Chương 2
A chime sounded near the foyer.
The private elevator had arrived.
Victor turned.
Daniel’s voice came through Mara’s phone. “The first round is complete. Building security is with me. Are you able to walk?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone preventing you from leaving?”
Victor looked at the phone as though Daniel were standing in the room.
“No,” Mara said.
She did not look away from him.
The elevator doors opened. Two building security officers stood outside with Daniel between them. He was sixty next spring, though grief had added years to his face since Elias died. His gray suit was wrinkled from the drive. He took in Mara’s bruises, the papers on the floor, Serena’s untouched wine, and Victor’s gloved hands.
Nothing in his expression moved.
“Ms. Ellison,” he said. “Your car is downstairs.”
Victor laughed once. It sounded dry and involuntary. “You think you can walk into my home and remove her?”
Daniel glanced toward the open elevator. “She appears to be removing herself.”
Mara crossed the salon. Each step required a private negotiation with her ankle. She refused Daniel’s arm until the threshold, where the polished marble met the elevator’s dark carpet and the slight change in height nearly folded her knee.
He caught her elbow.
Victor remained beneath the chandelier.
“You’ll be back by morning,” he called. “The banks won’t let you burn ten thousand jobs to settle a family grievance.”
Mara turned just enough to see him.
Victor’s composure had returned, but he had buttoned his jacket. He did that only when he felt exposed.
“I don’t have a family grievance,” she said.
His eyes went to the blood on her lip.
The elevator doors closed.
In the mirrored wall, Mara saw herself between Daniel and the security officers. One pearl earring remained in place. The other was gone. Her hair looked as though someone had tried to drag her by it, although Victor had not.
Daniel pressed the lobby button.
“Hospital first,” he said.
“Office.”
“Hospital.”
“The notices will be challenged before midnight.”
“I know.”
“We need the records from the audit server.”
“We have copies.”
“Not the attachment Victor printed.”
Daniel looked at her reflection. “The one on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“You are not going back upstairs.”
“I wasn’t suggesting it.”
“You were looking at the button.”
Mara let her head rest against the mirrored wall. The metal was cool near her bruised eye.
One of the security officers pretended to be interested in the floor numbers.
Daniel removed his overcoat and placed it around her shoulders. It smelled faintly of rain and the peppermint lozenges he kept in every pocket.
“Serena saw what happened,” Mara said.
“She may deny it.”
“She will.”
“You sound certain.”
“I would.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened, not quite disapproval. “No, you wouldn’t.”
The elevator passed the fiftieth floor.
Mara watched the numbers descend. “You don’t know what I would do.”
“I have known you since you were six.”
“You worked for my father since I was six.”
“That is not the same sentence.”
It was the first sharp thing he had said to her since the funeral.
Mara closed her eyes. Her shallow breaths fogged a faint oval on the mirror. “Did the final packet include Halpern’s declaration?”
“Yes.”
“And the trust schedules?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
Daniel paused.
Mara opened her eyes.
“All of the schedules we were authorized to release,” he said.
The elevator continued downward.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we are going to the hospital.”
At Lenox Hill, a nurse cut away the loose lining inside Mara’s jumpsuit and asked whether she felt safe going home. Mara nearly said yes out of habit. The word reached the back of her teeth and stopped.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The nurse marked something on a tablet.
A doctor examined her ribs, wrist, ankle, and left eye. Nothing was broken. The bruising across her side would deepen. The scrape on her forearm needed cleaning and a thin row of adhesive closures. The split lip would heal without stitches if she stopped touching it with her tongue.
“Any loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
“From before or after the fall?”
Mara looked at Daniel, who sat in the corner with both phones on his knees.
“After he shoved me,” she said.
The doctor did not react beyond making another note.
A police officer arrived at 10:06. He was younger than Mara and looked tired enough to be older. He asked her to describe the sequence twice. The second time, he interrupted to clarify whether Victor had struck her with a closed fist.
“No.”
“Open hand?”
“He grabbed my wrist. He pushed me against the table. When I tried to get past him, he shoved me down.”
“Did he threaten to kill you?”
“No.”
“Did he prevent you from calling for help?”
“He broke my phone. It still worked.”
“Did he lock the door?”
“The penthouse elevator requires his authorization from inside after ten.”
“Did you ask to leave?”
“Three times.”
The officer glanced at Daniel. “Was anyone else present?”
“Serena Cole.”
“Relationship?”
“To me?”
“To either of you.”
Mara thought about Serena’s hand around the wineglass. “Investor. Board observer. Possibly witness.”
“Possibly?”
“She was there.”
“Will she confirm your account?”
“I don’t know.”
The officer asked whether Mara wanted to pursue charges. She stared at the darkened television mounted above the exam-room door. A muted commercial showed a woman laughing in a spotless kitchen while a golden retriever watched her cut vegetables.
“Yes,” Mara said.
Daniel shifted slightly.
The officer gave her a case number and explained that detectives would follow up. Victor might be interviewed that night or the next day. The absence of an immediate arrest did not mean the report was being ignored.
Mara thanked him, then hated herself for thanking him.
When he left, Daniel said, “That will become public.”
May you like
“It already is.”
Her phone had received forty-three notifications while the doctor examined her. Board members, lawyers, lenders, employees, journalists, one cousin she had not spoken to in nine years, and three unknown numbers from Delaware.
