The CEO Who Betrayed Me

Diner-a

The rain has stopped by the time I leave the office, but the sidewalks are still slick, throwing back the neon signs in long broken streaks of color. I walk the six blocks instead of taking a car. I need the air. I need something to do with my legs besides sitting still.The diner on 9th still has the same broken sign, the one missing the R, so it just reads DINE at night, blinking every few seconds like it's tired of trying.

Maya is already inside when I get there, in the back booth, the same one, both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she isn't drinking.She looks up when the bell over the door rings. For a second neither of us says anything. She looks smaller than she did yesterday, and I don't think it's the light."You look terrible," she says, when I sit down across from her."You should see a mirror," I say.She almost smiles. It doesn't quite make it all the way there.I set my phone face down on the table between us, next to the folder Grace gave me, still folded in my jacket pocket.

I haven't decided yet whether to show it to her or wait and see if she brings any of it up herself."I didn't vote for the restructuring because I wanted to," she says, before I can start with anything of my own. "Delaney came to me three weeks before the meeting. Privately. He told me if I didn't support the cuts, he'd pull his firm's funding completely, mid-round, no warning. He had documents ready. Fabricated ones. Enough to make it look like the company was failing from the inside. Enough to get you personally investigated."I keep my face still. I've had all day to prepare for this part. "You could have told me.""He said if I told you, he'd move faster.

Before we had any way to defend ourselves." Her voice catches slightly, right on the last word, the first real c***k I've heard in it since the vote. "He wanted me isolated from you. On purpose. He knew you'd fight him the second you found out. He knew I was the only one who could stop you from doing something reckless before we were ready.""So you let me believe you'd betrayed me instead.""I was buying time." She reaches into her bag and slides a folder across the table, the twin of the one sitting folded in my pocket, except hers is thick with weeks of work. Financial records.

A signed statement from a board member. Emails, dated back three weeks, laid out like a case file. "I've spent every night since the vote building this. Fraud. Coercion. Enough to get him removed from the board completely."I look at the folder without touching it. "You did this alone.""I couldn't risk you knowing before it was solid. You're terrible at hiding what you feel, Ethan. If Delaney saw one second of doubt on your face, he'd have buried us both before we had anything to fight back with."Her eyes are wet now, the calm finally slipping all the way through. "I let you believe the worst thing about me because it felt safer than the alternative.

I told myself it didn't matter, as long as it worked in the end."I sit with that for a moment. The waitress passes without stopping, sensing correctly that this isn't a table that wants refills right now."I spent this whole week thinking I didn't know you at all," I say, quiet."I know.""That's the part that actually hurts. Not the vote. Not the company falling apart around us. You. Turning into a stranger overnight."She reaches across the table, her hand stopping just short of mine, like she isn't sure she's earned the right to close that last inch.I look at her hand.

I think about the photograph in my email. The private room, three weeks back, exactly matching what she just told me. I think about Grace's spreadsheet folded in my jacket pocket, a name from four years ago that has nothing to do with any of what she just explained.I close the distance anyway and put my hand over hers."Don't ever do that again," I say. "Not because it worked out this time. Because I don't want to survive something like that a second time.""I won't," she says, fingers tightening around mine. "I promise you."---