Chapter 3

At eight the next morning, my name and title still appeared in removable silver lettering outside the chief executive's office.

I remembered choosing that lettering when Aster & Row could barely afford it. I had spent the previous night sealing shipping cartons because we could not afford a warehouse crew.

By ten, a maintenance worker was waiting beside my office with a scraper and a roll of blank vinyl.

My attorney sat beside me in the boardroom. My husband sat across from us in a fresh charcoal suit.

The board chair opened the emergency meeting.

"Our concern is the stability of Aster & Row," she said. "We will not investigate anyone's marriage."

"My husband used our investor gala to introduce what appeared to be a secret family," I replied. "That became a company matter when the acquisition announcement collapsed."

Grant leaned forward.

"I didn't arrange what happened," my husband said firmly. "Nora abandoned an eighty-five-million-dollar announcement. The buyer is questioning whether she can complete the transaction."

My attorney placed a document on the table.

"My client is issuing a preservation demand," she said. "No email, invoice, financial record, or access log connected to Grant Mercer or Elise Parker may be altered or destroyed."

My husband's eyes dropped to the document.

"Why is Elise included?" he asked immediately.

The question came too quickly.

Grant leaned back, but I had already seen the alarm on his face.

"We need to know whether my best friend used her company position to benefit my husband," I said.

"You have no evidence," Grant snapped.

"Then preserving the records shouldn't frighten you."

The board chair asked my husband to wait outside.

Grant gathered his papers, then stopped behind my chair. His fingers closed around the leather back.

"You are destroying everything you built because you're angry with me," my husband whispered.

I looked through the glass wall at the employees pretending not to watch.

"No. I'm checking whether you used what I built to betray me."

Grant released the chair and walked out.

Then the board chair announced that I was suspended as chief executive until an independent review was complete. My husband would remain chief financial officer under the independent review committee's supervision.

The board's vote on whether to approve the acquisition agreement was postponed for seven days.

When I left the boardroom, the maintenance worker climbed his ladder.

His scraper caught beneath the silver words CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. The first strip of my title curled away while my name remained above it.

I had survived rejected loans, failed formulas, and nights sleeping on the laboratory floor. None of them had prepared me to watch my own company place a blank strip beneath my name.

Our company controller waited near the elevators, holding a scratched glass jar and watching my husband through the glass wall.

It was the first product Aster & Row had ever manufactured.

"Grant ordered finance to purge the old vendor packets," she whispered. "I kept one because the totals didn't reconcile. If he sees me give this to you, he'll make the missing records my fault."

She held out the jar. Something crackled beneath its base when I accepted it.

An envelope had been taped underneath.

"Don't open it here," our controller warned as my husband entered the hallway.

Inside the elevator, I turned the envelope over.

Three words were written across the front.

OPEN AWAY FROM GRANT.