The Woman He Erased

Old Ghosts

I don't cry in elevators. Not anymore. But the reflection at the steel doors is one of a woman who wants to, and I resent the hell out of her.

By the time I reach the first floor, the practiced detachment of a business manager replaces the pained expression on my face. Priya is waiting by the car, texting on her phone with all the intensity of a woman pretending to pay no attention to when I might walk out the building doors.

"Well?" she asks, sliding in behind the wheel.

"He'd have to have been blind not to recognize me in under three seconds."

"Didn't surprise me," Priya says easily. "You were married to him for four years."

"Still surprised that he seems... surprised." I trace the line of the cityscape with the side of my eye. "I thought guilt had choked all that out of his system by now."

Priya opens her mouth, then stops, her brows knitting together for a moment in consideration. "Are you saying it's not about business?"

I give her a look. A long look. And then finally, I turned to face the city passing by. "Voss Holdings' offices are on the second floor of a building his family used to be in beneath us," I say at last. "My father started there, in a shared office, paying rent in cash. And I used whatever I had to buy that laptop. He insisted on me getting to make financial reports on my own."

"I don't know if I've ever told you that story," I admit. "But I didn't disappear, you know? I built something harder."

I pause, my fingers hovering over the screen of my phone until I pull my attention away.

I should have taken this job to get my revenge on the man who made me suffer that final, excruciating scene in that boardroom.

I should have. But instead, I find myself doing something far more humiliating — allowing him a chance at redemption.

I should have been waiting by the car door, eager to toss out the file that would finally bring him down. But instead, I'm staring down at my text conversation, wondering why I felt the need to justify this to her in the first place. What, exactly, is it that I hope he will do?

All of this comes crashing down on me at that moment as his private jet touches down in the city. I am faced with the fact that he is here, and that I am waiting, and that despite everything he has put me through, it would still kill me a little to know that he is well and that, in whatever capacity he finds himself fit to approach me in, he is reaching out.

I should have been far stronger.

"He's not just a means to an end." My voice is quiet when I finally speak. "He never was."

I looked up then, locking eyes with Priya's. "It's not just about money."

"He called you a fraud in front of forty guests at the most high-profile wedding in the country and had your things tossed out on the street before the papers had even been signed." Her voice is soft with barely concealed rage. "You were right to want his business for yourself. But what is it that you want with him?"

I say nothing in response, because there is no good answer. He was nothing but cruel and punishing when he walked away from me, and I would rather die than let him have this final victory as well.

"Whatever you're planning,

I want to know about it first.

Not read about it in the damn press."

My fingers twitch over the keys of my phone, and if I hadn't been so angry, so hurt, so completely humiliated, I think I might have laughed. Instead, I type a reply and then delete it with a sharp press of my thumb.

You lost that right the day you didn't ask me a single question before signing.

I press send before I can second-guess it, and immediately regret it, not because I'm angry about what I've said, but because it's true.

His typing indicator blinks three times, disappears, and then blinks again.

I set my phone face down on the table, as if it will help undo it somehow, and watch the skyline until the ache in my chest has dulled enough to breathe through.

Tomorrow, I need to win that shareholder vote, and I certainly need to make sure his mother understands that I expect his share of the profits to go to me.

Tonight, apparently, I still have a foolish heart that hopes he might write to me again.