CLARA’S POV
The chair behind the CEO’s desk was softer than I remembered. Or maybe I was just harder. I let my fingers trail over the polished mahogany, the same desk my father had sat behind for thirty years. The air in the room still smelled like him—old leather and sharp peppermint—underneath the new, expensive cologne Daniel had started wearing. The scent of a man playing dress-up.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was laid out like a toy model. My city. My view. Or it had been, until I decided to let a lie do the work of the truth.
I never went to prison. The handcuffs they photographed were for show. The trial was real enough, the charges my ex-husband crafted were brutal, but the verdict was a negotiated silence. My lawyer, a man my father trusted, knew a judge. We c
