Chapter Ten
Jackson
It's been three weeks since I walked out of Rose's apartment.
She's held true to her word. I haven't seen her. She's been working, emails come through, her status light burns green on my screen like a pulse I check more often than I'll ever admit, but I haven't laid eyes on her since the day her lights went out in that lobby.
My father was arrested the day after his visit to the building, exactly as planned.
The marriage is dissolved. Elyse is off my property.
I expected one of those things to feel bigger than it does, maybe all of them, but mostly there's just the absence of weight.
Turns out three years of shackles don't make much noise when they come off. They just stop pulling.
The press was relentless for a while, trying to paint Rose as unstable after the lobby footage leaked.
We stopped what we could, but enough got out that she had to tell Bennet what happened to her.
I don't know how that conversation went.
I only know he was in pieces for nearly a week afterward, inconsolable in a way I've never seen him before, and whatever Rose gave him, he hasn't spoken a word of it to me.
Good.
At least one of us learned the lesson before it cost him everything.
We're walking out of a press conference where Blaire Monroe finally addressed the public.
Her husband had been abusing her for the entirety of their marriage, brutally, and Bennet and I took a trip to Houston beforehand to have a very direct conversation with the motherfucker about how things would proceed from there.
Turns out Blaire is a pretty cool chick underneath all that armor, and my best friend is completely fucking gone for her. He told me last night he's planning to propose soon.
I'm happy for him.
I am.
Just in the distant way you're happy about weather in someone else's city. Nice that the sun is shining somewhere.
A board meeting was called immediately after the press conference, and I don't give a single shit what's on the agenda. The only thing I care about is that Rose will be there.
I need to see her.
Not talk to her. I know better than to ask for that yet.
Just see her.
Make sure she's standing. Make sure she's eating. Make sure there is still some version of her moving through the world that I can look at from across a table and know I didn't destroy completely.
By the time everyone settles into the conference room, I can barely sit still.
Frank is here too. He still holds his board seat for strategic reasons only, and he knows exactly how lucky he is to have it because the alternative was a cell somewhere down the hall from my father's. He hasn't looked directly at me once since I sat down.
Smart man.
The conference room door opens as Rose walks in, and every cell in my body turns toward her like she's true north.
There's a young woman I don't recognize walking a step behind her, but I barely register her because I'm waiting for Rose's eyes to find mine. One glance. One flicker. Anything that tells me I'm still somewhere in the landscape.
She doesn't look at me.
Not even accidentally.
That's somehow worse than deliberate avoidance. If she looked away too quickly, if her jaw tightened, if anything in her face shifted when she passed my side of the table, I could at least tell myself I still affect her.
But there is nothing.
I'm simply not in the room she's walking through.
Rose takes her seat with the young woman on her right and Bennet on her left, opens the folder in front of her and starts arranging papers like this is any other meeting.
And I learn, in real time, what it costs to become furniture to the woman who owns you.
"Anybody know what this is about?" Bennet asks the table.
The door opens again before anyone answers, and Laura, our HR Director, walks in carrying a stack of packets.
"Hello. Sorry to keep you all waiting."
She takes the chair at the head of the table.
The chair reserved for whoever called the meeting.
Laura passes a packet down each side of the table, and I don't touch mine at first. I just watch it slide toward me until it stops beside my hand.
"I've brought you here because Rosalie is resigning as Senior Counsel and relinquishing her seat on this board."
The room goes silent. I look at Rose.
Bennet's head whips toward his sister, mouth open, brows crashed together.
So he didn't know either. Fuck. It just keeps getting worse. She's not just done with me. She's sealed herself off from all of us.
He draws breath to speak, but Laura's hand comes up. "We all know the bylaws. She couldn't disclose the board seat until this moment. Please hold questions until the end. Your materials outline the division of her shares and the candidates for her seat."
I can't look at the papers. I can't take my eyes off Rose.
Her gaze stays fixed on Laura. Her fingers are linked together and resting on the conference table, still as a photograph, not a tremble in sight.
Three weeks ago I watched this woman shatter on a marble floor, and now she sits twenty feet away from me immaculate and unreachable, and I can't decide if what I'm looking at is healing or the world's most beautiful sarcophagus.
“...Jade Gallagher will be stepping in as Senior Counsel, effective immediately. Do either of you need to address the room?"
I realize I haven't heard a single fucking word.
"No. I'm done here," Rose says, matter-of-fact.
"Then we're adjourned."
Just like that.
Rose starts gathering her things while the rest of the board closes in around her with their pleasantries.
We'll miss you. What an incredible run. You built half of this place.
She doesn't smile at a single one of them.
She nods along to whatever they're saying with the mechanical courtesy of a woman greeting strangers at a funeral, and I realize with a sick lurch that that's exactly what this is.
We're all standing around the casket making small talk.
None of them can see the body.
Jade leans in close and murmurs something against Rose's ear before slipping out of the room.
Rose doesn't react to that either. Whatever was said, it was already known, already settled.
The two of them have choreographed this down to the minute while the rest of us were carrying on like her life hadn't already been dismantled behind closed doors.
None of this feels real. There should be a vote. A transition period. A hearing. A fight. Something with friction in it. Something that takes time. Something that gives a man an opening.
But she's a lawyer.
Of course the bylaws are airtight. Of course she found the one clean seam in the whole corporate structure and slipped through it without a sound.
She's been planning this since...
Since the night I left her apartment.
She's been executing this for three weeks while I watched a green status light on my screen and told myself it meant she was okay.
Bennet clears his throat, sharp enough that the board members still lingering around Rose scatter like birds.
"Sis." His voice has none of the boardroom in it now. "Why?"
"I have to. I don't have a choice."
Bennet's eyes cut to me, and all I can do is hunch my shoulders because what the fuck am I supposed to give him?
Rose is answering like a recording of herself.
The woman who once threatened to drown him in the lobby fountain is sitting there with nothing in her face and barely anything in her voice.
"Okay." He tries again, gentler this time, the way you approach something wounded. "Are you going to another firm?"
"No. I'm just leaving. I don't know when I'll be back." She pauses, and it costs her nothing while taking years off my life. "If I'll be back."
"Leaving?"
"Yes."
"Rose, you're scaring me."
"Sorry."
Not don't be scared. Not I'll be fine. Just sorry.
An apology issued with the same flat courtesy you'd use after bumping a stranger's shopping cart, and I watch it land in Bennet's breath. Watch him look at his sister and realize he doesn't recognize the woman wearing her face.
Where is she? The thought is a visceral scream in my head.
Where the fuck is she, because this isn't Rose. This is the vacancy she left behind, and somebody in this room has to say something before she walks out and takes the last visible piece of herself with her.
"When are you leaving?" I manage.
It's the first thing I've said since the meeting started. My voice comes out rusted, and every head at the table turns toward me except the only one that matters.
Rose doesn't look up. She doesn't pause while sliding her portfolio into her bag. For one suspended second I think she's simply going to pretend I never spoke.
Then...
"Now."
One word, delivered to the room at large. Not to me. Not to Bennet. To the fucking air, I guess.
She shoulders her bag, turns on her heel and walks out of the conference room without a backward glance at her brother, the company she built, or me.