The departures hall was too bright and too loud for what was happening inside it.
Victoria looked at Elara with the particular contempt of someone who has underestimated an opponent and cannot forgive them for it.
"I always wondered," Victoria said, pleasantly, "what you thought you were doing. Marrying him. You must have known you weren't built for that world."
"I was built fine," Elara said. "You just needed me out of it."
"You were a phase." Victoria's voice dropped, low and precise, meant for Elara's ears only. "A sweet little phase. He would have gotten there himself eventually."
"He didn't, though," Elara said. "You had to arrange a car."
The pleasantness evaporated.
Callum stepped forward. "Victoria. My legal team is waiting outside. You can walk out with me now and we handle this privately, or airport security gets involved in the next four minutes and it becomes a great deal less private."
She looked at him. She looked at Elara. She made the calculation that a person like Victoria Ashford makes — clean, fast, unsentimental.
"I want my attorney," she said.
"Already called," Callum said. "She's meeting us outside."
Victoria picked up her bags. She walked toward the exit with the composure of a woman who had decided that composure was the last territory she owned.
Callum fell in beside her.
Elara followed a step behind.
They made it three steps before Victoria spoke again — quietly, without turning her head.
"He still doesn't remember you, you know," she said, to Elara. "Whatever happens with all of this. Whatever he finds out. The memory doesn't come back just because you want it to." A pause. "He fell for me twice. Once before you, once after. That's twice to your once."
Elara said nothing.
She was quiet all the way to the car.
— ✶ —
The lawyers arrived. Statements were given. Garrett produced his documentation with the efficiency of someone who had been building toward this moment for fourteen months.
Victoria was not arrested that day — these things, Callum's attorney explained, moved more slowly than the movies suggested. But her passport was flagged. Her accounts were frozen pending investigation. Her attorney, to Victoria's visible displeasure, advised strongly against speaking.
She left in a separate car without looking back.
Callum and Elara stood on the pavement outside the terminal in the cold afternoon air and watched it go.
"She said something to you," Callum said. "In the hall. When she was walking out."
"Yes."
"What was it?"
Elara looked at the sky. "The truth, probably. In her way." She pulled her coat tighter. "She said you still don't remember me. Whatever happens."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She's right," he said.
"I know."
"But she's wrong about what that means."
Elara looked at him.
"I don't need to remember," he said. "I can see."
She didn't know what to do with that.
She decided to do nothing with it.
"I need to get back to the office," she said. "Nathan's covering a client meeting and I've already missed—"
"Nathan," Callum said.
"My business partner—"
"I know who he is." The words were measured but the temperature in them was not. "How long has he—" He stopped. Looked away. "Never mind."
"Ask the question, Callum."
A beat. "Is there something between you and Nathan Shea?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
"That," she said quietly, "is not a question you've earned the right to ask."
She walked to her taxi.
She did not look back.
But she heard him, very quietly, say: "Not yet."