Chapter 10
DREW
Drew called Victoria before he'd stopped shaking.
Madeleine had been gone for less than five minutes.
He could still smell her. Madeleine didn't wear perfume, just soap, cold air and something underneath that was purely her, the scent he'd been breathing for years and never catalogued because it had been as constant as oxygen.
The penthouse still held the echo of her voice saying I want a divorce with a calm that was worse than screaming, worse than plates thrown or doors slammed, because calm meant she'd already grieved.
Calm meant the decision had been made somewhere between Lark and the parking garage and she'd arrived with it finished, sealed, delivered.
Victoria picked up on the second ring. "Drew, I—"
"You went to her restaurant."
A pause. "She called you."
"She came here. She stood in our kitchen and asked me if I kissed you. She asked me if I talk about her like something I've outgrown. She asked for a divorce. My wife asked me for a divorce because you walked into her workplace and lied to her face."
"I didn't lie. I told her the truth about—"
"You told her I kissed you."
Silence.
"I want you at the office in one hour," he said. "I'll have Tom clear your things."
"Drew, let's talk about this—"
"One hour."
He hung up. He stood in the kitchen, gripped the counter and breathed until the shaking subsided enough for him to drive.
Then he grabbed his keys from the console table, the console table where Madeleine's keys should have been, the hook where her coat should have hung, the foyer that should have smelled like bread or garlic or whatever she'd been cooking that day.
He drove to Fishtown with his hands white on the steering wheel and his mind running a single loop: She asked for a divorce.
She asked for a divorce. My wife asked me for a divorce.
He got there first. He sat at his desk and pulled up Victoria's equity agreement, her employment contract, the company bylaws governing partner removal.
He read every clause. He made notes. He called the company's outside counsel, Ken Hsu, and outlined the situation in clipped, clinical sentences.
When Ken asked him to slow down and repeat the part about the attempted kiss, Drew repeated it without inflection because inflection would have broken something in him that was currently load-bearing.
"That's sexual harassment," Ken said. "Unwanted physical advance in a workplace setting. If you want to pursue it—"
"I don't want to pursue it. I want it in my pocket. I want her to know it's there."
"Understood. I'll draft the separation agreement tonight. You said she has eighteen percent?"
"Eighteen percent vested. The unvested portion reverts under the bad-actor clause. She also went to my wife's workplace and made false statements about our relationship. Told her we'd been romantically involved. Told her I'd kissed her. None of it happened."
"That's tortious interference with a marital relationship. In Pennsylvania, that's actionable."
"I don't want to sue her. I want her gone. Today. Clean. Final."
"I'll have the paperwork within two hours."
Victoria arrived forty minutes later. Drew heard her heels on the concrete before he saw her — that click he'd heard a thousand times, walking into his office, walking into board meetings, walking into rooms where she made herself indispensable.
He'd admired that sound once. The confidence of it.
The authority. Now it made his stomach turn.
She appeared in the doorway. She'd dressed for battle — a charcoal blazer, her hair pulled back, her face set in the expression she wore during hostile negotiations. She looked at the box Tom had left on the chair across from Drew's desk. Her jaw twitched.
"Sit down," Drew said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Sit down, Victoria." He used her full name on purpose.
She sat, folded her hands in her lap and lifted her chin.
Even now, even in this, she was composed, controlled, performing the version of herself that she wanted the room to see.
Drew looked at her and thought: How did I miss this?
How did I sit across from this woman for four years and not see what Madeleine saw?
"Here's what's going to happen," he said.
"You're going to sign a separation agreement that buys out your vested equity at a twenty percent premium over fair market value.
You're going to surrender your unvested shares under the bad-actor clause.
You're going to sign a non-disparagement agreement that covers me, the company, and my wife.
And you're going to walk out of this building today and not come back. "
"You can't force me out. I built this company."
"You built this company with me. And in the process, you made an unwanted sexual advance on your co-founder in a workplace setting.
You put your hand on my neck. You leaned in to kiss me.
I told you to stop. That's sexual harassment, Victoria.
If you want to fight the separation, I will file a formal complaint and let HR and legal handle it from there. "
Her composure fractured. Not much. A tiny crack around the eyes, a tightening of her fingers in her lap. "You wouldn't."
"I would. And I'd also have my attorney send a cease-and-desist regarding your visit to my wife's restaurant, where you made materially false statements about our relationship with the apparent intent of destroying my marriage.
My lawyer tells me that's actionable in Pennsylvania.
I don't want to go that route. But I will if you make me. "
Victoria stared at him. He stared back. He'd negotiated with venture capitalists, with board members, with founders who'd built empires.
None of them had frightened him. This woman didn't frighten him either.
She repulsed him. She repulsed him because he could see, with a clarity that arrived far too late, every move she'd made — every late night extended by twenty minutes, every coffee placed on his desk, every story rewritten with herself at the center, every whispered we that had slowly, systematically erased Madeleine from the grammar of his daily life.
"I gave you everything," Victoria said. Her voice was low, stripped. For the first time, he heard the raw thing underneath. "I gave you years. I care about you. I fell in love with you. I gave you my best ideas, my best work, my—"
"And my wife gave me years of patience while you tried to take her place. She told me — she told me clearly, with evidence, with examples — that you were doing this, and I looked at her and said she was overthinking it. I chose your feelings over hers in front of her face. I owe her a debt I may never be able to repay, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell me what you gave me when what you took was my marriage. "
Victoria's hands were trembling. She looked at the box on the chair, at the door. She looked at Drew.
"The twenty percent premium," she said. "I want twenty-five."
"Done."
She stood. She picked up the box — it was small, her personal effects, a few framed photos, a notebook, the custom diffuser from the 19th Street arcade — and held it against her hip. At the door she turned.
"She won't take you back."
"Maybe not. But that's between me and my wife. You don't get a vote anymore."
She left. The perfume lingered for another hour, fading slowly. Drew opened every window in his office and let the air pour in until the room smelled like nothing but cold and concrete and the beginning of whatever came next.
He sat at his desk, opening a blank document on his laptop. He stared at the cursor blinking on the white page and thought about what to write.
Letters were his first instinct and his first instinct was wrong.
A letter was a pitch. A letter was a presentation.
A letter was Drew Adler doing what Drew Adler always did: constructing a case, building an argument, deploying words to achieve an outcome.
Madeleine didn't need his words. She'd had his words for months.
She'd had you're overthinking it and she's not a threat and that was nice and we're good, right?
She'd been drowning in his words. What she needed was his patience.
His willingness to sit in the wreckage he'd made and not try to fix it on his timeline.
He closed the laptop.
He thought about Madeleine. About Cape May. The coffee she'd walked six blocks to get. I put cream in it, is that right? Her blue eyes in the early light. The moment on the beach when he'd known, with a certainty that had nothing to do with data or analysis, that this woman was his life.
She still was. If she'd let him prove it.
Drew picked up his phone and typed one text: I know what Victoria told you. All of it was a lie. I will never ask you to take my word for it. I will show you. However long that takes.