6. True Gold Fears No Fire
Six months later.
The air in the city had turned warm and heavy with the promise of summer. I was sitting on the expansive balcony of our high-rise penthouse apartment, the city skyline glittering below us like a sea of diamonds.
The fallout from the wedding had settled into a quiet, permanent reality.
I had drastically reduced contact with my parents, seeing them only occasionally for brief, highly structured holidays where Ethan’s presence kept them strictly on their best behavior. They treated me with a cautious, fearful respect, terrified of offending the billionaire son-in-law.
As for Claire, I heard updates mostly through the corporate grapevine.
Ethan had kept his word. He hadn’t fired her on that fateful Monday morning. Instead, he had called her into his massive corner office. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. He simply laid out her performance metrics, informed her that her marketing division would be under direct, monthly executive review, and told her that any lapse in professional integrity would result in immediate termination.
Claire still worked at Whitmore Dynamics. She still had her salary.
But her entire existence within the company had changed.
