Page 73 of The Marriage Blunder

“I think,” said Jude, “you have to confront her directly. Not through lawyers, not through a press campaign. You go to her, and you tell her exactly what you know, and you give her a chance to end it. If you give her a path to victimhood, she’ll take it. If you don’t, you might get out with less blood.”

Lucas considered this. “If we do that, she’s going to come at you.”

Jude shrugged, and it was the smallest, saddest movement I had ever seen. “She always has.”

No one said anything for a long moment. Jake cleared his throat. “If that’s how you want it, I’ll arrange backup.”

Lucas closed the folder, stood, and offered Jude a hand. “Let’s do it now, before she’s got time to regroup.”

Jude nodded, then turned to me, and for the first time all morning I saw in his eyes not defeat, but a kind of bleak, unblinking resolve. He was not afraid of what Carolyn would do to him. He was only afraid of leaving the mess unfinished for someone else.

I felt it then—the specific, hollow fury of realizing you could not protect someone, only stand with them.

I reached for his hand, not out of sentiment, but because the next hour was going to be ugly, and I wanted him to know I was not leaving the room. “We do it together,” I said.

Jude squeezed my hand, just once, and said, “Let’s go.”

* * * *

The elevator ride to Carolyn’s apartment was silent except for the hydraulic hum of the car and the distant slap of cables reeling overhead. Miles stood with his hands in his pockets, head tilted back, eyes closed. If he was running through the next thirty minutes in his mind, I could not tell.

Jude leaned against the far wall, not looking at either of us, hands loosely at his sides, like he’d given up deciding where to put them.

I had never been in this building before, but I knew it by reputation. Carolyn had chosen it for its anonymity: the kind of security system that would politely call a second elevator if you so much as glanced at a neighbor, the kind of lobby that left no fingerprints. There was no doorman—just a keyed elevator and a silent concierge who presumably ran background checks on the tenants twice a week.

The doors opened into a corridor of muted brown carpet and soundproofed walls, nothing to disturb the surface. Carolyn’s unit was at the end, the corner with the best light. I rang, and the door opened before the sound had finished echoing.

She was already dressed for a meeting she did not know was coming: tailored navy suit, hair in a twist, makeup that belonged to someone planning to survive two depositions and a dinner before midnight. She took one look at us, then at the folder in Miles’s hand, and smiled in the brittle, radiant way that always meant she had expected the move and already planned her next three.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “And Jude. I assume you’re not here for coffee.”

“We won’t be long,” I said, as if that had ever worked before.

She let us in. The apartment was expensively, almost antiseptically, perfect. Not a magazine out of place, not a throw pillow that had ever been sat upon. The walls were the soft off-white of a West Elm showroom; the view was panoramic, the skyline visible in a slab of glass the size of a tennis court.

At the far end of the living room, already seated, was Rosamund Vance.

If there was a lawyer more self-assured in a pantsuit, I had never met her. She rose, slow and deliberate, and extended a hand. “Kenneth. Miles. Jude.” She did not offer any line to Jude, just let his name sit there for a moment.

Carolyn gestured to the seating area. “Let’s not stand on ceremony,” she said, voice velvet and venom. “I’m sure we’re all on the same page by now.”

Jude did not sit. He stood behind the end of the couch, hands gripping the wood frame, gaze on the tabletop. I took the center chair, the better to control the sight lines, and Miles settled beside me, legs crossed, every line of his posture telegraphing that this was a negotiation, not a visit.

I set the folder on the table. “We’ll be direct,” I said.

“Always preferred,” said Carolyn, eyes glittering.

I let the silence settle just long enough to set the rhythm. Then I said, “We know you reached out to Aldous Pryce before the engagement. We know about the side deal. We know about the blackmail on Edward Taylor, and that Vance built the structure using Mercer. You had a majority stake before you even RSVP’d to the engagement party.”

Carolyn’s expression did not flicker. Vance looked at her, not at me, and raised one brow just a fraction. Miles said nothing, but I could sense him cataloguing each word for future reference.

I kept going, not for drama, but because every second that passed was another chance for Carolyn to reroute her story. “We also know you manufactured the Vegas incident. That you had the ring already, made sure we had more than our fair share of alcohol, and arranged that scene in your hotel room.”

Still nothing. No anger, no denial, just the smooth neutrality of a surgeon prepping for an amputation.

Jude spoke, finally. “You can stop pretending you’re the victim now,” he said, voice so quiet I almost missed it.

Carolyn smiled at him, a smile I had seen used to vaporize stronger men, and said, “You never really knew how this worked, did you?”