“They were in the process of being secured.
Everyone knew that.”
“Did Amber know?” Isaac asked.
It was the first time he had spoken since the meeting began.
His voice was quiet.
Kenton looked at him.
“This isn’t your concern.”
Isaac’s expression barely changed.
“My investment group is one of the groups you asked to finance the expansion.
It became my concern the moment your projections relied on an asset you couldn’t legally transfer.”
Silence settled over the table.
Kenton blinked.
Amber saw understanding arrive piece by piece.
The private investor he had been courting.
The delays he could never quite explain.
The additional questions his financial team had received.
Amber disappearing from his reach.
Isaac sitting beside her now.
Kenton looked again at their rings.
“What exactly is this?” he demanded.
Isaac did not answer immediately.
Amber did.
“My husband is asking whether you misrepresented my property to his investment group.”
For perhaps the first time since Amber had known him, Kenton had no immediate response.
His face went pale.
Two months earlier, he had told Amber she was a burden he refused to support.
Now the supposedly powerless woman he had discarded sat across from him carrying his children, controlling the license his deal required, with one of his most important potential investors beside her.
Kenton recovered quickly enough to become angry.
“You married him?”
Amber’s hand rested lightly over her belly.
“That isn’t the issue in this room.”
“You barely knew him.”
Isaac’s gaze sharpened.
Amber remained calm.
“And you knew me for ten years before telling me my pregnancy made me inconvenient.
So I don’t think you’re qualified to lecture me about what makes a marriage real.”
Tessa lowered her eyes, hiding the smallest smile.
Kenton pushed his chair back.
“This is retaliation.
She’s trying to destroy a legitimate project because she’s bitter about the divorce.”
“No,” Amber said.
“I came because the project involves technology I own.
The hospital expansion can continue if the rights are negotiated honestly.
What cannot continue is you pretending those rights belong to you.”
That distinction mattered.
Amber did not want a hospital project to collapse simply because Kenton had attached himself to it.
Patients, doctors and employees had nothing to do with what he had done to her.
Isaac’s investment team had already considered that problem.
The expansion could be restructured.
The platform could be licensed directly from Amber under transparent terms.
The hospital project could move forward without allowing Kenton to control an asset he did not own.
Kenton understood what that meant before anyone said it aloud.
The project might survive.
His position in it might not.
He pointed toward the folder.
“Those transfers prove nothing.”
