Chapter 8: The Part Where He Tries to Win
Wade called three more times that evening.
I didn't answer.
The fourth time, I picked up.
"You went to a lawyer." His voice was controlled, but something underneath it wasn't.
"I did."
"That was a mistake."
"Was it."
"Noelle." The charm came back, smoothed over the edge in his voice like plaster over a crack.
"We have fifteen years together.
We have a son.
Whatever you think happened with the paperwork, it can be corrected.
I'm willing to sit down and work this out.
No lawyers, no courts.
Just us."
"The way we worked out the Seattle documents?" I said.
"Where my name is on every liability clause and yours appears once as a consultant?"
Silence.
"Or the way we worked out the March fourteenth signature?" I said.
"The one filed from your floor while I was in a hospital waiting room?"
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I have the IP log, Wade."
More silence.
Longer this time.
"Whatever Donna told you—"
"Donna showed me.
There's a difference." I kept my voice even.
"I also have the document you asked Kendra to sign.
The one she didn't."
The silence that followed was a different kind.
Not calculating.
Exposed.
"She had no right—"
"She had every right.
You tried to buy her silence before the gala started.
That tells me you knew exactly what you were doing and you planned for it to hold." I paused.
"It didn't hold."
"I will tie this up in court for three years," he said.
The charm was gone now.
"You'll spend everything you have on legal fees.
You'll lose the house.
You'll put Tobin through a war.
Is that what you want?"
"I want my company back," I said.
"And I want my name off the Seattle liabilities you put me on without my knowledge.
And I want the original brooch clasp fixed, since you apparently never did that either."
"Don't be—"
"I'm going to hang up now, Wade.
My lawyer will be in contact with yours."
"Noelle—"
"Goodnight."
I ended the call.
Tobin was in the kitchen doorway.
He'd heard enough — I could see it in the set of his mouth, the particular stillness he had when he was processing something he didn't entirely understand but knew was serious.
"Is it going to be okay?" he asked.
I looked at my son.
Twelve years old.
He had stood at a microphone in front of four hundred people and told the truth because he knew where I'd been that night.
Because he'd been there with me.
"Yes," I said.
"It's going to take a while.
But yes."
He nodded.
Came and sat at the kitchen table.
After a moment he said, "Can I help?"
"You already did," I said.
"You already did the hardest part."
He thought about that.
Then: "What did Kendra whisper to him?
At the gala.
You never told me."
I sat down across from him.
"She told him she hadn't signed the document he gave her."
Tobin was quiet for a moment.
"So he thought he was safe and then he wasn't."
"Yes."
"Good," he said simply.
My phone buzzed.
Sylvia.
I read the message: *Injunction granted.
Filed forty minutes ago.
He can't touch the company structure until this is resolved.
Get some rest — deposition prep starts Thursday.*
I set the phone down.
Tobin was looking at me.
"What does that mean?"
"It means the first wall is up," I said.
"He can't do anything else while we build the case."
"And then?"
"And then we take it back."
He nodded again, satisfied in the way he was when a problem had a clear next step.
Outside, Wade called one more time.
I watched the phone light up and go dark.
May you like
He called Donna next — I found out the following morning when she forwarded me a voicemail in which he told her, carefully and without raising his voice, that her position at the company was under review and that she should consider whether her loyalty was being placed wisely.
Sylvia added it to the file.
