. I touched my cheek and wiped away the last trace of tears. Then I straightened my shoulders.
The hurt hadn't disappeared. Neither had the betrayal, the humiliation, or the question of what I was going to do with a marriage that had suddenly become impossible to recognize.
But I had a job to do.
And for the first time since I walked into that bedroom, I had something in front of me that belonged entirely to me. I stepped out of the elevator and headed toward the boardroom, already running through the numbers in my head.
Whatever happened to my marriage, I still had my work. And maybe that was where I needed to start.