An Understated Dominance novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Launch Party
Thea hands her husband divorce papers in front of four hundred guests at her company's biggest night, and Colter signs without a word, until the buyer's lawyer reads out who has to co-sign the deal.
I handed my husband the divorce papers at ten past nine, in front of four hundred people and a champagne tower.
The tower was three feet taller than the man holding the glass at the bottom of it.
That was Colter.
He stood by the pillar nearest the coat check, in the same grey cardigan he wore to every party I had ever dragged him to.
He had a flute in one hand and a napkin in the other, and he looked like he was waiting for a bus.
Behind me, the Fieldwell logo glowed forty feet wide on the warehouse wall.
My company had just been valued at one hundred and forty million dollars.
I had spent eleven years building it from a sewing table in a rented garage.
The Harcourt Group had signed a letter of intent an hour ago, and the CEO had kissed my cheek for the photographers.
Everyone in the room wanted to shake my hand.
I walked past all of them with a cream envelope.
"Thea," Bev said, catching my sleeve.
She was my COO and my best friend, and she had read the papers in my office that afternoon.
"Not here," she said. "Please."
"It has to be here."
"Why?"
"Because I'm done doing it quietly."
Bev let go.
I crossed the floor, and the crowd moved aside without being asked.
Colter saw me coming and set the champagne down on a tray.
He smiled the way he always smiled, small and a little tired.
"Congratulations," he said. "You were wonderful up there."
"Take this."
He looked at the envelope.
He did not take it.
"Thea, what is that?"
"It's divorce papers, Colter. Six years of them, if I'm honest."
Somebody near us stopped talking.
Then somebody else did.
The quiet moved outward in a ring until the string quartet in the corner stumbled and quit.
I raised my voice enough to be sure the back rows heard me.
"I built this company with my hands," I said. "Eleven years, every day, no help."
"You've been very good at standing next to it."
His face did not change.
"I'm not saying it to be cruel," I said, which was a lie.
I said it because I was thirty-two.
At that moment I felt like a woman who had been dragging a stone uphill for six years.
"You work a desk job you never talk about."
"You've never asked a single question about it."
"You don't have a dream, you don't push, and you don't want anything."
"I come home to a man who's content, and I'm not."
A woman in the front row put her hand over her mouth.
A man in a blue suit lifted his phone.
I should have noticed that.
I did not.
"You're dead weight, Colter," I said. "I'm sorry. I need to say it out loud once, so I never doubt it."
I waited for him to flinch.
I waited for him to say my name the way he said it when he was hurt, or angry, or begging.
He took the envelope out of my hand.
He took the pen from the inside pocket of his cardigan.
He signed against the pillar, once, on the line the lawyer had flagged in yellow.
It took only a moment.
Then he capped the pen and handed the pages back to me.
"You'll want to keep a copy," he said gently. "Your lawyer will need the original."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"You're not going to say anything?"
"I said congratulations."
He looked at me for a moment longer than was comfortable.
His brown eyes behind the black frames were steady and kind, and I hated them.
"You looked so happy tonight," he said. "I'm glad I got to see it."
He picked up his coat from the stand and walked toward the exit.
He did not hurry.
He did not look back.
Four hundred people watched him go, and then four hundred people turned and looked at me.
My cheeks burned.
I had pictured this moment for months, and in my version he had cried.
"Well," I said brightly, into the silence. "Drinks are on the house."
A few people laughed too loudly.
The quartet started up again.
Bev reached me first and took the papers out of my hand without a word.
"You okay?" she said.
"I'm free," I said.
I did not feel free.
I felt like I had thrown a punch and hit a wall.
"Thea!"
Russell Voelker was pushing through the crowd, tie loosened, grinning.
He was the CEO of the Harcourt Group, and he had been calling me "partner" all night.
Beside him walked a thin woman in a grey suit with a leather folio under her arm.
"That was quite a show," Russell said. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
He clapped my shoulder.
"Gilbert Merrow wanted to be here tonight. He's our lead backer, and he doesn't miss a closing."
"Mr. Voelker."
"Russell. This is our deal counsel."
"Ms. Forsberg," the lawyer said. "I'm sorry to interrupt. I know the timing is difficult."
"It's fine. What is it?"
She opened the folio and turned it to face me.
"The letter of intent requires the co-signature of Pine Street Partners' managing member before we can move to closing."
"Pine Street owns twenty-two percent of your company, and it has a veto over any sale."
I stared at her.
"Pine Street is an angel fund," I said. "They've never answered an email."
"They answer one thing," she said. "Their signature."
She tapped the line at the bottom of the page.
The name was already inked there, in a neat upright hand, dated this afternoon.
I knew the handwriting.
I had seen it for six years on grocery lists taped to the refrigerator.
I had seen it on every birthday card, and I had seen it moments ago against a pillar.
The managing member of Pine Street Partners was Colter Briscoe.
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