18. Rhodes #2
“Effective immediately. I’ll have the paperwork drawn up tonight. You’ll get a fair payout and a clean reference, more than you deserve, all things considered.”
“You can’t fire me for-” She stops herself, recalculates. “This is about feelings? I confess that I have feelings for you and you fire me?”
“I’m firing you because you deliberately lied about having a sexual relationship with your boss, then took that lie to his wife’s place of business to damage her personally.” I keep my voice steady, clinical. Boardroom Rhodes, making the hard call. “That’s not a feeling, Rachel. That’s conduct.”
Her mouth opens, then closes on nothing.
“After everything I’ve done for this company-”
“You’ll be compensated fairly for your work. And you’ll sign paperwork acknowledging that no inappropriate relationship ever occurred between us, because it didn’t.”
She stares at me. I watch hope die in her expression, along with whatever version of our future she’d been building in her head. For ten years she worked beside me. For ten years she told herself a story about what we were, what we could be, and I was too focused on work to notice.
That’s on me too.
“One more thing.” I move toward the door, effectively dismissing her. “You’re going to tell Maren the truth.”
Rachel laughs. It’s not the raw sound from before, this one has edges. “Excuse me?”
“You went to her shop. You told her we slept together. Now you’re going to go back and tell her you lied.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what you did.
I have security footage of you entering and leaving my office the day of the coffee incident, the maintenance request I filed for the carpet cleaning, timestamps proving I was in meetings or on calls during every single night you could claim we were together.
” I watch her face as the reality sets in.
“I’ll document, in excruciating detail, exactly how you fabricated a sexual relationship and used it to harass my wife.
And then I’ll make sure that documentation becomes very relevant to your future employment prospects. ”
Her cheeks are red now. Humiliation or anger, I can’t tell which.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
We stare at each other across ten years of late nights, strategy sessions, and working dinners.
She’s right about one thing, I did spend more time with her than with my wife.
I built half this company with her brain beside mine, her instincts complementing my own.
There was a partnership here, even if I refused to see it as anything more.
But partnership doesn’t excuse what she did.
“Fine.” The word comes out clipped. “I’ll tell her.”
“This week.”
“I said fine.”
She gathers her bag, her dignity, whatever pieces of herself she can still hold together. At the door, she pauses. Doesn’t turn around.
“She won’t come back to you, you know. Even if I tell her the truth. Even if she believes it.”
“I know.”
“Then why does it matter?”
Because she deserves to know. Because I don’t get to let her carry a wound I didn’t inflict when there are already so many I did, and because somewhere in Nora’s apartment, my wife is alone with the belief that I fucked another woman, and that’s not the part I’m guilty of.
But I don’t say any of that. I just wait until Rachel walks out, until the elevator swallows her and the floor goes quiet again.
Then I call my wife.
It rings three times before her voicemail picks up, the same message she’s had for years, slightly breathless, like she recorded it between customers at the shop. Hi, you’ve reached Maren. Leave a message and I’ll call you back!
I’ve heard it a thousand times. Tonight it breaks something in me.
“Maren.” My voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again.
“Maren, I know you don’t want to talk to me.
I know you have every reason to ignore this.
But Rachel lied. She never, we never, I have proof.
She saw the freckle months ago when I changed my shirt after a coffee spill. That’s it. That’s all it ever was.”
I pause, staring out at the city. All those lights. All those lives.
“Please call me. Please let me explain. I know it doesn’t fix everything. I know there’s still, I know I still let you down. But I didn’t do that, Maren. I didn’t cheat on you. I need you to know that.”
I hang up.
The phone sits in my hand, dark and silent. She won’t call back tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not ever. I can fire Rachel, cut her out of the company like she never existed. I can document the lie, prove my innocence, present the evidence like I’m laying out a case.
But I can’t fire the husband I’ve been.
I can’t terminate the version of me who missed dinners and canceled trips and chose work over her so many times that she stopped expecting anything different.
That version doesn’t sign separation agreements and walk away with a check.
He just stands here, in this office where he spent all the hours he should have spent at home, and realizes that being innocent of one thing doesn’t make him innocent of everything.
Rachel lied about the affair.
But she didn’t lie about the rest.
The city blurs. I blink and my eyes are wet.
Somewhere out there, Maren isn’t answering her phone.