That smile was gone. It had gone somewhere around the time the first round of serious funding came through, and by the time the second round closed, she could barely remember what it had looked like.
“Let’s not drag this out,” he said, and slid the documents across the polished wood toward her. A manila folder, neatly labeled, everything in order. Ethan was always orderly when it came to his interests. “We both know this marriage is over.”
Emily looked at the folder. She did not reach for it.
“Over,” she repeated, softly, not as a question or a challenge, simply as though she were tasting the word and finding it accurate.
“Don’t play the victim,” he said, and there was an impatience in his voice that he made no effort to conceal. “You were a waitress when I met you. I gave you a better life. A much better life.”
He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, adjusting his cufflink with a practiced flick of his wrist. The gesture was so automatic, so polished, that it seemed to Emily like a kind of punctuation—a period placed after a sentence he considered closed.