“See what taking interview requests with actual reporters every now and then can do?” she comments. “Instead of running away and hiding?”
“Oh no,” I wave a dismissive hand. “The favorable piece wasn’t because of my interview. It was your presentation. You were fucking brilliant.”
Her cheeks flush. “I was just doing my job.”
“You demolished all the arguments like swiss cheese,” I counter. “That’s not ‘just’ anything. Yes, the good press we had was all because of you.”
She looks down at her plate. “Thank you.” Then: “By the way, in that reporter’s piece, Xavier Laurent was brought up.The former board member who buried your objections those five years ago. Is he a problem?”
“He’s being dealt with,” I reply.
Which is the truth.
Just not the whole truth.
The silence stretches again. I should say something. Anything. But my brain is running projections on how this conversation could go and none of them end well.
“So,” she says suddenly. “I understand now why you couldn’t tell me what happened five years ago. You didn’t want to put me in an impossible position. You know, the whole, either destroyyourcareer by going public with whatever you told me, or stay silent and watch Leena go down. And I thank you for that.” She pauses, her eyes on mine. “But here’s what I need to know. If you could go back, knowing everything that happened afterward, would you have blown the whistle yourself instead? Would you have destroyed your own career rather than letting the board bury the incident? So that Leena had a fighting chance, and we...” She trails off. “So that we’d still be together?”
I set down my fork.
There it is. The question I’ve been asking myself for five years. The one that keeps me awake at three in the morning when the guilt gets loud enough to drown out everything else.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I’d have burned my career if I’d known how things would end.”
Amara leans forward slightly. “You really mean that?”
“Without hesitation.” I meet her eyes. “I chose optics over honesty, and it cost everyone. Leena. You. The families who depended on her charity. I made a calculated decision to protect the firm’s reputation, and it was the wrong fucking call. I made billions. And lost everything in the process.”
“But youdidtry to stop it,” she counters. “Even if you didn’t tell me until recently.”
“Yes, but trying isn’t the same as succeeding.” My hands curl into fists under the table. “I wrote memos. I objected. I flagged the ethical concerns. And then I let Xavier bury it because I was too afraid of the fallout. Like I told you already. I don’t blame you for leaving me. It was the right call. I looked guilty. Hell, Iwasguilty. What I did was cowardice dressed up as strategy.”
She’s quiet for a long time. Then she says, so softly I almost miss it, “You matter in this equation.”
I shake my head, flash a wan smile. “No, I don’t.”
“You do,” she insists. “To me.”
The words hit me somewhere deep inside, and I reach across the table without thinking.
My hand finds hers, and she lets me take it.
Her fingers are warm, and for a second I think maybe this is salvageable. Maybe we can build something from the wreckage.
Then she asks, “Why do I feel there’s something else you’re not telling me?”
And there’s the line.
I could lie.
Insist I’ve told her everything.
No.
I’m done lying.
Especially to her.
