“Mine,” Diana said.

Jonathan flinched almost invisibly.

Arthur’s jaw tightened. He disliked interruption unless he was the one doing it. “Yes. Your role is one of them.”

“My accounting role.”

“Yes.”

“The one paying seventy-eight thousand dollars a year.”

Arthur exhaled through his nose, the way he did when he wanted to seem patient. “Diana, please don’t reduce this to salary. You don’t need the job. I make more than enough for both of us.”

That sentence hung in the office, heavy and absurd.

Diana’s face did not change.

Arthur continued, gaining confidence from what he mistook for submission. “Frankly, it has become awkward. My wife working in a subordinate position inside my company creates unnecessary optics. People talk. Investors notice these things. The board has concerns about professional boundaries.”

The board.

Diana lowered her gaze for one second to keep the amusement out of her eyes. Arthur still spoke of the board as though it belonged to him because its members allowed him to speak first at quarterly meetings. He still believed Oberon Capital was a distant investment syndicate managed by faceless men in darker rooms. He still believed the proxy directors answered to market logic, not to the woman sitting in a cardigan across from him.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “We’ve prepared a severance package. Six weeks of pay, continuation of medical benefits through the end of the month, and a standard non-disclosure agreement regarding internal company matters and the circumstances of your departure.”

He slid the folder across the desk.

Diana looked at the folder but did not touch it.

Arthur’s fingers stopped moving around the pen.

“Diana,” he said quietly, “don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

That was the first honest sentence he had spoken.

She lifted her eyes to him. “Who is replacing the operational leadership?”

A flicker moved across his face. There it was. Pride. Anticipation. The male vanity of a man about to reveal what he believed was his masterstroke.

“We are appointing Khloe Jenkins as chief operating officer.”

The office went very quiet.

Outside, a horn sounded far below on Fifth Avenue. A long, impatient note swallowed by rain.

Diana felt the name settle inside her like a final stamp on an already completed file. Khloe Jenkins. Twenty-six. Director of Public Relations. Brilliant at entrances, mediocre at everything that required follow-through. She wore perfume so aggressively floral that it had been appearing on Arthur’s shirts for months. She laughed too loudly in executive corridors and let assistants see her private calls because she believed being envied was the same thing as being respected.

Diana had first noticed Khloe because of a hotel invoice.

The Four Seasons. Presidential suite. Two nights. Listed under “regional media preparation.” Then came the private car services, the restaurant charges, the jewelry coded as client gifts, the Napa trip labeled executive retreat even though no executive had attended except Arthur and the woman whose initials appeared in the booking notes.