“Sit down.”
She looked shocked.
It was the first time that night he had spoken to her without protecting the performance.
“You said this was handled,” she whispered.
The words were quiet, but the room was quiet enough for everyone to hear them.
Grant’s expression changed again.
“Sloane.”
“You said the shares were dealt with.”
His father opened his eyes.
One board member looked at the other.
Grant went completely still.
Sloane realized what she had said a second too late.
I didn’t need to ask what Grant had told her.
Her panic had answered enough.
“I meant the divorce,” she said quickly.
Nobody believed her.
Grant stood again.
“We’re leaving.”
“You can,” I said.
He looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there.
“What?”
“You said I could sit wherever I wanted.
I’m returning the favor.
You can leave whenever you want.”
He looked around the table, perhaps expecting his parents or the board members to stand with him.
Nobody did.
Sloane picked up her bag.
Before she walked away, she looked at the place card still in my hand.
For the first time, she seemed embarrassed by it.
Grant remained beside his chair.
“You think this makes you look powerful?”
I shook my head.
“No.
I think it makes the documents visible.
That’s all they needed to be.”
The board members asked to keep copies of the expense records and the proposed voting transfer for review.
I gave them copies.
Not originals.
Grant noticed that too.
“You’ve been planning this for months,” he said.
“I’ve been paying attention for months.”
There was a difference, and he finally understood it.
The dinner ended without dessert.
There was no dramatic applause.
No one cheered when Grant walked out.
Real humiliation was quieter than that.
His mother cried silently into her napkin.
His father sat staring at the table.
The board members spoke to each other in low voices before leaving with the copies I had prepared.
Naomi waited until the room was almost empty before coming to me.
“You knew?”
“Enough.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to stop asking him for explanations he was never going to give me honestly.”
She looked at the altered place card.
“Are you keeping that?”
