12. Dante
— ? —
Dante
The manila folder feels heavier than paper should.
I’ve been carrying it for three days. Vanessa’s HR termination file - cause for dismissal clearly documented.
The wire transfer receipt showing payment to the tabloid, routed through a shell company registered to her cousin’s name.
And the screenshot that seals it: her text to the reporter, timestamped two hours before the article dropped.
My security team traced every wire, every shell company, every text back to her. Every piece is real.
Make sure you use the word “gold-digger.” I want that bitch to choke on it.
The editor at Manhattan Pulse didn’t want to meet. Then I sent him a preview.
“You have two choices,” I told him on the phone. “Retract the story and issue a public apology. Or I run this - the payment trail, the texts, the whole thing. Every outlet in the city will have it by morning.”
He retracted.
But retractions don’t undo damage. They’re footnotes. Afterthoughts. Nora’s name is still out there, tied to words like calculating and gold-digger, and the people whispering at tonight’s gala haven’t read any corrections.
They’ve only read the poison.
***
The Carozza Charity Gala is old money dressed in new clothes. Crystal chandeliers, string quartet, champagne that costs more per bottle than most people make in a week. I’ve been to a hundred of these. Usually I work the room like a chess board, every conversation a move.
Tonight I can barely breathe.
I spot Nora across the room almost immediately. She’s not here - I checked the guest list - but I keep seeing her anyway. The curve of a shoulder. A laugh that sounds almost right. The red of a dress that’s never quite the right shade.
Get it together.
I take a glass of champagne I don’t want and move through the crowd. Shake hands. Make small talk. Pretend I give a damn about anyone’s stock portfolio or vacation plans.
Then I hear it.
“ - got what she wanted, didn’t she?” The voice is male, smug, carrying from a cluster of suits near the bar. “Moretti’s wife. Married up, cashed out, ran to the competition. Classic.”
Another voice laughs. “Can you blame her? Cross is richer anyway.”
“Gold-digger got exactly what she came for.”
The champagne glass cracks in my hand.
I don’t remember moving. One second I’m across the room; the next I’m standing in front of the stage, and the band has stopped, and someone’s pressed a microphone into my hand.
“I need to say something.”
The room goes quiet.
***
“Most of you have read the story about my wife.”
My voice comes out steady. I don’t know how. Everything inside me is shaking.
“The one that calls her a gold-digger. The one that says she abandoned our marriage for money.” I scan the crowd. Find the suits from the bar. Hold their eyes. “That story was bought and paid for. By a woman I fired for kissing me without my consent.”
Whispers ripple through the room.
“Vanessa was my executive assistant for five years. The night I closed the biggest deal of my career, she came to my office and she kissed me. I pushed her away. I fired her on the spot.” I take a breath.
“My wife saw it happen. She left. Not because of the kiss - she believed me when I told her the truth. She left because of everything that came before.”
The whispers are louder now. I don’t care.
“My marriage didn’t fail because Nora left. It failed because I stopped showing up. Because I buried myself in work and forgot how to be present. Because I let the most important person in my life feel invisible for a year, and by the time I realized what I was losing, she was already gone.”
I set down the microphone.
“If anyone in this room wants to call someone a gold-digger, call me. I’m the one who forgot what was valuable.”
Silence.
Then I walk off the stage.
***
She finds me in the coat room.
“That was quite a performance.”
Vanessa’s voice is ice and venom. I turn to face her, and she looks - wrong. The polish is still there, the perfect dress and perfect hair, but underneath it she’s cracking. Eyes too bright. Smile too sharp.
“Vanessa. I’m surprised you had the nerve to show up.”
“I have as much right to be here as anyone.” She steps closer. “More, actually. I’ve been coming to these galas for years. You’re the one who doesn’t belong anymore.”
“I think tonight’s speech might disagree with you.”
Her smile twists. “Your little confession? Please. You think that changes anything? You think she’s going to take you back because you humiliated yourself in front of everyone?”
“I think that’s between me and my wife.”
“Your wife.” She laughs, and it sounds like breaking glass. “Your wife who walked out on you. Your wife who’s been seen all over town with Julian Cross. Your wife who couldn’t wait to escape the prison of being married to you.”
“Are you done?”
“No.” She steps closer. Close enough that I can smell her perfume - the same one she wore that night, cloying and too sweet. “I want you to know something, Dante. I want you to carry it with you for the rest of your miserable life.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’ll crawl back to her. You’ll beg and grovel and debase yourself, and maybe she’ll even take you back.
But she’ll always know.” Her eyes glitter with malice.
“She’ll always know you didn’t want her enough the first time.
That you let your marriage die while I was right there, ready to love you the way she never could. ”
“You don’t know anything about love.”
“I know I would have fought for you. I know I would have been there every night, not crying in a guest bedroom because you worked late.” She straightens her dress. “Enjoy the leftovers, Dante. I hope they taste like regret.”
She turns to walk away.
“Vanessa.”
She pauses.
“The retraction ran this morning. But that’s just the start.” I pull out my phone. Show her the screen. “The wire transfer. The texts. The shell company in your cousin’s name. I gave a copy to every editor in the city.”
Her face goes white.
“By tomorrow, you won’t be the woman who loved me. You’ll be the woman who stalked a married man and tried to destroy his wife when she got caught.” I pocket the phone. “You wanted to be part of my story. Congratulations. Now you are.”
For a moment, she just stares at me. Then something in her face crumbles - not into tears, but into something harder. Uglier.
“You’ll regret this,” she whispers.
“I already regret everything about you.”
She walks away.
I let her go.
***
The stock ticker on the ballroom screen catches my eye as I’m leaving.
MORETTI HOLDINGS: -4.2%
Then -4.7%
Then -5.1%
The speech. The scandal. The admission that the CEO of a billion-dollar company was too busy drowning in his personal life to show up for his marriage. Investors don’t like uncertainty. They don’t like drama.
They especially don’t like a man who just admitted he was failing.
My phone is already buzzing. The board. My COO. Three different crisis management firms.
I turn it off.
Let it drop. Let it all drop. The stock price, the reputation, the empire I spent a decade building.
None of it matters if I can’t get her back.
I walk out of the gala, and behind me, the numbers keep falling.