11. Benedict
— ? —
Benedict
The boardroom smells like fear.
I can always tell when someone’s about to be destroyed - there’s a particular tension, a collective holding of breath that borders on bloodlust. I’ve been on the dealing end of that destruction more times than I can count.
Today, I’m going to destroy someone who deserves it.
Pauline sits at the far end of the conference table, looking exactly like what she is: a woman who thinks she’s untouchable.
She’s been on paid leave for five weeks while the investigation ran.
She came in this morning because I told her the findings were final, and she assumed that meant they’d cleared her.
Her suit is immaculate. Her smile is the same practiced curve she’s been wielding like a weapon for years.
She doesn’t know yet.
The board members file in - Mitchell, Torres, the others. They take their seats with careful choreography, reading the room before they speak. They can feel it too. The coming storm.
“Good morning,” I say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. Calm. Controlled.
“Benedict.” Pauline’s smile widens. “You look better. Have you been sleeping?”
I don’t answer.
“Before we begin today’s agenda, there’s a personnel matter that requires immediate attention.” The board members exchange glances. This is unusual. Unprecedented. Good. “Pauline Hartley’s employment with B-Morgan Industries is terminated, effective immediately.”
The silence is absolute.
Pauline laughs - short, sharp. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your access has been revoked. Security will escort you out after this meeting.”
“On what grounds?”
“Misconduct. Breach of fiduciary duty. Deliberate interference in personal matters.”
“That’s absurd. I’ve done nothing but support this company - support you - for years.”
“You intercepted my wife’s calls.”
The words land like a grenade.
Pauline’s smile falters. “I don’t know what you’re-”
“I pulled the phone records. My assistant’s message log with them.
” I spread papers across the table. “Sixteen hours, near enough. My assistant wrote to you at ten past one in the morning. Mrs. Morgan is in labor, she’s asking for him.
You wrote back eleven minutes later saying you’d tell me.
” I let that sit in the room. “You stood outside my door at quarter past two and you didn’t knock.
You didn’t tell me at breakfast. You didn’t tell me in the car to the airport.
And then you sat across an aisle from me for nine hours at thirty thousand feet and you watched me sleep. ”
She recovers quickly. Her spine straightens, her chin lifts. “I was protecting you from distractions. You were in the middle of the most important negotiation of your career-”
“My wife is not a distraction.”
The words come out harder than I intended. The board members flinch.
“She’s my entire world. And you tried to take that from me.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong-”
“You let me believe everything was fine while my wife gave birth alone. You posted those photos knowing what they’d look like. You’ve been positioning yourself for years, and I was too stupid to see it.”
“Benedict-”
“You don’t get to use my name.” The ice in my voice could freeze the Hudson. “You lost that right when you decided my family was an obstacle to be removed.”
She’s trembling now. The mask is cracking. “This is ridiculous. I’ll sue for wrongful termination-”
“Go ahead.” I lean forward, palms flat on the table.
“I know the photograph you posted the afternoon my daughter was born was taken the evening before, because I’m standing in it in a shirt I’d already sent out to be cleaned.
You held that picture for twenty hours. You posted it while my wife was being stitched up, because that was the moment it would do the most damage. ”
The color drains from her face.
The door opens. Two security guards enter.
Pauline stands, and for a moment I think she might go quietly. But she’s never been good at quiet.
“You think this fixes anything?” Her voice is shrill now, all pretense abandoned. “Your wife still left you. Your daughter still doesn’t know you. Getting rid of me doesn’t change that.”
“I know.”
The simplicity seems to throw her.
“I know exactly what I did and what I failed to do. The difference is, I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to fix it. You’re just going to be gone.”
She stares at me - hatred and hurt and genuine confusion in her eyes. Like she truly doesn’t understand why her careful manipulations didn’t work.
Then she turns and walks out.
The boardroom is silent.
“Well,” Mitchell says finally. “That was dramatic.”
I sink back into my chair, exhaustion replacing adrenaline. “The Budapest deal closed successfully. Q3 projections are on track. Anything else?”
“No,” Torres says carefully. “I think we’re good.”
I stand and walk toward the door.
“Benedict.” Mitchell’s voice stops me. “For what it’s worth… I’m glad you did that. She was always a little too eager.”
“I should have seen it sooner.”
I leave before anyone can respond.
The drive to Queens takes an hour in traffic. I don’t mind. I need the time to think.
Firing Pauline felt necessary - like cutting away dead tissue so a wound can heal. But it doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t bring back those twelve hours. It doesn’t erase two years of absence. It doesn’t make Christine love me again.
Nothing can do that except me.
I park across the street from Clara’s building, the same spot I’ve claimed every night for weeks. The windows of the third-floor apartment glow warm in the gathering darkness, and I can see movement behind the curtains - shapes I’ve memorized, patterns I’ve learned by heart.
Christine, pacing with Isabella in her arms.
Clara, moving through the kitchen.
The quiet domestic rhythm of a life I’m not part of.
I should go up. Ring the bell, demand to see my daughter, force myself back into their world.
I don’t.
Instead, I sit in the dark car and watch the light in the window, thinking about all the ways I’ve failed and the impossible distance between who I was and who I need to become.
The light goes off around eleven.
I wait another hour. Just in case.
Then I drive back to the hotel room that’s become my prison, and I lie awake until dawn. I know what this is. I know that a man who tells his wife he’ll respect her space and then sits outside her mother’s window every night is telling himself a story. I just don’t know how to stop yet.