CHAPTER FOUR Hes Not Signing
Dominic — POV
Richard Holt arrived at seven-oh-three.
Dominic was already at the boardroom table with two cups of black coffee and the divorce petition in a clear document sleeve, which Richard took and read in silence while Dominic stood at the window looking out at a city that was already fully operational at seven in the morning in the way of things that did not require permission.
He had not slept.
He had lain on top of the covers in the dark until three and then given up and showered and dressed and come here, because the apartment was not a place he could exist in last night. Too quiet. Too much of her absence taking up space.
Richard set the petition down.
"She's engaged Elliot Crane," he said.
"You recognize the name."
"I do." Richard removed his glasses and placed them on the table with the particular deliberateness of a man preparing to deliver information he knows will not be received well. "He's one of the three best matrimonial attorneys in New York. He does not take cases he does not expect to win."
"He won't win this one."
Richard looked at him. "Dominic. I've been your attorney for eleven years.
In that time I've advised you on nine major acquisitions, four hostile takeovers, a shareholder revolt, and the regulatory audit of two thousand nineteen.
I have never told you something you did not want to hear without first telling you that I am telling you something you do not want to hear. "
"Then tell me."
"This is not a case you win by contesting.
Crane will build a narrative of marital neglect over four years.
He has, I can virtually guarantee, documentation.
Dates. Incidents. Witnesses. The photograph from last night's gala will be exhibit one.
" He paused. "Where were you, incidentally, when the photograph was taken? "
"The Diane Yao situation was professional. She is an associate at Meridian Capital—"
"I know who she is. So will the court. The photograph won't hold up as evidence of infidelity.
But it will hold up as evidence of a husband who was at a charity gala on his wedding anniversary without his wife after telling her the event was canceled.
" Richard paused again. "Did you tell her it was canceled? "
Dominic was quiet for one beat too long.
"Dominic."
"I may have. The details of the conversation—"
"Did you attend this gala while your wife believed it was not occurring?"
"The scheduling changed."
"She didn't know that."
"It was an oversight."
Richard replaced his glasses. "Crane will call it a pattern."
The word sat on the table between them. Dominic looked at it without looking at it — the way you look at a thing you cannot bear to examine directly.
The door opened. Marcus Webb entered with his jacket over his arm, his expression carrying the careful neutrality he deployed when he already knew what had happened and was working out how to present it.
He sat down across from Dominic without being invited because Marcus had not needed an invitation in twelve years.
"The photo has moved," Marcus said. "Finance blogs picked it up overnight. Three morning show mentions. The Post is running a sidebar in the eight o'clock edition."
"Managed by whom?"
"Someone fed it. Timed perfectly, given it's your anniversary and Serena's already filed." He put his elbows on the table. "Dom. This came from inside."
Dominic looked at him.
"It came from someone with access to your schedule, knowledge of the gala, and motive to put the story in circulation at the most damaging possible moment.
" Marcus held his gaze. "Victoria has pulled this kind of thing before.
Small things. I've let them go because I didn't have enough to say anything. "
"My mother wouldn't—"
"She introduced Diane Yao to your scheduling team. She suggested the Meridian partnership that had you at that gala. And she called the Post's society editor last Tuesday — I know this because the society editor told a mutual contact who told me this morning."
Dominic put both hands flat on the table.
"There's something else," Marcus said. He did not look comfortable. He looked, in fact, like a man who had been holding something for a considerable time and had decided the weight of holding it was no longer sustainable. "Serena miscarried in year three. You were in Singapore."
"I know. I was there when—"
"You came back two days later."
"The meetings were—"
"Dom." Marcus' voice was steady and entirely without judgment, which made it worse.
"The meetings were not the reason. I've been in the files this week.
I've been looking at things I should have looked at a long time ago.
Your Singapore trip — the specific week of Serena's miscarriage — the critical meetings you believed were non-negotiable? "
Dominic went still.
"The other party filed for rescheduling three days before you flew out.
The meetings were gone before you got on the plane.
" Marcus held the silence for two full seconds.
"You didn't know. I'm not saying you knew.
But someone on your team knew and did not tell you.
You spent five days in Singapore on a dead deal while your wife was in a hospital alone. "
The boardroom was very quiet.
Dominic heard his own breathing.
"Who?" His voice came out from somewhere lower than usual.
"I'm still pulling the thread. But the assistant on that trip was Elena Marsh. She was hired—"
"Through my mother's referral," Dominic said.
"Through your mother's lawyer, specifically." Marcus did not look away. "Yes."
He had thought, last night, sitting on the edge of his bed with the ring in his hand, that he understood the shape of his failure. He had thought it was the accumulated weight of a thousand small neglects, a man too focused on the empire to tend to the person beside him.
He was now understanding that the shape was different from what he had thought.
Some of his failures were his.
Entirely, categorically his — the inattention, the assumption, the emotional blindness of a man who had confused provision with love. He could not absolve himself of those. He would not.
But some of this had been engineered.
And the thing that split him open, quietly and completely, sitting in the boardroom with Richard and Marcus and the morning light coming in off the skyline — was that it didn't matter.
Because even if Victoria had never interfered, the marriage had been failing.
Because he had let it fail. Because his mother could only work with the gaps he created, and he had created vast ones, and she had moved through them like water through a crack he had left unattended.
He picked up his phone.
"Elena Marsh," he said. "I want everything. Where she is now. Every email, every calendar entry, every communication from the week of that Singapore trip. Full access."
"Already pulling it," Marcus said.
"And I want the Crane firm's opposing counsel file started today. Not to fight the divorce." He paused. "To understand exactly what Serena has, what she knows, what she's been told. Not to use against her. To understand the full scope of what happened in this marriage."
Richard and Marcus exchanged a look.
"That's an unusual approach," Richard said carefully.
"She deserves to know I understand it," Dominic said. "All of it. Not a curated version. The whole map." He stood up. "She's not signing those papers. And neither am I. Not yet. But I'm not contesting because I think I can win an argument. I'm contesting because I am not finished."
He walked to the window.
Below, Manhattan moved. Cabs and trucks and people arriving at offices that would consume them for the next ten hours. He had spent his adult life contributing to that consumption. He had hired good people and driven them hard and believed that the machine's success was the measure of his own.
He thought about Serena in a hospital room.
Thought about her calling him and getting his voicemail because he was in a meeting that had already been canceled.
Thought about two days.
He had made her wait two days.
He put his hand on the window glass and felt the cold.
"One more thing," Marcus said from behind him.
He turned. Marcus was holding his phone.
"Crane's office filed an addendum this morning, in addition to the petition.
" He glanced at the screen. "Serena is requesting that the penthouse be listed for sale.
She doesn't want it. She wants no settlement from the property. She wants none of it."
Richard began to say something about the financial implications.
Dominic raised a hand and Richard stopped.
She didn't want the penthouse.
She had lived in that apartment for four years, turned it into a home by the sheer force of her presence and her taste and her warmth, and she wanted none of it. She was walking away from forty floors of everything he had given her without looking back.
Because she had never wanted the apartment.
She had wanted him.
And he had given her the apartment instead.
"List it," he said.
"Dominic—"
"List the penthouse." He turned from the window.
"Whatever Serena needs to be comfortable, whatever she needs to feel that this process is not another way I'm failing her — give it to her.
No negotiation. No withholding. Whatever she needs.
" He looked at Richard. "Make that clear to Crane's office. "
Richard wrote something down.
Dominic picked up his phone and typed one text to Serena's number. He did not deliberate. He did not draft it three times.
I know I'm the last person you want to hear from. I know that. But I need to ask you something. Not to change your mind. Just to understand. When did I lose you? Not last night. Not the photograph. I know it wasn't last night. Tell me when.
He put the phone face-down on the table.
It did not receive a reply.
Not that day.
Not the next.
But he held the question like a man who had finally learned to sit with the things he could not control, and he waited.