She pointed at Marcus without looking at him. "He touched you and the good in you went bad. My grandmother had a saying about people who handle pitch. You can't touch it without getting dirty. That's what happened to you, Quinn. You married a man who tracks dirt into every room he enters and now you're tracking it alongside him."Quinn placed food in Marcus's bowl without responding to Nadine. Her movements were precise, unhurried, the movements of someone conducting their own business inside a storm without acknowledging the storm's existence."I'm planning to travel with Marcus going forward," Quinn said. Her voice carried no particular emphasis, no argumentative positioning. Just information.Nadine's eyes narrowed. The casual statement landed in her processing as something significantly more threatening than its tone suggested, because Nadine understood at an instinctive level that Quinn traveling with Marcus meant Quinn becoming less accessible, and Quinn becoming less accessible

The movement was simple. He pushed his chair back and rose to his full height with the unhurried composure of someone who has been sitting through a performance and has decided to contribute.He pointed at the floor where the vegetables and seafood had scattered from Glenn's overturned dish."Fine," Marcus said. His voice was perfectly calm. "If we're settling things today, let's settle accounts first. Those raw materials cost two hundred thousand. Pay up."Nadine laughed. The sound was genuine, surprised out of her by the absurdity of the claim."Two hundred thousand for a plate of food? You're even more delusional than I thought. Don't make a spectacle of yourself on your way out of this house, Marcus. Whatever dignity you have left won't survive it."Marcus walked to the balcony.On the balcony sat Nadine's prize flower pot. It was a rare cultivar, gifted to her by a former classmate who had connections to botanical circles that most people couldn't access.Nadine had tended it wit

"We give them what they want to see," Marcus replied. His expression was clear and unhurried, the expression of a man who had managed empires across lifetimes and was not going to be undone by a mother-in-law with a lawyer and a mahjong addiction.Quinn's face changed before he finished speaking. Something behind her eyes shifted, a movement that happened below the level of conscious control.The word divorce, even spoken in the context of strategy, even framed as a tool rather than a destination, landed somewhere specific in her chest.Her Saintess intuition, which had never once been wrong about Marcus Steel, which had kept her anchored to this marriage through three years of confusion and silence and the slow accumulation of questions she couldn't answer, ran directly into that word and produced something she didn't want to examine too closely."If you want to divorce," Quinn said. Her voice was steady. The shimmer behind her eyes was not. "Let's divorce."Marcus looked at her. He

Nadine stood on the sidewalk surrounded by her belongings with the expression of someone whose victory celebration had been interrupted by the discovery that the trophy was hollow.Glenn loaded what he could into the sedan. The trunk took two suitcases. The back seat took three bags. Everything else remained on the sidewalk for a second trip that neither of them discussed scheduling.They drove to Glenn's old apartment in silence. The apartment occupied the third floor of a building that had been adequate before the villa and now felt like a punishment designed by someone with a specific sense of humor.The rooms were small. The kitchen was functional but ungenerous. The bathroom had a window that didn't close completely.Nadine sat on the sofa and pulled out her phone before Glenn had finished bringing in the first suitcase."Quinn," Nadine's voice carried the particular tone of someone who has recalculated their position and identified the next available resource. "I need money for

Glenn picked up the keys without comment and went downstairs. The door closed behind him with the quiet sound of a man who had learned decades ago that questioning Nadine's instructions required more energy than executing them.Nadine paced the small apartment. The calls were still coming. Relatives were confirming attendance at a dinner she hadn't planned in a house she no longer occupied with reimbursements she couldn't afford.She was trapped. Denying the dinner meant explaining why. Explaining why meant admitting the divorce, the eviction, the suitcases on the sidewalk. Admitting any of it meant losing face in front of every relative she had spent months cultivating with stories about Quinn's company and the villa and the life she had built on her daughter's success.She called Quinn."I need the six hundred thousand," Nadine's voice had lost its earlier triumph and found something closer to desperate practicality. "As a loan. I'll repay it. But I need it now. Relatives are coming