I gave him the smallest shake of my head.

Not yet.

This was more than a rude intern. More than a spilled drink.

This was a symptom.

And I needed to know how deep the disease went.

“I see,” I said, quietly enough that only she and the people closest would hear. My fingers slid along the edge of my phone. “Well then. Let’s call your husband.”

Her brows knit, confusion briefly surfacing. “What?”

“You said I’m dead because your husband owns this place,” I said. “So let’s call him.”

I pulled the phone out, wiped a bead of coffee from the screen with my thumb, and scrolled through my contacts until I reached the one labeled “My Love.”

I almost laughed. I had put the contact name there years ago. It had stayed there through promotions, late nights, tears, charity balls, and stock market spikes. Through long, exhausted mornings and occasional whispered fights behind closed doors.

Now the words looked obscene, like graffiti on a church.

I pressed the call button.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

Then Mark answered, his voice coming through the small speaker in that particular tone he used when he wanted to sound important and overbooked.

“Cath, honey, I’m in the middle of a massive meeting with the Singapore investors,” he said. “Is everything okay? Did you land?”

The lobby went so still I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioning. I switched the call to speaker, letting his voice fill the space.

“I’m in the lobby,” I said.

There was a pause. “The lobby of…?”

“Apex University Hospital,” I said. “Our hospital.”

He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Cath, sweetheart, I told you this call is critical. The Singaporeans are skittish; if we lose them—”

“Your wife,” I said, cutting him off, my voice still calm, “just threw coffee on me. She’s live streaming this to around ten thousand people. They all heard her call herself Mrs. Mark Thompson. She also told me you own this place. And you own me. So I thought I’d check.”

There was a different kind of silence on the line now.

Behind me, Tiffany’s face was draining of color, the pink in her cheeks turning chalky. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “Hang up. You’re going to get sued or something.”

I ignored her.

“Come down to the lobby, Mark,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, flattening. “Right now.”

“Cath, be reasonable,” he said. I could hear the scrape of a chair in the background, murmured voices, a door closing. “I can’t just walk out in the middle of this. Go home. Take a bath. I’ll be there for dinner, and we can talk about—”

“If you’re not down here in three minutes,” I said, “I’m calling Arthur. And I’m asking him to walk me through the missing two million in the MRI procurement fund.”

This time, the silence wasn’t confused or exasperated. It was frightened.

A faint rustle. A curse muttered under his breath.

Then the line went dead.

I let my hand fall to my side, the phone hanging loosely from my fingers.

Around us, people shifted. The story had just taken a turn they hadn’t expected.

Tiffany’s grip tightened on her gimbal. The chat on her screen was a blur of “OMG” and “LOL” and “IS THIS REAL?” Her eyes, which had been oh-so-confident minutes ago, were now darting between my face and the bank of elevators like a trapped animal’s.

“What did you just do?” she demanded.

I looked at her properly now. Really looked. Under the contour and gloss, under the bravado, I saw the thing that had probably drawn Mark in: she was young, pretty, hungry for attention in a way that made older men feel powerful.

I wondered what story he’d told her. What story she’d told herself.

“I’d suggest you keep that stream running,” I said. “You wanted an audience. It would be a shame to lose them before the climax.”

David reached us then, his presence settling at my side like a shield.

“Catherine,” he said, eyes flicking over me, taking in the stain, the damp edges, my face. “Are you hurt?”

“I’ll live,” I said.

He turned his gaze on Tiffany. If looks could have triggered cardiac arrhythmias, she’d have coded on the spot.

“What is going on?” he asked.

She laughed—a high, strangled, ugly sound. “Oh look, it’s her loser doctor friend. Perfect. Mark can fire both of you when he gets down here. He’s my baby, you know. He bought me this dress. He’s going to make me a star. Isn’t that right, chat?”

Her phone pinged nonstop. Notifications cascaded. Somewhere in that swarm, the truth was already being sliced and diced and reposted on a dozen platforms.

I saw movement at the far end of the lobby.

The executive elevator doors slid open with a soft, expensive chime.

He stepped out like a man thrown out of a moving car.

His tie was askew, the top button of his shirt undone. His usually impeccable hair looked slightly mussed, as if he’d run his hand through it one too many times. Sweat glistened at his temples.

Mark Thompson had been voted “Most Charismatic CEO” by three separate business magazines in the last five years. He had a stock photo smile and a voice like smooth bourbon. People trusted him in the way they trusted expensive packaging.

In that moment, he looked small.

His gaze swept the lobby, taking in the crowd, the raised phones, the nurses and orderlies clustered along the edges. Then he saw me.

His eyes widened.

“Catherine,” he said, my name coming out half-breathed, half-choked.

He started toward me, but stopped mid-step when he noticed Tiffany. She had turned the camera on him now, her whole face lighting up like a child’s on Christmas morning.

“Mark, baby!” she cried, running toward him in her too-high heels, arms outstretched. “You’re here! Oh my god, you won’t believe what this crazy woman did to me. She pushed me. She spilled coffee on me. She’s lying about you, about money, she—”

He didn’t catch her.

He didn’t enfold her in his arms, or murmur comforting nonsense, or even put a hand on her shoulder.

He looked at her with pure, undiluted panic. And something else. Something like rage. The kind of rage a man feels when the fragile balance of his double life cracks under pressure.

His hand snapped out before I could fully process what was happening.

The sound of the slap echoed off the glass walls.

There was a collective intake of breath. Tiffany’s head jerked to the side, her body spinning half a turn with the force of the blow. Her phone slipped from her hand, clattering across the marble and landing screen-up, still live, the comments now coming so fast they were unreadable.

She dropped to the floor, one hand pressed to her cheek, eyes huge and wet.

“I don’t know this woman,” Mark shouted, his voice cracking. He looked around wildly, as if searching for someone to corroborate the lie. “She’s crazy. She’s been stalking me. I’ve never seen her before in my life—”

The crowd murmured. A nurse whispered, “Oh, come on,” under her breath.

Tiffany stared up at him as if he’d just grown a second head. “Mark?” she whispered. “Mark, what are you—what are you saying? Tell them. Tell them I’m your wife.”

My jaw tensed.

There are some sins I can empathize with. Weakness. Fear. Even selfishness, in small doses. But watching a man throw a young woman under a bus that he himself had driven onto the sidewalk—that was a new brand of cowardice.

“You don’t know her?” I asked, stepping forward.

He turned toward me as if grabbing at a life raft. His eyes were shiny now, a sheen of desperation coating them. He reached for me, hands shaking.

“Cath, honey, listen to me,” he said. “She’s lying. She’s obviously unstable. I’ll have security remove her. I’ll have legal—”

“Arthur,” I said, without looking away from Mark.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw David’s posture shift. He moved aside just enough to reveal the man standing behind him, wearing a charcoal pinstriped suit and the expression of someone who’d seen every variety of corporate sin and had the documentation to prove it.

Arthur Vance. Apex’s lead counsel. The board’s attack dog. My father’s personal choice, once upon a time.

Arthur stepped forward, holding a slim leather dossier in his hand.

“Mark Thompson,” he said calmly. “We have the deed to the Hudson Yards condominium purchased in the name of one Tiffany Jones, also known as Tiffany Henry. We have wire transfers from the Apex MRI procurement account to the same Tiffany’s personal savings. And we have hotel security footage from the Mandarin Oriental, where you and Ms. Jones checked in together on three separate occasions last quarter.”

Each sentence hit like a gavel strike.

“This information,” Arthur added, his voice still perfectly even, “was compiled at the instruction of the chairwoman of the board after certain financial irregularities were brought to her attention.”

Mark’s knees buckled.

He didn’t stagger gracefully. He crumpled, collapsing onto the marble like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The sound of his knees hitting the floor made me wince in spite of myself.

He grabbed at the hem of my coffee-soaked pants, clutching the fabric with white-knuckled hands.

“Catherine,” he sobbed. “Please. Listen to me. It was a mistake. I was lonely when you were in Germany. You’re always working, you’re always gone. She was… she was just a distraction. I didn’t mean for it to—Don’t do this. Think about the company. Think about the kids.”

He had the nerve to say that. To drag our children into this, here, in front of half the staff and however many strangers were watching online.

For a moment, my vision blurred at the edges. Not from tears—they’d abandoned me a long time ago when it came to Mark—but from the sheer, suffocating weight of waste.