There’s a pause. I know him well enough to hear the shift immediately—alertness, then dread, then recognition. There is only one woman in this building who would speak to him like that.
His voice drops.
“Emily?”
Brittany flinches.
There it is.
That tiny reaction tells me everything. The name means something to her. Maybe she’s heard it before. Maybe she’s heard it too often. Either way, she understands now that I’m not just some unlucky employee she chose to humiliate.
“Yes,” I say calmly. “Emily. I’m in the executive café. Your wife just threw coffee on me in front of half the lobby.”
Silence.
Then his voice, tight and controlled: “Stay there.”
I hang up.
Brittany stares at me like I’ve done something impossible.
Her confidence hasn’t completely disappeared yet. Women like her don’t collapse easily. Admitting defeat would mean admitting that everything they’ve built—the charm, the entitlement, the illusion—was never real. But fear has entered the room now, and fear changes everything.
She laughs.
It’s the wrong kind of laugh—too sharp, too forced.
“You’re crazy,” she says. “You don’t know my husband.”
I tilt my head slightly. “No?”