The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 10

The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 10: The Wrong Husband Asks First

Cade stopped two feet from me.

He didn’t notice the dress. He didn’t notice Julian. He didn’t notice Ryker.

“What are you doing here.”

His voice was quiet. It wasn’t an angry voice. It was the voice of a man verifying a misprint on a guest list.

“Ryker invited me,” I said.

His eyes narrowed.

“I’m consulting for him tonight.”

A muscle jumped near his jaw.

“Are you and Ryker—”

“The paid kind of consulting,” I said. “I have a contract.”

He blinked.

A waiter brushed past us. Cade did not flinch.

“Can we find somewhere to talk?”

“Not tonight.”

“Sienna. Five minutes.”

“I’m working.”

He opened his mouth and no sound came out. The string quartet hit their second chord, and the crowd began drifting toward the dining tables. The flow of bodies forced Cade to take a half-step back. I used the moment to step around him.

I did not look back.

Julian was holding a fresh scotch when I returned to the alcove. He looked from me to Ryker and started laughing.

“That was the husband?”

“Soon to be ex,” Ryker said.

“I had a feeling,” Julian said. He set his glass down and reached into his inside jacket pocket. “I just had a very interesting conversation at the bar. A young woman overheard me asking around about you. She gave me quite the summary.”

“Who,” I said.

“A podcast founder. Nadia Thorne. Sharp. She told me you were one of the best operations minds in the Austin tech scene and that you had been buried for a very long time. She suggested I lock you down for a consultation before someone else realized what your time was actually worth.”

Buried.

The word hit me harder than I expected.

Julian handed me a card.

“Call my office Monday. I want you to audit our Q3 expansion plan. I’ll wire the retainer in advance. We can negotiate scope on the call.”

He smiled, shook Ryker’s hand, and walked away.

I held the card in my hand. Six years at Lawson & Associates and Cade had never once handed me his card. I had given out *his.*

“Put it away,” Ryker murmured. “He’s coming back. And he’s not alone this time.”

I looked up.

Cade was crossing the ballroom floor. Elena was beside him. She was in a crimson dress that screamed *look at me,* her hand gripping his forearm so hard her knuckles were white.

She was glaring at me. Specifically at my dress.

I slipped Julian’s card into my clutch.

“Sienna.” Elena’s voice carried over the music. “We need to talk about the corporate accounts.”

“No,” Cade said sharply. He grabbed her elbow. “Not here.”

She yanked free.

“She locked me out of the vendor portal.” She pointed a manicured finger at me like she was filing charges. “She changed the security questions.”

“I didn’t change them,” I said. I took a slow sip of champagne. “I removed my personal email from the recovery settings.”

“The security question is *what was the founder’s first pet’s name.* Cade doesn’t remember the dog!”

I looked at Cade. His face went a deep, mottled red.

“It was a golden retriever named Buster,” I said quietly. “He died in 2009. You should write that down, Elena. Since you’re running things now.”

Her jaw locked. She reached into her purse and pulled out a thick folded stack of papers. She thrust them at my chest.

I let them fall to the carpet.

The top page landed face up.

*Austin Fertility Clinic — Patient Discharge Summary.*

The air left my lungs.

“You charged your last round of treatments to the corporate AmEx,” Elena said, loud enough for the people at the nearest table to hear. “That’s company theft, Sienna. That’s a *fireable* offense. That’s—”

Ryker moved.

He stepped between her and me. His shoulders were not particularly broad in absolute terms but in that moment, in that suit, in front of her, they blotted out the room.

“Pick those up,” he said.

His voice was the coldest thing I had ever heard him produce.

Cade’s eyes had gone huge. He was staring at the documents on the floor. He had not known she had them.

“Elena. *What the hell are you doing.*”

“Exposing a fraud.”

“Pick them up *now.*”

She didn’t move.

Ryker did. He crouched, gathered the papers carefully, and folded them once. He slid them into his inside jacket pocket. Then he straightened up and looked at Cade.

His voice was conversational.

“You have ten seconds to get her out of this building. Or I call your primary investor in the morning, divest, and dissolve your firm by noon. Test me, Cade. I would love it if you tested me.”

Cade froze.

“You can’t do that,” Elena scoffed.

Ryker pulled his phone out. He dialed a number. He hit speaker.

A man’s voice answered on the second ring.

*”Mr. Hale. I have the file on Ms. Harding you requested. The Tahoe property, the cash deposits, and her sister’s apartment lease. Where would you like me to send it?”*

The blood drained from Elena’s face.

Ryker hit mute. He smiled at her. It was not a kind smile.

“Out,” he said.

Cade grabbed Elena’s arm. This time she let him. He turned her toward the door without looking at me.

Ryker watched them go. Then he unmuted the call.

“Hold the file,” he said. “I’ll let you know when to send.”

He hung up.

The string quartet was still playing. The room was still full of people in expensive clothes pretending nothing had happened in their peripheral vision. Julian had vanished. A waiter approached with a tray of champagne and I took a glass without looking.

I looked at Ryker.

He looked at me. He had the medical paperwork in his pocket — the paperwork that listed the three rounds of IVF I had paid for myself, the three failed attempts, the diagnosis I had never told Cade because he had stopped asking how I was almost a year before I started.

“Burn them,” I said.

“Already planned.”

I took a long drink of champagne. My hands were perfectly steady.

For the first time in six years, I was the most powerful person in the room.