Chương 3
Adrian remembered Elena’s face.
Not impressed.
Not grateful.
Concerned, then confused.
“That clip is already online, isn’t it?”
Olivia checked her phone.
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
She turned the screen around.
Someone had posted fifteen seconds.
The clip began with Claire spinning the chair and ended with Adrian standing.
The caption read:
HOTEL BILLIONAIRE FAKED PARALYSIS TO TEST HIS EX AT CHARITY GALA.
Adrian stared.
“I’m not a billionaire.”
Samuel closed his eyes.
Olivia said, “That is the least important inaccurate word in that sentence.”
The video had twelve thousand views.
While they watched, it became thirteen thousand.
Adrian handed the phone back.
“Put out a statement.”
“Saying?”
“The truth.”
Olivia waited.
Adrian heard himself becoming irritated.
“That I never said I was paralyzed.”
“And that you deliberately remained in the chair tonight to see how Claire behaved?”
“I remained in the chair because sitting hurts less.”
“Is that the whole reason?”
Silence.
Samuel put his glasses back on.
Adrian looked at the gold trim around the salon door.
His father had chosen that trim in 2008 during a renovation and had argued with an interior designer for forty minutes over whether it looked French or merely expensive.
That memory arrived without permission.
His father had been dead eleven months.
Adrian suddenly wanted him alive badly enough to feel stupid.
Robert Cole would have understood the test.
That was part of the problem.
His father tested everyone.
Waiters. Girlfriends. Contractors. Friends.
Especially friends.
Leave a wallet on the table and see whether they mention it.
Offer a bad deal and see whether they challenge you.
Pretend not to know something and see who lies.
Money doesn’t buy loyalty, Robert used to say. It buys opportunities to discover disloyalty.
Adrian had always rolled his eyes.
He had also learned the habit.
“Tell them I use the chair because of ongoing pain and fatigue after the accident,” he said. “Tell them I’m ambulatory. Tell them I should have corrected assumptions earlier.”
Olivia’s expression did not change.
“And the test?”
Adrian looked at her.
“If we omit it,” she said, “the clip supplies it.”
Samuel rubbed his forehead.
“Tomorrow’s review has to be postponed.”
Adrian stood too quickly.
Pain flashed white.
“No.”
“You cannot vote on Ellis Development twenty-four hours after humiliating Grant Ellis at a public event.”
“I didn’t humiliate Grant.”
Samuel stared.
Adrian sat back down.
“Fine.”
Olivia said, “You need to recuse yourself.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then Grant’s lawyers will claim any adverse decision is retaliation.”
“We have procurement concerns that predate tonight.”
“Which is why your presence makes this worse, not better.”
Adrian looked from Olivia to Samuel.
“You both know there are problems with his proposal.”
“We know there are questions,” Samuel said. “Those are not the same thing.”
Grant’s company wanted the management contract for three properties Cole Hospitality planned to convert into mixed-use residential hotels. The deal was worth enough money that several people at the gala had spent six months finding reasons to sit beside Adrian.
Claire had spent longer.
Before the accident, before the breakup, before Grant.
Adrian had never known precisely where ambition ended and affection began with her.
He had once believed that uncertainty was romantic.
After his father died, it became intolerable.
Samuel leaned forward.
“You cannot use tonight as evidence about the contract.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Can you honestly tell me it won’t affect you?”
Adrian started to answer.
Stopped.
Samuel nodded.
“That’s why you recuse.”
Outside the salon, applause began in the ballroom.
The charity auction had apparently started without them.
A vacation home in Vail was being sold to help fund housing grants for families of pediatric patients.
Ordinary life continuing.
Adrian stared at the door.
“What happens to Claire?”
Samuel frowned.
“At the foundation?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing tonight.”
“She assaulted me.”
“She moved your wheelchair without consent.”
“Which is not nothing.”
“I didn’t say it was. But we’re not firing a volunteer chair in the middle of a gala based on sixty seconds of chaos.”
Adrian disliked that answer.
Which was exactly why it was probably correct.
Olivia checked her phone again.
“Thirty-eight thousand views.”
Adrian laughed.
He did not mean to.
Samuel looked at him.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
The laugh died.
Adrian pressed both palms against his eyes.
When he lowered them, Olivia was studying him.
“What?”
“You need to go home.”
“I’m hosting.”
“You are currently the event.”
That hurt more than it should have.
Twenty minutes later, Adrian left the Whitmore through the kitchen because Olivia refused to let him cross the ballroom again.
He had returned to the wheelchair.
Partly because his hip hurt.
Partly because refusing to use it now would feel like admitting the internet’s version of events was true.
An assistant pushed him through the service corridor until Adrian told him to stop.
“I can do it.”
The young man released the handles instantly.
“Sorry, Mr. Cole.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Adrian pushed himself the remaining distance.
The plaid blanket rested over his legs again.
Elena stood near a stainless-steel counter writing on a clipboard.
Two cooks argued quietly about missing sheet pans behind her.
A dishwasher sprayed plates.
Nobody in the kitchen seemed interested in symbolism.
Adrian slowed.
“Elena.”
She looked up.
The clipboard remained against her chest.
“Mr. Cole.”
“I wanted to apologize.”
She waited.
He hated being waited out.
“For putting you in the middle of that.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?”
Her mouth twitched.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then okay seems safe.”
The kitchen doors swung open behind him. A server passed carrying dessert plates.
Adrian moved the wheelchair out of the way.
Elena glanced at his legs.
“Does it hurt?”
He considered lying.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you say you always could walk?”
“Because Claire was looking at me.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answers more of it than I like.”
Elena looked toward the service captain.
He was checking his watch.
May you like
She lowered her voice.
“I have to work.”
