Chapter 6: The Conversation He Should Have Had
She was still at the resort.
That surprised him.
He had assumed she would have left immediately after the signing, retreated to some arrangement Declan Pierce had made for her — a car, a flight, a clean exit.
Instead she was three floors above him in a suite that, he realized when he looked it up, had been booked under her own name four days ago.
She had checked in the same day he had.
He took the elevator to the seventh floor.
Knocked twice.
The door opened almost immediately, as though she had been standing on the other side of it.
Grace stepped back to let him in.
She had changed out of the emerald dress into a loose cream blouse and dark trousers.
Her hair was pulled back.
One lamp was on.
The black folder was on the coffee table, closed.
She sat in the chair across from the sofa.
She did not offer him anything.
He sat down anyway.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
"You've been planning this for a long time," he said.
"Yes."
"The trust shares.
The access log.
The board meeting."
"I didn't plan the board meeting.
That's Declan's decision.
I gave him the shares.
What he does with them is his business."
"You gave him a weapon."
Grace looked at him steadily.
"You gave me a reason to."
He leaned forward.
"Grace, whatever you think you know about the Meridian transaction—"
"I don't think anything about it." Her voice was calm.
"I have the approval chain.
I have the invoice.
I have the email you sent Cole Drayden three days before the board vote telling him the fee had been arranged and asking him not to contact you directly for the next sixty days." She paused.
"I've had all of it for nineteen months."
"Then why didn't you use it nineteen months ago?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
Her hand moved to rest on her stomach — a small, unconscious gesture.
"Because nineteen months ago I was trying to save our marriage," she said.
"I found the file by accident.
I wasn't looking for it.
I was looking for the insurance documents after my father d*ed and I needed to update the beneficiary forms." She stopped.
"I saw the folder name.
I opened it.
I read it.
And then I spent the next year and a half deciding what to do."
"And what you decided was to sell my own shares out from under me."
"What I decided," she said quietly, "was that I was done protecting you from yourself." She stood up and moved to the window.
"I covered for you with the Hargrove dinner when you were in Chicago with Vanessa.
I told your mother you were traveling for work when she called on our anniversary and you didn't answer.
I sat across from your board members at charity events and smiled and answered questions about the company's future and I knew — I knew — what you were doing and who you were doing it with." She turned back to face him.
"And I was seven months pregnant and completely alone and I decided I was done."
Ethan said nothing.
"I didn't go to the press," Grace said.
"I didn't go to the SEC.
I didn't call Gerald Hurst.
I made one phone call to Declan Pierce, who had approached me six months earlier about the shares and whom I had turned down, and I told him I had changed my mind." She sat back down.
"That's all I did."
"That's all you did." His voice tightened.
"You handed fourteen percent of my company to the most aggressive acquirer in the country."
"I sold my shares," she said.
"My shares.
That my father left me.
That I never asked you for anything in exchange for." Her voice didn't rise.
"You want to be angry at me for that, Ethan, you go ahead.
But you should be very careful about the kind of anger you're performing right now, given where I found you this afternoon."
The room went quiet.
His phone buzzed on the cushion beside him.
He looked at the screen.
Vanessa.
He turned it face-down.
Grace watched him do it.
Something moved across her face — not satisfaction, not pain.
Something older than both.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want a divorce," she said.
"I want the house in Connecticut.
I want full custody with reasonable visitation.
I want a settlement that reflects fourteen years of marriage and the specific contributions I made to this company in its first four years when it was still losing money and you needed someone to believe in it." She paused.
"And I want you to leave me alone after that."
"And Pierce?"
"Declan is a business associate.
What happens between him and your board is between him and your board."
"Grace—"
"I'm not negotiating tonight, Ethan." She stood up.
"I'm seven months pregnant and I'm tired and I've said what I needed to say.
My attorney will contact Robert Fitch on Monday morning." She walked to the door and opened it.
"You should get some sleep.
You have a difficult few weeks ahead of you."
He stood.
Crossed the room.
Stopped in the doorway.
"Did you ever love me?" he asked.
He hadn't planned to say it.
Grace looked at him for a long moment.
"I loved you for eleven years," she said.
"And then I watched you choose not to be worth it." She stepped back from the door.
"Good night, Ethan."
The door closed.
He stood in the hallway for a moment, the corridor empty and bright around him.
Then his phone buzzed again.
Not Vanessa this time.
Marcus Webb.
He answered.
"Ethan." Marcus's voice was stripped of its earlier caution.
Something had shifted.
"You need to see what just came through on the financial wire."
"What is it?"
"Pierce issued a public statement twenty minutes ago.
He's not just calling a board meeting." A pause.
May you like
"He's announcing a full tender offer for the Calloway Group.
He's going public with it."
