or another at every dinner table, every phone call, every moment when she had asked a question they did not want to answer. Claire wouldn’t understand business. Claire wouldn’t understand pressure. Claire wouldn’t understand how these things were handled by people who actually understood the world. It had worked, for a while. She had believed it for longer than she should have. She had traded her own knowledge for theirs, which was exactly what they had needed her to do.
But Claire understood invoice trails. She understood approval chains. She understood how panic sounded when it was wearing the clothes of authority.
Ryan stepped forward and Mrs. Parker held her ground without touching him, the simple refusal of her posture more effective than any physical barrier.
“I said divorce,” he snapped. The cruelty coming back now, because fear embarrassed him and embarrassment had always made him reach for his sharpest
