Dominic didn't press the matter any further. Something in his posture shifted, though. Not suspicion exactly. Something closer to the instinct of a man who controls territory for a living sensing that ground was moving beneath him.
He just pulled me along to a nearby hotel, one of the Sloane-affiliated properties where the staff knew his face and his preferences and the particular discretion required when he arrived with a woman. He booked us a suite without asking if I wanted one.
He quickly got to work on his laptop, handling some urgent business. A shipment delayed at the port. Numbers that needed reconciling before a call with associates overseas. There was a wordless understanding between us as we worked side by side until the early morning. This was what we'd always been best at. Not love. Work. The machinery of the Sloane empire had always been our most fluent shared language, and even now, with my severance letter signed and folded in my bag, my fingers moved across the spreadsheets with the competence of a woman who'd kept these books for seven years.
Eventually, I couldn't fight off the exhaustion any longer and fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke up in bed, surprised to find myself tucked in. The sheets had been pulled to my chin with a precision that suggested hands more accustomed to violence than tenderness.
Dominic sat beside me, casually leaning against the headboard, flipping through the financial section of the newspaper. The silver lighter rested on the nightstand beside him, catching the morning light. He glanced at me as I stirred.
"Breakfast's on its way," he said, already picking up his phone to call room service.
Halfway through breakfast, Dominic suddenly asked, "Why'd you change your phone password?"
I didn't even look up from my plate. "Felt like changing it," I replied casually.
The truth was, the old password was a combination of our birthdays. Since I was planning to leave, it didn't make sense to keep it. Every trace of him needed to be excised, digit by digit, habit by habit.
I heard him set down his knife and fork, his tone shifting. "You were always asking me to go to the movies with you, weren't you? There's a theater nearby."