I stood there longer than I should have.

The booth behind me felt suddenly too small for the amount of air I was trying to pull into my lungs. Vanessa’s perfume—soft, expensive, carefully chosen—turned sharp in a way I hadn’t noticed before, like it belonged to a life that was already backing away from me.

She said my name again, quieter this time. “Dominic?”

But I didn’t hear concern in it anymore.

Only distance.

My fingers tightened around the phone so hard it almost hurt, as if pressure alone could reorder what I was seeing.

LEAKED FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS THREATEN REED & PARKER DEVELOPMENT.

The words didn’t blur. They stayed cruelly stable, refusing to soften no matter how many times I reread them.

My name sat beneath it like an accusation already signed into permanence.

Not a suggestion.
Not speculation.
A line drawn in ink that had already dried.

Dominic Reed, senior partner at Reed & Parker Development, is alleged to have authorized questionable transfers through affiliated shell entities tied to luxury expenditures and offshore consulting arrangements.

For a moment, my mind tried to reject it the way you reject bad lighting in a photograph—you assume it’s a trick, a reflection, something external that will correct itself if you just look again from a different angle.

But it didn’t change.

Nothing changed.

Then the phone vibrated again.

Thomas.

I answered immediately, too quickly, like the call itself had grabbed me by the collar.

“What exactly did she send?” I asked. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded stripped down, missing something essential.

There was a pause on the other end. The kind of pause people take when they already know the answer will make things worse.

“Divorce papers,” Thomas said finally. “A forensic accounting report. Screenshots. Travel records. Invoices. Wire transfers. Photographs.”

Each item landed separately, like bricks being dropped into still water.

“Photographs?” I repeated.

My voice sharpened on the word without permission.

Across the table, Vanessa had stopped moving entirely. Even her hand, which had been halfway to her glass, froze midair. Her eyes weren’t on me anymore—they were on the space between us, like she was trying to decide how far away she needed to be.

Thomas exhaled, slow and uneven.

“You and Ms. Hale,” he said. “Aspen. New York. The Gold Coast apartment.”

The restaurant didn’t react.

That was the strangest part.

The jazz kept flowing in lazy notes from somewhere unseen. A waiter still moved between tables with practiced calm, pouring champagne for an elderly couple near the window as if nothing in the world had ever been urgent. Rain continued sliding down the glass in thin, indifferent lines, like time itself refused to acknowledge what had just changed.

But my world collapsed inward anyway.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just… narrowing.

Until all I could hear was Thomas breathing on the other end of the call, waiting for me to say something that would make it less real.