The Woman He Erased

The Vote

Marguerite Cross has a way of walking into a room as if she's considering staying.

She strides into the shareholder meeting in a cream Chanel, her two lawyers in tow and a look of triumph plastered across her face. It was five years ago, and I'd taken that same look and shriveled beneath it. Now she scans the room, landing on me, and her victorious smirk flickers, just for a heartbeat, as she registers the fact that I'm not in the back of the room where she'd instructed me to sit the last time she'd told me to 'take my place amongst people like myself.'

"Elena." She drawls out my name, as if she's swallowed something nasty, "How resourceful of you."

"Marguerite." I say, and don't rise to my feet. "You look well for someone about to lose eighteen percent of her leverage."

Her lawyer leans close to whisper in her ear, but she bats him away, her eyes never leaving my face.

Damian sat two seats away from his mother in silence, arms folded over his chest, his mouth a tight line. He hasn't said a word since I walked in, but I can feel his gaze on me, assessing, as if he's trying to see whether the fire I struck five years ago is still burning.

We fall into the proper motions of the shareholder meeting, reports given and a merger discussed - the sort of mergers that no one here is actually interested in at the moment. We all know that the real drama will unfold when the floor is opened to discussion, and we're all dying to get there.

It happens as soon as the meeting falls to motions.

"I'd like to call for an independent audit." I announce, standing, "of all financial dealings pertaining to the ex-CFO for the fiscal year of my divorce."

The room stilled. Marguerite's lawyer straightened his tie. Damian turned to stare daggers at his mother.

"That's an odd thing to call for." Marguerite says smoothly, as she twirls her pen between her fingers, "Fishing for something particular, dear?"

"Funny, I've already found it." I say, sliding a file across the table to the center so that everyone could see it. It was the second folder that I'd given her this week, and it was always better this way, so that she had to turn it over herself before she realized that every single forged bank transfer she'd signed off on in good faith was a perfectly forged replica of her own signature, implicating her in her own little charade. A nice tidy paper trail that led right back to her desk, and which I was sure she would have noticed by now.

It was the stillness that followed next that finally convinced me that I'd won, because that's when it settled in that I really had.

"This is ridiculous," Marguerite scoffed, too quickly, "Preposterous, fabricated evidence, probably planted by this vindictive-"

"Careful now, slander is very expensive, and I have considerably more lawyers than I did five years ago." I cut her off.

It was Damian who finally spoke. "Is this true?" The words were directed at his mother, though he wasn't looking at her. He looked at me instead, with this strange, expectant look.

Marguerite's mask slipped for precisely one heartbeat, before she smoothed her expression into an expression of disdain. "Damian, don't be absurd, you can't think for one second that-"

"I believed you the first time," he said quietly, "Without asking a single question. I'd like to not make that mistake again."

The room went silent again, and this time I found myself holding my breath as well, waiting with baited breath for whatever would happen next, though I would never have admitted it.

"The audit will take place, then," the chairman said, clearly wishing to bring the meeting to a close, "All those in favor-"

The motion passed, overwhelmingly, with a vote of twenty-two to three. Marguerite barely bothered voting against it, in the end.

She stood with a practiced air, gathering up her lawyers as she passed my chair. "You've become someone I'm not particularly fond of," She said, low enough that only I could hear, as she paused beside me.

"Good, I'm glad to hear it. The woman you used to know doesn't exist anymore- you made sure of that."

She said nothing more, but she left me standing there, in the room that had once been my home.

The other executives filed out of the room, whispering amongst themselves, undoubtedly already planning the next office scandal when I finally got up to leave. I paused in the doorway, letting the adrenaline drain out of me, before I registered that Damian hadn't left with the others.

"You knew." He said, after a while, when it was just us in the emptying room.

"I lived it, Damian, of course I knew." I said, gathering up my things.

"But why didn't you do something about it?"

The question caught in my throat, and for the space of a heartbeat I considered telling him the truth.

"Because I trusted you to do it for me. And you didn't."

That stung, right in the ribs. " I cut in, voice calm. "Five years too late."

I left him standing there in the room that, as of this morning, was no longer fully his.