Page 20 of The Wife He Replaced
"Sit down," Drew said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Sit down, Victoria." He used her full name on purpose.
She sat, folded her hands in her lap and lifted her chin. Even now, even in this, she was composed, controlled, performing the version of herself that she wanted the room to see. Drew looked at her and thought:How did I miss this? How did I sit across from this woman for four years and not see what Madeleine saw?
"Here's what's going to happen," he said. "You're going to sign a separation agreement that buys out your vested equity at a twenty percent premium over fair market value. You're going to surrender your unvested shares under the bad-actor clause. You're going to sign a non-disparagement agreement that coversme, the company, and my wife. And you're going to walk out of this building today and not come back."
"You can't force me out. I built this company."
"You built this company with me. And in the process, you made an unwanted sexual advance on your co-founder in a workplace setting. You put your hand on my neck. You leaned in to kiss me. I told you to stop. That's sexual harassment, Victoria. If you want to fight the separation, I will file a formal complaint and let HR and legal handle it from there."
Her composure fractured. Not much. A tiny crack around the eyes, a tightening of her fingers in her lap. "You wouldn't."
"I would. And I'd also have my attorney send a cease-and-desist regarding your visit to my wife's restaurant, where you made materially false statements about our relationship with the apparent intent of destroying my marriage. My lawyer tells me that's actionable in Pennsylvania. I don't want to go that route. But I will if you make me."
Victoria stared at him. He stared back. He'd negotiated with venture capitalists, with board members, with founders who'd built empires. None of them had frightened him. This woman didn't frighten him either. She repulsed him. She repulsed him because he could see, with a clarity that arrived far too late, every move she'd made — every late night extended by twenty minutes, every coffee placed on his desk, every story rewritten with herself at the center, every whisperedwethat had slowly, systematically erasedMadeleinefrom the grammar of his daily life.
"I gave you everything," Victoria said. Her voice was low, stripped. For the first time, he heard the raw thing underneath. "I gave you years. I care about you. I fell in love with you. I gave you my best ideas, my best work, my?—"
"And my wife gave me years of patience while you tried to take her place. She told me — she told me clearly, with evidence,with examples — that you were doing this, and I looked at her and said she was overthinking it. I chose your feelings over hers in front of her face. I owe her a debt I may never be able to repay, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell me what you gave me when what you took was my marriage."
Victoria's hands were trembling. She looked at the box on the chair, at the door. She looked at Drew.
"The twenty percent premium," she said. "I want twenty-five."
"Done."
She stood. She picked up the box — it was small, her personal effects, a few framed photos, a notebook, the custom diffuser from the 19th Street arcade — and held it against her hip. At the door she turned.
"She won't take you back."
"Maybe not. But that's between me and my wife. You don't get a vote anymore."
She left. The perfume lingered for another hour, fading slowly. Drew opened every window in his office and let the air pour in until the room smelled like nothing but cold and concrete and the beginning of whatever came next.
He sat at his desk, opening a blank document on his laptop. He stared at the cursor blinking on the white page and thought about what to write.
Letters were his first instinct and his first instinct was wrong. A letter was a pitch. A letter was a presentation. A letter was Drew Adler doing what Drew Adler always did: constructing a case, building an argument, deploying words to achieve an outcome. Madeleine didn't need his words. She'd had his words for months. She'd hadyou're overthinking itandshe's not a threatandthat was niceandwe're good, right?She'd been drowning in his words. What she needed was his patience. Hiswillingness to sit in the wreckage he'd made and not try to fix it on his timeline.
He closed the laptop.
He thought about Madeleine. About Cape May. The coffee she'd walked six blocks to get.I put cream in it, is that right?Her blue eyes in the early light. The moment on the beach when he'd known, with a certainty that had nothing to do with data or analysis, that this woman was his life.
She still was. If she'd let him prove it.
Drew picked up his phone and typed one text:I know what Victoria told you. All of it was a lie. I will never ask you to take my word for it. I will show you. However long that takes.
CHAPTER 11
DREW
The first thingDrew did was fire himself from his own calendar.
He couldn't step away from the company: he had a board, investors, employees whose livelihoods depended on the business continuing to function. But he could stop being the person who said yes to every meeting, every call, every dinner with a potential partner, every Saturday afternoon "quick sync" that turned into hours of strategy sessions in a conference room that smelled like cold coffee and dry-erase markers.
He called his COO — the interim COO, the one he'd promoted to fill the gap Victoria had left — and told him to take the Singapore relationship. He reassigned the board prep to his VP of operations. He blocked out his calendar from six p.m. onward, every night, no exceptions, and when his executive assistant asked what to tell people who wanted that time, he said, "Tell them I'm unavailable."
