Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Took Off the Ring
Savannah came to Claire’s office wearing jeans.
Without the designer dress and carefully arranged smile, she looked younger.
More frightened.
Claire remained behind the desk.
“If you’re here to explain what Ethan really meant, don’t.”
“I’m here because I found something.”
Savannah placed her phone on the desk.
A message thread.
Ethan and the media consultant.
Use the romance angle. Nobody wants to read a capitalization table.
Claire felt a cold, familiar anger.
Savannah swallowed.
“He sent it to me by mistake.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“And you waited.”
“Yes.”
Claire appreciated that she did not invent a better answer.
Savannah looked toward the chair.
“May I?”
Claire nodded.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Savannah removed her engagement ring and held it in her palm.
“He told me you refused to accept the breakup.”
“I accepted it. I didn’t enjoy it.”
“He said you threatened to destroy the business if he married me.”
“No.”
“I know.”
Claire leaned back.
“What changed your mind?”
“My father asked questions Ethan couldn’t answer. Then I asked whether the money in his development company was his.”
“What did he say?”
“That I sounded like you.”
Claire almost laughed.
Savannah looked down.
“I was cruel in that room.”
“Yes.”
“I thought if you looked small, I would look secure.”
The admission sat between them.
Claire remembered the deliberate glance at her body.
The word unnecessary.
“You made a choice,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m not going to make you feel better about it.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Savannah slid a printed packet across the desk.
Ethan had sent her an investment summary to reassure her father.
It described Mercer as wholly controlled by Cole Meridian.
Attached were schedules Claire had never seen.
Several included her professional credentials beneath representations she had not prepared.
Claire called Marisol.
Then she asked Savannah to send the materials directly to counsel and preserve the original messages.
Savannah stood.
“For what it’s worth, the wedding’s off.”
Claire looked at the ring.
“That sounds like a decision for you.”
“It is.”
At the door, Savannah paused.
“I hope things work out with Damian.”
Claire considered her carefully.
“I hope you learn to like yourself without needing another woman to lose.”
Savannah’s eyes filled.
She nodded and left.
That evening, Ethan appeared outside Claire’s building.
The doorman refused him entry.
Claire could see him through the glass from the elevator.
For one second, memory betrayed her.
Ethan at twenty-six, holding cheap flowers.
Ethan laughing beside a broken rental car.
Ethan asking her to believe in a company that existed mostly inside his head.
Then he saw her.
His face hardened.
“You’re turning Savannah against me now?”
Claire stopped several feet from the entrance.
“No. She’s reading.”
“Don’t do this through glass.”
“You chose to come uninvited.”
He lowered his voice.
“Please. We can fix the paperwork.”
“Was it paperwork when you used my signature?”
“I was protecting what we built.”
“You were selling what I owned.”
His expression shifted.
For a moment, she saw him calculate whether tenderness would work.
“I loved you.”
Claire’s chest ached.
“I know you did.”
“Then remember who I am.”
She held his gaze.
“I am.”
She turned toward the doorman.
“Please ask him to leave.”
Ethan struck the glass with his palm.
Not hard enough to break it.
Hard enough to end the last illusion.
Claire stepped back.
The doorman called security.
Upstairs, she locked her door and cried for twenty minutes.
When Damian called, she answered.
“Do you want me there?” he asked.
She wiped her face.
“Yes.”
He arrived with soup and no questions she wasn’t ready to answer.
May you like
Later, sitting beside him on the couch, Claire realized she was not grieving because she wanted Ethan back.
She was grieving because she finally believed herself.
