“Correct.”
“Interesting.”
The word was soft.
Dangerous.
Andrew cleared his throat. “Mr. Harrington, are you suggesting—”
“I’m asking a technical question.”
“No,” I said. “You’re implying theft.”
Blake’s jaw flexed.
Someone shifted uncomfortably.
I walked to the table, picked up the printed appendix, and slid it toward him.
“Every patent filing is dated. Every research sequence is documented. Every model is independently audited. You’re welcome to review the materials like everyone else in this room.”
His eyes dropped to the appendix.
Then back to me.
“For someone who claims to hate my world,” he said, “you seem to have learned how to survive in it.”
I held his gaze.
“I learned from being destroyed by it.”
No one spoke.
The meeting ended ten minutes later.
Professionally.
Politely.
Catastrophically.
By the time Priya and I reached the elevator, she looked ready to commit a felony.
“That was intentional,” she snapped. “He tried to poison the room.”
“He tried to test me.”
“That’s worse.”
The elevator doors opened.
Blake was inside.
Priya muttered, “Absolutely not.”
I touched her arm. “Go ahead. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Emma—”
“I’ll be fine.”
She looked between us, then stepped back. “Ten minutes. Then I’m calling legal.”
The elevator doors closed with Blake and me inside.
For several floors, neither of us spoke.
The city dropped away behind the glass wall.
Finally, Blake said, “You built all of that?”
“Yes.”
“While raising them?”
“Yes.”
His reflection looked at mine.
“Alone?”
I laughed once, quietly. “Don’t flatter yourself. I had help. Good help. Loyal help.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
The elevator descended.
Blake’s voice softened. “I was wrong in that room.”
I turned to him.
“Only in that room?”
His eyes tightened.
“Emma.”
“No. Say it properly.”
He looked at me for a long time.
“I was wrong five years ago.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
Not because they healed anything.
Because they arrived years late, carrying the ghosts of everything they could not save.
“I didn’t have an affair,” I said.
“I know.”
My breath caught.
