“My car is six minutes away.”
Mark pointed toward the Escalade.
“Paul will take you.”
Paul finally spoke.
“I’m sorry, Mr.
Anderson.
The updated authorization names Mrs.
Anderson as the sole passenger principal.”
Mark stared at him.
“You got that already?”
Paul’s eyes met his in the mirror.
“Yes, sir.”
Camille let out a humorless laugh.
“Unbelievable.”
She stepped into the rain to wait near the curb, keeping several feet between herself and Mark.
The distance was small, but its meaning was unmistakable.
Mark turned to Isabelle again.
His voice dropped.
“Do you know what people will say?”
She looked across Fifth Avenue at the restaurant entrance, where strangers had watched her husband send her to the back seat.
“Yes,” she said.
“For once, they will say it about you.”
Helen guided Isabelle inside the tower.
Mark followed them through the revolving doors, but security stopped him in the lobby.
“I’m with my wife,” he said.
Isabelle did not turn around.
Helen had already notified the building that Mark was not her client and had no invitation to the firm’s floor.
The elevator doors closed on the sight of him arguing with a security supervisor beneath the white marble lights.
Upstairs, Isabelle signed the final documents.
At 12:01 a.m., the divorce petition entered the filing system.
Notices went to the penthouse management company and the trust’s bank.
The vehicle authorization took effect.
The board packet was delivered to every director.
Helen poured two glasses of water.
“You can still stay elsewhere tonight,” she said.
“The apartment may feel difficult.”
Isabelle looked through the office windows at the rain moving over Manhattan.
“No,” she said.
“I’m going home.”
Paul drove her there alone.
When the Escalade passed the restaurant again, Camille was gone.
Mark stood beneath the awning with his phone pressed to his ear, gesturing sharply at an unseen caller.
He looked smaller from the back seat.
At the penthouse, the night manager greeted Isabelle by name.
A technician was already changing the digital access permissions.
Mark’s clothing and personal effects remained inside; the court process would determine how they were collected.
Nothing was thrown away.
Nothing was damaged.
Isabelle did not need revenge.
She needed boundaries with locks on them.
She entered the bedroom and removed her cream coat.
On the dresser sat a framed photograph from the night Mark proposed.
In it, he stood beside her on a Central Park terrace, one arm around her waist, both of them laughing at something outside the frame.
She did not smash the photograph.
She placed it face down.
At 7:52 the next morning, Mark entered the boardroom wearing the same tuxedo shirt beneath a borrowed jacket.
