The world tilted. The air in the boardroom, once merely stale with anxiety, became a vacuum that sucked the breath from my lungs. It was her. It was Elara. But it was also a stranger, a woman sculpted from ice and ambition, wearing my wife's face like a perfectly tailored mask.
The five years had sharpened every line of her features, erasing the last vestiges of the soft, hopeful woman I had known. Her eyes, the same deep hazel I once got lost in, were now instruments of clinical assessment. They swept across the room, cataloging, evaluating, dismissing. When her gaze passed over me, it was without a flicker of recognition, without a hint of warmth or hatred. It was the look one gives a piece of unremarkable furniture. It was a look of utter and complete indifference. That was worse than
