Chapter 2 - The Cracks in the Facade
The party dissolved in less than five minutes.
Colleagues who had been braying with laughter at Damian's jokes five minutes earlier muttered hurried excuses, avoiding eye contact as they grabbed their coats and slipped into the night. Nobody wanted to be in the splash zone of a corporate manslaughter scandal.
When the door clicked shut behind the last guest, Damian stood in the center of the debris. Cake crumbs littered the table. Red wine was spattered across the tablecloth.
He didn't run to hug me. He didn't ask if I was okay.
Instead, his shoulders hunched, and his fists clenched at his sides.
"Are you happy now?" he snarled, whirling on me.
I froze, holding the dustpan. "What did you just say?"
"You humiliated me!" Damian roared, kicking a fallen party horn across the floor. "In front of my entire team! In front of the senior vice president’s direct reports! You made up some psychotic, historical grudge and threw it in the face of the woman who just handed me a two-hundred-thousand-dollar salary!"
"I made it up?" I stared at the man I had been married to for four years. The man who had held my hand at Logan's annual memorial service without ever asking the detailed names of the executives who settled out of court. "Damian, she killed my brother. There were three autopsies. There were four hundred pages of state fire marshal reports!"
"Seven years ago, Iris!" he yelled, veins bulging along his neck. "People change! Businesses restructure! You think every logistics firm in the country is some criminal syndicate out to get you? You're paranoid. You've always been paranoid about my career because you gave up yours!"
The cruelty of his words struck harder than a slap. I had left my job as a paralegal when Damian’s mother fell ill with dementia, caring for her until her final breath because Damian couldn't handle the emotional toll.
"She used you," I whispered, my voice shaking with fury. "Look at the dates on those permits, Damian. She hired you six months ago. She spent six months flattering your ego, flirting with you over late dinners, feeding your pathetic vanity, all while setting you up to be the legal sacrificial lamb."
Damian let out a bitter, defensive laugh. "She flirted with me because she likes me, Iris! Unlike you, she actually looks at me like I'm a man who matters. Not some broken project you settled for!"
Before I could answer, Damian’s phone buzzed loudly on the counter.
Both of us looked down.
The screen lit up with a text from **Maribel Kane**:
*“Get your wife under control tonight, Damian. If she breathes a word of this to the board or regulatory oversight, I will revoke your signing bonus, trigger the clawback clause on your stock options, and submit your signed safety waivers to the EPA first thing Monday morning. You go down with me. Choose your side.”*
May you like
The room plunged into an arctic chill. Damian stared at the glowing screen, his mouth slightly open, the arrogance draining out of his posture like water through an open grate.
***