14. Nash
NASH
The envelope hit my desk at nine-thirty Monday morning.
I'd been staring at the FAA inspection report for twenty minutes without reading a word of it. My assistant set the courier package down without a word and left. I didn't look up. The report blurred in front of me, and all I could see was Rae's face when she'd asked me for a divorce last night.
You're right. I chose wrong.
I'd said that. I'd admitted it. And she'd still left.
I hadn't slept. I'd sat in the penthouse until four in the morning, staring at the city lights and replaying the conversation over and over, trying to figure out where I'd lost her.
She'd accused me of giving Adriana time I wouldn't give my own wife, of choosing the airline over her every single time.
I'd admitted all of it because it was true.
I'd offered to step back from operations, to delegate to Elias, to do whatever it took.
I'd reached to brush her cheek, and she'd stepped back like my touch burned her.
Then she'd asked for a divorce.
The envelope sat there like an accusation. I picked it up, turned it over, and saw the law firm's return address embossed in the corner. My chest went tight. I tore it open.
Petition for Divorce. Cause: adultery. Respondent named: Adriana Moreau.
The words didn't make sense at first. I read them again. Adultery. Adriana. My hands went numb, and the papers nearly slipped from my grip. What the hell was this?
I hadn't touched Adriana. I'd thrown her out of my penthouse on Friday night when she'd tried, and I'd made it clear she was never to pull that shit again. There was no affair. There had never been an affair.
But Rae thought there was.
God, that's what Adriana had told her. That's why Rae had looked at me like I was a stranger. That's why she'd asked if Adriana had been there, why she'd accused me of giving Adriana time I wouldn't give my own wife. She thought I'd been fucking someone else.
Rage hit me like a live wire, burning through my chest and down my arms. I shoved back from the desk hard enough that the chair slammed into the credenza behind me. The sound echoed in the office. I didn't care.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Adriana's extension. She picked up on the second ring.
"Nash, I was just about to?—"
"My office. Now."
I hung up before she could answer. My pulse hammered in my throat.
I stood at the window overlooking the runway and watched a 737 taxi toward the terminal, trying to get a grip on the fury clawing its way up my spine.
It didn't work. By the time Adriana knocked and stepped inside, I was ready to put my fist through the glass.
"Close the door," I said.
She did, and turned to face me with a smile I wanted to rip off her face. "You wanted to see me?"
I held up the petition. "You told my wife I was having an affair with you."
The smile faltered. Good.
"Nash, I can explain?—"
"Did you tell her that?" My voice came out flat and cold. "Yes or no."
She hesitated, and I saw the calculation in her eyes, the same look she got when she was deciding whether a vendor was bluffing about delivery times. She was weighing her options. That told me everything.
"Answer me, Adriana."
"Yes." She lifted her chin. "I told her we were together. I told her you'd chosen me."
The admission landed like a punch to the gut. I'd known it had to be true, but hearing her say it out loud made it real in a way the papers hadn't. My wife thought I'd betrayed her because this woman had lied to her face.
"Why?"
"Because it should have been true." Adriana stepped closer, and I stepped back.
Her expression shifted, something almost pleading creeping into it.
"Nash, we're good together. You know we are.
We built this airline from nothing. We understand each other in a way she never could. I thought if she was out of the way?—"
"Get out."
"Nash—"
"Get the fuck out of my office." I turned to the phone on my desk and punched the intercom. "Send in Collins, Hart, and Ramirez. Now."
Adriana went pale. "What are you doing?"
"What I should've done the second you made a pass at me."
The door opened, and my senior leadership filed in: Mike Collins, head of finance; Sarah Hart, general counsel; and Tom Ramirez, chief pilot. They looked between me and Adriana, confused. I didn't give them time to ask.
"Adriana Moreau is terminated for cause, effective immediately," I said. "Her contract is void, her stake in this airline is dissolved, and she's to be escorted from the building within the hour."
Sarah's eyes widened. "Nash, we need to discuss?—"
"No." I kept my gaze on Adriana. "She lied to my wife and told her I was having an affair. She interfered in my marriage. That's cause. Draft the paperwork."
Adriana's face went white, then red. "You can't do this."
"I just did." I looked at Mike. "Call the accounting firm and have them start the buyback calculation for her shares. Use the penalty clause. She gets the floor value, nothing more."
"Nash, please." Adriana's voice cracked, and she reached for my arm. I jerked away from her touch. "I love you. I did this because I love you, and she was in the way, and you deserve someone who understands what you've built here?—"
"You don't get to say that." My hands curled into fists at my sides, and I forced them open before I did something I'd regret. "You don't get to tell me you love me after you blew up my marriage with a lie."
"It didn't have to be a lie." Her eyes were wet now, desperate. "We could have had this, Nash. We still can. Just?—"
"Tom, Sarah, take her down to HR and make sure she's off the property in an hour." I turned my back on her and stared out at the runway again, my jaw clenched so tight it ached. "Mike, stay."
I heard them leave, heard Adriana's voice rising in the hallway, heard the door close and cut her off. The silence that followed pressed down on my shoulders like a weight.
"Jesus Christ, Nash." Mike's voice was quiet. "What the hell happened?"
"She torpedoed my marriage because she wanted me for herself." I turned to face him. "And I'm done pretending I can work with someone who'd do that."
"Understood." He hesitated. "You know this is going to hurt us, right? She ran ops. She knows every route, every crew schedule, every vendor relationship we've got. Losing her is going to leave a hole the size of Texas."
"I know."
"We're going to have to scramble to cover her responsibilities, and we've got the Denver expansion launching in six weeks." Mike rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying this is going to cost us."
"I know," I said again. My throat felt tight. "But I can't have her here. Not after this."
Mike nodded slowly. "I'll make the calls. We'll figure it out."
He left, and I picked up my phone. I had calls to make, and I was going to make every single one of them before noon.
I started with Jim Harper at Southwest. He picked up on the third ring, and I didn't waste time on pleasantries.
"Jim, it's Nash McCallister. I'm calling to give you a heads-up. Adriana Moreau is no longer with my company, and if she comes to you looking for a job, you should know why she was terminated."
There was a pause. "I'm listening."
"She lied to my wife and told her I was having an affair with her. She interfered in my marriage to try to get me for herself. I fired her for cause this morning, and I'm making sure everyone in the industry knows exactly why."
"Jesus, Nash. I'm sorry."
"Don't hire her, Jim. She's poison."
I made the same call to United, to Delta, to American.
I called every regional carrier from here to Denver, every airline that might consider taking her on.
I told them what she'd done, and I made it clear that hiring her would be a mistake.
By the time I was done, Adriana Moreau's career in aviation was over.
I sat back in my chair, staring at the petition still sitting on my desk.
The rage had burned itself out, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in my chest. Adriana had run operations for three years.
She knew the airline inside and out, and replacing her was going to be a nightmare.
Routes would get screwed up. Crew scheduling would be chaos.
Vendor contracts would need renegotiating because half of them had her name on them and she'd probably try to poison those relationships on her way out the door.
The Denver expansion was going to be hell without her.
But I couldn't keep her. Not after what she'd done.
I sat down and pulled up my email, already seeing the backlog of decisions I was going to have to make personally until we found someone to take her place.
My calendar was a disaster — board meeting this afternoon, a site visit in San Antonio tomorrow, the FAA follow-up on Thursday.
I didn't have time to pick up an entire department's worth of work.
I did it anyway.
By eleven I was neck-deep in crew schedules I didn't understand.
By noon I'd fielded three calls from vendors asking where Adriana was and why their contracts were suddenly in limbo.
By one I'd had to personally reroute a flight out of Dallas because the ops team didn't know how to handle a mechanical delay without her signing off on it.
The board meeting started at two, and I walked in knowing I looked like hell. I hadn't shaved, I'd been wearing the same shirt since yesterday, and I was running on two hours of sleep and four cups of coffee. The board took one look at me and started asking questions.
I told them Adriana was gone. I told them why. I didn't tell them about the divorce.
Three hours later, I was drowning in operational reports I didn't know how to read when Elias walked in without knocking. He took one look at my desk, at the stacks of binders and printouts I'd pulled from Adriana's office, and shook his head.
"I heard," he said.
"Yeah." I didn't look up. "She's gone."
"About damn time." Elias dropped into the chair across from me and leaned back, arms crossed. "I worked it out Friday night, after you told me she'd shown up at your place uninvited. Figured she'd made her play and you'd shut her down, and she'd gone nuclear."
I glanced up at him. "You knew?"
"I'm not an idiot, Nash. She's been circling you for two years." He gestured at the mess on my desk. "What's all this?"
"Her job." I shoved a binder aside. "Someone's got to do it."
"Not you."
"I don't have a choice."
"You've got a whole management team. Delegate." Elias's gaze sharpened. "Or are you burying yourself in work because you don't want to think about the actual problem?"
I set down the report I'd been pretending to read and met his eyes. "Rae asked me for a divorce last night."
"I know. You texted me at two in the morning." He didn't look surprised. "You also didn't answer when I asked what you were going to do about it."
"I don't know what to do." The admission tasted like failure. "She thinks I had an affair. Adriana told her we were together, and Rae believed it."
"Did you tell Rae the truth?"
"I didn't get the chance. She asked if Adriana had been at the penthouse, I said yes, and she asked for a divorce." I ran a hand through my hair, frustration knotting in my chest. "I didn't even know what Adriana had told her until the petition showed up this morning."
Elias was quiet for a moment. "So what are you going to do?"
"Fix it."
I straightened in my chair, the answer coming easier now that I'd said it out loud. "I'll spend whatever it takes. I'll hire the best lawyers, I'll buy her whatever she wants, I'll prove there was no affair. I'll make this right."
"Jesus Christ." Elias leaned forward, his expression hard. "You really don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?"
"Money is what ruined your marriage, Nash. Throwing more of it at the problem isn't going to fix a goddamn thing."
The words hit me like a slap. "That's not?—"
"When's the last time you kept a promise to Rae?"
I opened my mouth to answer and realized I couldn't. My mind went blank. I tried to think of one, just one time in the past seven years I'd told her I'd do something and actually followed through. Nothing came.
"I don't—" I stopped. "I kept promises."
"Name one."
I couldn't. God, I couldn't think of a single one. The silence stretched out between us, damning.
Elias didn't let up. "You promised her you'd be home for dinner. Where were you?"
"Here," I said. The word felt like glass in my throat.
"You promised her you'd take a weekend off. Where were you?"
"Here."
"You promised her things would get better once the airline was stable. Did they?"
"No." My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the desk to stop it. "They didn't."
"Where were you while she was waiting?" Elias's voice was quiet now, but it cut just as deep. "When she needed you to show up, where the hell were you?"
"Here." The word came out hoarse. "I was here."
"Yeah. You were." He gestured around the office, at the desk I'd been sitting at for seventy hours a week for the past seven years. "You were always here. And she was always alone."
The realization settled over me like a weight, crushing the air from my lungs.
I saw it all at once — every dinner I'd missed, every weekend I'd spent at the airline, every time I'd promised I'd be home and hadn't made it.
The Thursday morning I'd refused her the afternoon at Cibolo Heights because of the FAA inspection, then gave Adriana the evening I'd just told my wife I didn't have.
Every Sunday I'd spent in this office instead of with her.
I'd built this company from nothing, and I'd done it by making Rae nothing in the process.
I'd chosen the airline over her. Every single time.
"I didn't mean to—" I stopped, because that was bullshit and we both knew it. "I thought I was building something for us."
"You built something for you." Elias stood. "And now you've got to decide if you're going to let it cost you everything that actually matters."
My chest ached. I looked down at my hands and thought about the wedding ring I'd kept since the day she left it on the kitchen counter. I'd told myself I was holding onto it because I was going to give it back to her. I'd told myself I'd fix things.
I hadn't fixed a damn thing.
"I might lose her," I said. The words felt like admitting defeat. "For good."
"Yeah. You might."
I looked up at him. "I need to win her back."
"Then figure out how." Elias headed for the door, then paused and glanced back. "And for God's sake, don't lead with your checkbook."
He left, and I sat alone in my office with the divorce petition on my desk and the truth sitting heavy in my gut. I'd lost Rae because I'd never been there for her. I'd put the airline first, every time, and she'd finally had enough.
I had to fix this. I had to win her back.
I just didn't know how.