looked back at Nora and something desperate entered his expression.
“The company will collapse without me,” he said.
It might once have been true.
But Nora had planned for even that.
“Payroll is covered for the quarter,” she replied. “Bridge financing was signed at seven o’clock. The projects continue. The employees keep their jobs. Only you are leaving.”
He stared at her.
Somewhere across the ballroom, a glass touched a table too hard and cracked.
Nora wondered if this was the first time Sebastian had ever understood that she had not been standing behind him all those years.
She had been holding up the wall.
When security took him by the arm, he did not go gracefully. He jerked once, cursed Dev, cursed Maeve, then looked at Nora with an expression so hateful it felt almost adolescent.
“You’ll regret this,” he said.
Nora believed he meant it.
She also no longer cared.
As they led him toward the ballroom doors, he twisted back. “You think they’ll respect you after this? They only tolerated you because of me.”
Nora rested one hand over her stomach and answered the question he had not meant to ask.
“No,” she said. “They tolerated me while I was quiet. That was your mistake.”
The doors closed behind him.
Ivy stood alone in the wreckage of her own calculation.
For a second, Nora thought she might lash out.
Instead, Ivy looked suddenly, shockingly young.
“Did you know from the beginning?” she asked.
Nora’s exhaustion came crashing back, but beneath it was something steadier than triumph.
Freedom, maybe.
Or the first shape of it.
“I knew enough,” Nora said. “The rest, you helped prove.”
Ivy swallowed. She seemed about to say more, then thought better of it. Her own attorney, likely called in panic from the lobby, appeared at the edge of the room and guided her away.
The orchestra had stopped playing at some point. The chandeliers still glowed. Dessert forks still lay beside folded napkins. The room looked almost absurdly unchanged.
Then a sharp tightening gripped Nora’s lower back and wrapped around the front of her body hard enough to steal her breath.
Maeve was at her side immediately. “Nora?”
Nora closed her eyes.
The tightening eased.
Not a labor contraction, she hoped. Or not yet. Stress, maybe. Braxton Hicks. Her doctor had warned her tonight was reckless.
Her doctor had not understood that some births begin long before hospitals.
“I’m all right,” Nora said.
She wasn’t, exactly.
But she was enough.
The rest of the evening blurred into controlled procedure. Devices surrendered. Hotel conference room secured for lender counsel. Statements drafted. Cameras kept outside. Nora declined interviews. She signed only what needed signing and refused to let anyone turn the night into a redemption performance.
When at last Maeve got her into the back of a quiet sedan, the city was past midnight and shining with rain.
Nora leaned her head against the window and watched lights slip across the glass.
“You should have told me not to go,” she murmured.
Maeve, seated beside her, gave a tired smile. “You would have ignored me.”
“Probably.”
After a moment Maeve said, “He’ll fight.”
“I know.”
“The offshore piece is ugly. But the forgery evidence is strong. Very strong.”
Nora nodded.
She looked down at her
