Chapter 12 - WHAT EACH WOMAN WAS PROTECTING
Cassidy saw Jessica once more before Jessica left Meridian permanently.
Not by choice.
They were both summoned for separate interviews in the same law office and crossed paths in the lobby.
Jessica stopped.
“How’s the baby?”
Cassidy almost kept walking.
“Fine.”
Jessica nodded.
“Good.”
Then she said, “Diane hates me now.”
Cassidy looked at her.
“You sound surprised.”
“She says I distracted Brendan.”
“Did you?”
Jessica gave a tired laugh.
“Probably.”
There was no glamorous rivalry left.
Jessica had lost her position and much of her social access. Brendan had moved into a hotel rather than her apartment after the scandal. Their relationship was apparently ending too.
“Why did you want him so badly?” Cassidy asked.
Jessica stared at the elevator doors.
“Because when Brendan walked into a room, everyone knew who he was.”
That was brutally honest.
Jessica grew up in a small Massachusetts town with a father who sold used cars and a mother who cleaned medical offices at night. She spent her twenties entering rooms where she believed everybody else had been taught secret rules she had missed.
Meridian made her feel admitted.
Brendan made her feel chosen.
Diane made her feel approved.
“And me?” Cassidy asked.
Jessica’s eyes filled.
“You made me feel like maybe none of it meant what I thought it meant.”
Cassidy almost laughed.
“So you poured champagne on me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s pathetic.”
“Yes.”
Jessica walked away.
The conversation stayed with Cassidy because it mirrored something Diane had admitted.
Diane protected status earned through work.
Jessica protected status borrowed through association.
Brendan protected the image of independence.
What had Cassidy protected?
Privacy.
So fiercely that secrecy became its own kind of control.
Charles Avery had taught her to distrust people who changed when they saw money.
Cassidy responded by letting almost nobody see it.
That protected her from opportunists.
It also meant some relationships were tested without the other person knowing there was a test.
Brendan’s cruelty would have existed regardless.
His affair did not become Cassidy’s fault because she hid an inheritance.
But Cassidy had to admit something uncomfortable:
part of her had felt safer knowing Brendan underestimated her.
It gave her private distance.
She had watched him reveal himself while holding a truth he did not possess.
That was understandable.
It was not how she wanted to live forever.
At Meridian’s next board meeting, Cassidy proposed something Charles would have hated.
Greater transparency around controlling ownership.
Not her personal finances.
Not her family life.
But clear governance disclosure so employees and executives understood where voting control actually sat and what rights it did—and did not—provide.
“No more mythology,” Cassidy said.
Edward Shaw smiled.
“Your grandfather just rolled over.”
May you like
“He’ll survive.”
It was the first joke about Charles that made Cassidy laugh since his funeral.
