Chapter 4 Poison in the silence

By the third day after the reveal, Carter Enterprises was hemorrhaging confidence faster than its PR team could spin headlines. Ethan's calendar, usually booked with venture calls and global partnerships, was now a labyrinth of emergency strategy meetings, stakeholder demands, and damage control.

And all anyone wanted to talk about... was her.

Sienna Cross.

The woman he'd built a life beside but never built with.

The woman he had loved, in his own guarded way yet never fully understood.

The woman he had once called "mine"... and who now belonged to the world.

"She's scheduled to speak at the Global Tech Disruption Summit in Paris next week," Nathan reported, slapping a tablet down onto the glass conference table. "First panel headliner. Solo keynote. Half the attendees have shifted their interest from your AI to hers."

Ethan sat at the head of the table, dark circles carved under his eyes, his signature steel gray suit hanging slightly looser around his shoulders.

"She's been CEO for three days. How the hell is she already headlining Paris?"

Vivian, seated across from him, didn't look up from her notepad. "Because she's good, Ethan. She didn't just reveal her identity she rewrote the narrative. In three days, she's become a symbol."

"A symbol?" Ethan echoed, incredulous.

"Women in power. Women in tech. Women who were overlooked," she said flatly. "You married a movement, and now you're on the wrong side of it."

Silence fell.

Ethan stared out the window, the skyline suddenly feeling more distant than ever.

He had built a name on dominance, on being the man who never lost.

But this... this wasn't a loss.

It was an undoing.

And the worst part?

It felt deserved.

Across town, in NovaDyn's executive wing, Sienna sat in her new glass walled office designed to be visible, transparent, and intentionally opposite the cloistered corner suite she'd once imagined Ethan in.

Her assistant, Elsie, entered with a thin black envelope.

"No return address," Elsie said. "But it was dropped off at the front desk by hand. Security has already scanned it."

Sienna nodded once and opened it.

Inside, a single card:

"You were never meant to survive. You just got lucky."

No name. No contact.

Sienna stared at the words, her pulse steady but sharp.

Then she turned it over.

A single symbol a stylized X cut through a circle.

She didn't flinch.

Instead, she reached for her intercom.

"Greg. I need eyes on anything in our surveillance archives tied to Project Xylon. And activate black tier threat protocols. Quietly."

Later that night, back in her penthouse, Sienna stood on her balcony with a glass of chilled white wine, watching the city breathe beneath her. The glow of news tickers danced across high rises. One of them bore her name.

She hadn't slept much.

Victory came with insomnia. Power with paranoia.

Still, she preferred this unease to the numbing silence of her marriage.

Ten years. A full decade of polished dinners, performative affections, and half shared dreams. And he had still looked at her like a fixture. A figure beside him, not a force with him.

And yet...

Her fingers curled around the glass.

She still remembered the early years before the boardrooms and betrayals when Ethan had held her hand like a lifeline. When he had looked at her like she was enough.

He had loved her once.

And she had loved him deeply.

Too deeply.

The problem wasn't that he'd changed.

It was that he'd stayed the same and expected her to remain unchanged too.

The next morning, Ethan did something impulsive.

Something rare.

Something desperate.

He showed up at NovaDyn.

Not as a CEO.

Not as a rival.

But as a man who needed to see her.

He was stopped at the reception by a sleek looking security detail.

"I'm here to see Ms. Cross," he said smoothly.

The guard didn't blink. "Do you have an appointment, Mr. Carter?"

Ethan smiled thinly. "Tell her I'm here to apologize."

After a moment, the guard nodded. "Wait here."

It was fifteen minutes before Elsie appeared.

"She'll see you," Elsie said calmly. "But only for five minutes."

He followed her through the polished corridor, eyes noting how different this place felt from Carter Enterprises. Less marble, more glass. Fewer portraits of past CEOs, more murals of tech innovation and breakthrough patents. The energy here wasn't legacy it was momentum.

When the office door opened, Sienna didn't rise.

She sat behind her desk, a sleek workstation glowing in the light of the Manhattan skyline. Her expression was unreadable. Her eyes didn't soften.

"Five minutes," she said coolly.

Ethan stepped in and closed the door.

He didn't speak immediately. Just looked at her really looked.

How could he have ignored this strength for so long?

How could he have dismissed this woman?

"I came to say I'm sorry," he said finally.

She tilted her head. "For what? The divorce? The years of dismissal? Or the fact that I built something you didn't see coming?"

He winced. "All of it."

She stood then, crossing slowly around her desk until she stood inches from him.

Her presence was quieter than rage. More lethal.

"You don't get to walk in and apologize like this is a bad quarterly report, Ethan."

"I know."

"I am not your mistake to fix," she said. "I am the consequence you never imagined."

He exhaled. "You think I did all this to hurt you?"

"I think," she said, voice ice edged, "you didn't think of me at all."

That landed.

Ethan looked away.

"I want to make it right," he murmured.

Sienna's eyes narrowed. "And what exactly does 'right' look like to you?"

He met her gaze. "I want to help."

She laughed once a sound so soft and scornful it chilled him.

"You want to help now? After ten years of absence behind a dinner table? You think I need your name, your boardroom, your legacy?"

"No," he said. "I think I need you."

That made her still.

Her expression didn't soften.

But something in her posture shifted just barely.

"And what if I've already decided I don't need you?"

Then she turned her back.

"Your five minutes are over."

Ethan walked out of NovaDyn with the taste of ashes in his mouth.

And the knowledge that winning her back wouldn't be a business strategy.

It would be a war.