He did not say anything, but he did not need to; the look on his face said it clearly enough, that I had not married well, as though I had made a shrewd acquisition, but that I had built something, with him, as a partner and an equal.

Chloe, sensing the ground shifting and scrambling for footing, smiled too brightly.

“Small world,” she said.

“Marcus’s company is actually working with Rhodes Capital.” “I know,” I said.

And Marcus blinked, because he had not known that I knew, had not, in fact, connected any of it until this moment, had assumed his business dealings with Rhodes Capital and his ex-wife were two entirely separate facts of his life.

He was beginning, I could see, to understand that they were not separate at all.