Thornwick's POV
She's still here.
That's the first thing I think when I wake up at six in the morning to the sound of furniture scraping across the floor in the master bedroom—my bedroom, the one I gave her last night because she backed me into a corner with that steel voice and those burning eyes.
I grip my coffee mug and stare at the ceiling of my study, where I slept on the couch like a guest in my own home. Because of Elodie Vale. Elodie, who nobody ever noticed. Elodie, who used to sit at the edge of family dinners like a shadow. Elodie, who I once forgot was even in the room.
Elodie, who took down Calista's portrait without flinching.
I set my mug down harder than I mean to.
By the time I've showered and dressed in the spare bathroom, it's seven. I tell myself I'm going to walk straight to the elevator, go to the office, and pretend last night never happened.
Instead, I stop dead in the doorway of the living room.
She's moved everything.
The white throw blankets Calista ordered from Paris are gone. In their place, something warm and golden is draped across the couch—something that looks like it came from a street market, not a boutique. A cluster of sunflowers sits in a glass jar on the kitchen counter where Calista's orchids used to live. The curtains are pulled open wide, and actual morning light is flooding in. This apartment hasn't seen real sunlight in months. I kept the curtains closed. I didn't realize until right now how dark it had become.
Elodie is standing on a step stool, hanging something on the wall where Calista's portrait used to be. A small painting. Abstract. Deep reds and golds, rough brushstrokes, nothing polished or perfect about it.
"What is that?" I ask.
She doesn't jump. Doesn't apologize. Just glances over her shoulder with calm, steady eyes.
"Mine. I painted it in college."
She steps down, tilts her head, looks at it like she's seeing it for the first time. There's something on her face I don't have a word for. Not pride, exactly. Something quieter.
"You can't just—"
"It's my home now." She turns to face me fully. "You said so yourself. Contract and all."
I want to argue. The words are right there. But she's already walking to the kitchen, and I notice Marcus, my head housekeeper of eleven years, standing near the counter with a tray—smiling. Actually smiling. Marcus, who has never once smiled before noon.
"She asked me about my sister in Lagos," he says, like that explains everything.
It doesn't explain anything.
I leave for the office before she can rearrange anything else.
The board meeting is at two o'clock. Fourteen people around the table, including Director Harlan Reese, who has been trying to quietly push me out since my father's health declined. Today's agenda is the Meridian Art Fund acquisition—a deal that matters because the fund owns major shares in three museums and two private collections that feed directly into our investment portfolio.
I'm halfway through the financial overview when the door opens.
Elodie walks in.
She's carrying a thin folder and wearing something simple, nothing that says "billionaire's wife" or "please take me seriously." Half the room doesn't even look up. Reese glances at her the way people glance at assistants—useful until dismissed.
"Who is this?" he asks me, not her.
"My wife," I say. The words feel strange in my mouth. "She has a background in art history. I thought her perspective might—"
"We don't need a perspective on art history," Reese says, and a few people around the table shift uncomfortably. "We need numbers."
Elodie sits down. Opens her folder. Doesn't say a word.
Reese keeps talking. He's recommending we lowball the Meridian acquisition by thirty percent, calling the fund's collection "sentimental inventory." Two junior directors are nodding. I'm about to cut in when Elodie speaks.
"The Weston piece alone is worth more than your entire offer."
The room goes quiet.
Reese blinks. "Excuse me?"
"The Albert Weston original in the Meridian private holdings." Her voice is even, unhurried. "It was misattributed for sixty years as a student work. I wrote my thesis on the reattribution. That painting will be authenticated within eighteen months—there are three scholars already working on it. When it is, the fund's value jumps by at least forty percent. Your offer doesn't account for that. Neither does your risk model."
She slides a page across the table toward Reese. He looks at it. His face doesn't move but his jaw tightens.
"You'd be handing them a reason to walk away," she continues. "Or worse—a reason to accept and tell every other seller in this space that Vale Industries lowballs. That reputation costs more than the thirty percent you're trying to save."
Silence.
Real, complete silence.
I stare at her. Fourteen other people stare at her. She stares at the table like she's slightly bored.
The rest of the meeting is different. People ask her questions. She answers them. By the end, Reese is quiet and the junior directors are writing things down. We table the lowball offer.
I find her in the hallway afterward.
"Where did you learn that?" I ask. "The Weston attribution?"
She looks up at me. Something flickers in her expression—surprise, maybe. Like she didn't expect me to follow her.
"My degree." A pause. "The impractical one. Art history. The one my father called a waste of a tuition check at every single dinner for four years."
I don't have a response to that.
"You saved the acquisition," I say finally.
"I protected the deal," she corrects. "There's a difference. Saving implies it was already falling."
I want to say something sharp. Remind her this is a business arrangement, that she's here for the merger optics and nothing else. But what comes out instead is: "You knew about Meridian before today?"
"I read the brief you left on the kitchen counter this morning. I figured it was for me."
It wasn't. I forgot I'd put it there.
She watches me absorb this, and for one strange second, I see it—not Calista's shadow, not the placeholder wife, not the forgettable sister. Just a woman who read a brief she wasn't supposed to see, walked into a room she wasn't invited to, and quietly changed the outcome of a fourteen-person meeting with a thesis she wrote years ago in a degree nobody respected.
Who is this woman I married?
The thought follows me into the elevator. Into the car. All the way back to the penthouse that now smells like sunflowers instead of orchids.
It's almost ten when I get home.
The lights are low. The apartment is quiet. Elodie's door is closed.
I walk to my study, and that's when I see it.
My laptop is open on my desk—which is not how I left it. The screen is dark but not asleep. One tap and it comes alive.
Someone has been in my files.
The folder is open. Medical folder. Calista's hospital records. Not the official ones—the private ones. The ones I paid to keep sealed. The ones that show the toxicology report from the night she fell. The one the police never saw.
My blood goes cold.
I don't breathe.
There's a new document open in the folder—something I didn't create. A single line of text, typed in the middle of an otherwise blank page.
"She didn't fall. And the person who pushed her is in this building right now. Check the security footage from Room 14B—before it disappears tonight."
I read it three times.
Then I grab my phone and call the hospital's private security line.
It rings once.
Twice.
On the third ring, the line picks up—and on the other end, before anyone speaks, I hear something that turns my legs to ice.
I hear Elodie's voice.
Not speaking to me. Speaking to someone else. Quietly. Urgently.
"I know what's in those files," she's saying. "And I know you're going to come for me next. So before you do—we need to talk."
The line cuts dead.
And I'm left standing in the silence of my study, staring at a document that could destroy everything, realizing I have no idea—not one—whose side my wife is on