It was Marcus who ruined everything.
He called her Friday morning, ten minutes before a meeting, his voice tight with something she had learned to recognize as controlled panic.
"Nora. A journalist from the Herald is asking questions."
She stepped into a stairwell, letting the door close behind her. "What kind of questions?"
"The kind that involve your real name. Your maiden name. Your married name." A pause. "She knows you were married to Damien Cross."
The stairwell was very quiet.
"How?"
"Marriage records. They're public. Someone cross-referenced the timing of the NovaTech acquisition with Cross's divorce filing. Apparently the dates were — noticeable."
Noticeable. The divorce finalized the same week the acquisition closed. Of course it was noticeable. She had known this was a risk. She had calculated it, accepted it, built contingency plans around it.
What she had not calculated was the way her stomach dropped right now.
"How long do I have?" she asked.
"The article is scheduled for Sunday. That gives you forty-eight hours."
Forty-eight hours before the entire city — before Damien — found out that the woman sitting across from him in his boardroom was the wife he had discarded by courier.
She hung up. Stood in the stairwell for exactly thirty seconds. Then she straightened her jacket, opened the door, and walked back into the building.
She had a meeting.
— — —
She considered telling him herself.
All through the morning meeting she turned it over in her mind, watching him at the head of the table, professional and focused, occasionally glancing at her with that new, considering look he had developed over the past week.
She could ask to speak with him privately. She could sit down, look him in the eye, and say: Damien, I need to tell you something. I was Clara. I am Clara. The woman you put out in the rain with a suitcase and a check is sitting across from you right now, running the company you paid four hundred million dollars for.
She imagined his face.
She wasn't ready. Not because she was afraid. But because she hadn't finished yet.
She was close — so close — to completing the integration, to securing NovaTech's independence clause in the merger agreement, to ensuring that when she walked away, she did so with everything she had earned and nothing that tied her back to him.
Two more weeks.
She just needed two more weeks.
"Ms. Walsh."
She looked up. The meeting had ended. The room had emptied. Damien was standing beside her chair.
"You've been quiet today," he said.
"I'm always quiet," she replied.
"Not like this." He studied her. "What's wrong?"
She looked up at him — this man who had broken her heart without knowing it, who was now looking at her with genuine concern in his eyes — and for a wild, unguarded moment she almost said it.
"Nothing," she said instead. "Just thinking about the Phase Two timeline."
He held her gaze for a moment longer than she was comfortable with. Then he nodded.
"Let me know if you need anything," he said, and walked out.
Nora sat alone in the empty boardroom.
Forty-eight hours.
She opened her laptop and got to work.