Chapter 9 - Across the Table|
Naomi agreed to see Duly eleven days after their wedding.
The meeting took place in Mara's conference room, with both attorneys present and no guards inside.
Naomi arrived first because she wanted to choose her own chair.
She sat where she could see the door.
Duly noticed that when he entered.
He looked as though he had slept in short intervals for several nights.
Once, she would have interpreted that as something she should fix.
Now she watched him take the seat across from her.
“Are you safe?” he asked.
“We're taking precautions.”
He looked toward Mara, then back at Naomi.
“I didn't send the man to your aunt.”
“I didn't ask whether you did.”
The answer left him silent.
He placed a small velvet box on the table.
Naomi recognized it immediately.
“Take that with you when you leave.”
Duly's fingers remained against the lid.
Then he moved the box to his side of the table.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
Naomi had imagined those words so often that hearing them felt almost disappointing.
They did not put her back in the bridal suite with a different man coming through the door.
They did not undo the morning she had spent hoping her mother would ask whether she was all right.
“For what?” she asked.
Duly looked at her.
“For leaving you on our wedding night.”
“Where did you go?”
His attorney shifted in his chair.
Duly answered anyway.
“To Serena.”
“Was there a problem at the ports?”
“No.”
The room seemed to grow very still.
“Then say that part.”
Duly lowered his eyes once, then met hers again.
“I lied to you.”
Naomi breathed out slowly.
She had not realized how much of her anger came from being expected to assist in the lie.
“I didn't ask you to fall in love with me before the wedding,” she said.
“I asked what I could expect.”
“I know.”
“You answered because it was easy.”
He did not deny it.
Outside the room, someone laughed briefly at a reception desk, then the sound faded.
“I thought there would be time to make the marriage work,” Duly said.
“After you finished doing whatever you wanted?”
He looked at the ring box.
“Yes.”
The honesty was ugly enough to feel new.
Naomi opened the folder in front of her.
“What did you know about my father's payments?”
Duly's attorney leaned toward him and spoke quietly.
They requested a short break.
Naomi waited while the two men stepped outside.
When they returned, Duly's expression had changed.
“I knew money was being moved so people with claims couldn't reach it,” he said.
His attorney set down a pen.
“I approved fees to my companies.”
“Did you know about the injured workers?”
“I knew the fire had created claims.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
He looked directly at her.
“I chose not to ask whose money I was taking.”
Naomi closed the folder.
The disappointment felt larger than the marriage now.
“Can I make any of this right?” he asked.
“You can give the records to the people investigating.”
She watched him absorb the answer.
“You can stop treating the truth like something everyone else should survive for you.”
“And us?”
For a moment, she saw the man he might have been if apologies had arrived before consequences.
Then she saw the man actually sitting there.
“I'm ending the marriage.”
Duly's face went still.
His attorney began to speak, but Duly raised a hand and then seemed to notice the gesture himself.
He lowered it.
“I'll have my lawyer respond,” he said.
Naomi stood.
He did not follow her to the door.
May you like
When she looked back, the ring box remained beside his hand.
It was the only thing he had brought that she had once mistaken for a promise.
