18. Rhodes
— ? —
Rhodes
Rachel turns when I push the door open. She’s still in the dress she wore to my wife’s shop, navy silk, professional, the kind of thing Maren would have helped her pick if they’d ever been the kind of women who shopped together. The thought makes my jaw clench so hard I feel it in my temples.
“Rhodes.” She offers me a small smile, the kind she uses when a meeting runs long and she thinks I need managing. “I know you’re upset, but if you’ll let me explain-”
“Sit down.”
The smile falters. Good.
I move to my desk but don’t sit. My hands find the edge, grip the cool wood, and I use it to anchor myself because if I don’t hold onto something solid I might put my fist through the fucking window.
The city sprawls behind her, all those lights, all those lives, and somewhere out there Maren is in her sister’s apartment believing I touched this woman.
“Did you tell my wife I slept with you?”
Rachel blinks. Whatever script she prepared, whatever careful explanation she rehearsed in the car, this wasn’t the opening she expected. I watch her recalibrate in real time, the slight tightening around her eyes, the way her fingers curl against her thigh.
“Rhodes, let me explain.”
“Yes or no.”
She’s still standing. I told her to sit and she didn’t, and normally I’d let that slide because I don’t micromanage my executives, but tonight I’m cataloging every small rebellion. Every moment she assumed her judgment superseded mine.
“It’s not that simple-”
“Yes.” I release each word like I’m pressing bullets into a chamber. “Or. No.”
The silence stretches between us, thin and sharp as wire. Rachel’s chin lifts, not quite defiance, but something close to it. Something that looks almost like righteousness.
“Yes.”
There it is.
I’ve spent eleven years building a company on my ability to stay calm when everyone else panics. To see three moves ahead while everyone else is still processing their first. I’ve sat across from people who wanted to tear me apart, and I’ve never once lost my composure badly enough to regret it.
Right now, I want to flip my desk.
“Did I ever touch you?”
Rachel’s expression shifts. Fear flickers there, or the first real understanding that this isn’t going to end the way she imagined. “Rhodes-”
“Did I ever touch you?”
“No.”
“Did I ever kiss you?”
“No.”
“Did I ever give you one fucking reason to believe I wanted you?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Her throat works, and I watch her search for the words that’ll somehow turn this back around, that’ll make her the reasonable one and me the man overreacting.
I know because I’ve seen her do it in a standoff.
Find the angle. Shift the frame. Make the other person doubt their own position.
“You chose me every day.”
The words hit somewhere under my ribs and lodge there.
She’s still talking, I can see her mouth moving, something about late nights and shared meals and how a wife who actually paid attention would have seen it, but I can’t hear her over the roaring in my ears.
Because that’s what Maren said. Not the exact words, but the same wound.
Every meeting that ran late, every dinner I canceled, every time I picked up the phone and it was Rachel and I answered even though my wife was sitting right there.
You chose me every day.
Christ.
“The freckle.” My voice scrapes out lower than I intend. “How did you know about the freckle?”
Rachel goes still. It’s subtle, if I didn’t know her tells after ten years of working together, I’d miss it. But I see the pause, the quick calculation, the slight color rising in her cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“You told my wife about a freckle on my stomach. Right side, near my hip.” I force myself to maintain eye contact even though looking at her right now makes my skin crawl.
“She wouldn’t know about it unless you’d seen me without a shirt.
So either we slept together and I somehow blocked it out, or you saw something innocent and decided to turn it into a weapon. Which is it?”
Silence.
The city hums forty floors below us. Somewhere in the building, a vacuum cleaner starts up, the cleaning crew moving closer, ordinary people doing ordinary jobs while my life collapses in real time.
“It was months ago.” Rachel’s voice has changed. Smaller now. More careful. “The Hartley deal, you spilled coffee on your shirt right before the presentation. You changed into the spare from your closet.”
The memory surfaces, slow and unwanted. The Hartley deal. March, maybe April. I was reviewing notes at my desk when the cup tipped, coffee everywhere, and Rachel was in the room because we’d been going over the numbers. She’d turned away while I changed. Or I thought she had.
“I didn’t, I wasn’t trying to-” She stops herself, takes a breath. “It just happened. I saw it, and I remembered.”
“You remembered.” I taste the words and they’re bitter. “You remembered a freckle on my body for months, held onto it. And when my wife was already leaving me, when our marriage was already falling apart, you went to her shop and you used it to convince her I fucked you.”
“She was already leaving you.” Rachel’s voice strengthens, like she’s found her footing again. “I didn’t break your marriage, Rhodes. It was already broken. I just, I forced her to see what it had become.”
“What it had become?”
“A marriage where you spend more time with Rachel than your wife. A marriage where she sits home alone while you build an empire with another woman.” Rachel takes a step toward me, and I can see the desperation bleeding through now, the careful mask slipping.
“I didn’t lie about that part. You did choose me, every day. I didn’t make that up.”
I should tell her she’s wrong.
I should defend my marriage the way I defended it at the gala, with righteous anger and sharp words and absolute certainty. I should say I was working, just working, that proximity doesn’t mean anything, that she read signals that didn’t exist.
But Maren’s voice echoes in my head. You chose her. Every time you chose her.
And Rachel’s standing here confirming it.
“I never touched you.” I say it quietly, but the words land with weight. “I never wanted you, never gave you any indication that I was available, or interested, or looking for something outside my marriage.”
“You didn’t have to. You showed me every day with how you-”
“No.” I cut her off. “You don’t get to rewrite this. I was building a company. You worked for me. That’s all it ever was.”
“That’s all it was for you.”
Something shifts in her expression. The calculation drains away, and what’s left is rawer than I expected.
Realer. She looks at me the way I imagine I looked at Maren all those nights when she was already asleep and I stood in the bedroom doorway, too tired to undress but not too tired to feel the distance growing between us.
“I love you.”
I’ve been braced for this, but hearing it spoken aloud still makes my chest tight. Not with longing, with something closer to grief.
“Rachel.”
“I know you don’t feel the same way. I’m not stupid.
” She laughs, but it’s not a real laugh.
It’s the sound someone makes when they’re watching something they built burn down.
“I knew from the beginning that you were married. I knew you loved her. But I also knew that she didn’t understand you the way I do.
She doesn’t see the pressure you’re under, the way you carry everything on your shoulders. I see it. I see you.”
“You see what I show you in this office. That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s more than she sees. When’s the last time she asked about your work? When’s the last time she cared about anything other than-”
“Don’t.” My voice drops low, dangerous. “Don’t talk about my wife like you know anything about her.”
“I know she gave up on you.” Rachel’s chin lifts again, but this time there’s no defiance left. Just pain. “I’d never give up on you.”
For a moment, I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
Then I remember Maren’s face when she found me after Rachel’s visit. The hollow look in her eyes. The way she said I gave up on us long before I walked out that door, like she was reading lines from a death certificate.
“There was never a version of this.” I speak slowly, making sure every word lands. “There was never a reality where my marriage fails and you step in. Where Maren leaves and I turn to you. That world doesn’t exist, Rachel. It never did.”
Something shutters behind her eyes. The softness drains away, and what’s left is harder. Colder.
“Fine.” She straightens her spine, smooths her hands down her dress. “Fine. I’m sorry I told your wife something that wasn’t true. I’m sorry I used information I shouldn’t have had. But you should know, the marriage was already dying. I didn’t kill it. You did.”
“I know.”
That stops her. She expected me to argue. To defend myself. To list all the ways I was a good husband while she was the villain sabotaging everything.
“I know I killed it.” The words taste like ash.
“I know I spent more time with you than with her, that I let her down, again and again, until leaving was the only option she had left. I know all of that, Rachel. But you didn’t save her from me.
You didn’t force her to see what our marriage had become.
You took something innocent and turned it into a weapon because you wanted her gone, and you didn’t care what it would do to her. ”
Rachel’s jaw tightens. “She’d have left anyway.”
“Maybe. Probably. But she’d have left believing I never cheated on her.
She’d have left knowing that whatever I did wrong, I didn’t do that.
” I push away from the desk. My legs feel steadier now.
The storm in my chest has crystallized into something cold and clear.
“You took that from her. You took it from both of us.”
“I love you.” She says it again, smaller this time, like she’s trying to remind me that intentions matter.
They don’t.
“You’re terminated.”
Rachel’s face goes white. “What?”