Chương 5
“Thank you.”
“He’s also strange.”
“All rich people are strange. If I had that much money, I’d buy twelve identical houses and rotate through them so none developed emotional leverage over me.”
Elena laughed again.
Then her face tightened.
“I touched his hand.”
Tasha closed the refrigerator.
“And?”
“Nothing. But online it looks like I’m kneeling at his feet in a fairy tale.”
“You were helping him.”
“I know.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
Elena picked at the corner of the cereal box.
“That doesn’t seem to matter.”
Tasha’s phone buzzed.
She checked it.
“Hospital.”
“Go.”
“I can stay.”
“Go save a life or refill a chart or yell at a resident. Whatever nurses actually do.”
“Mostly stop doctors from killing people.”
“Great. Go do that.”
After Tasha left, the apartment became too quiet.
Elena opened the article again.
The video autoplayed.
Claire grabbed the chair.
Adrian turned.
Elena appeared.
Then Adrian stood.
The clip ended before she refused his hand.
It ended before she told him she did not want the seat.
Online, she remained eternally surprised, beautiful only because the lighting was kind, chosen by a wealthy man for being good.
Elena hated it.
She hated Claire for touching the chair.
She hated Adrian for turning her response into a reward.
She hated herself a little for having felt, for one stupid second, something warm when he offered his hand.
She closed the browser.
At three fourteen, her phone rang again.
Adrian.
She recognized the number because it had appeared on an internal contact sheet once.
She watched it ring.
Then answered.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Neither spoke.
Adrian cleared his throat.
“I’m calling to apologize.”
“You already did.”
“I did it badly.”
“That’s true.”
He laughed softly.
She almost did.
“Are reporters outside your building?” he asked.
“One photographer.”
“We can send security.”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“I don’t want your security.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t send a car.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You sound like you were.”
“I considered it.”
“That’s the problem.”
Silence.
He said, “Probably.”
She sat on the edge of the couch.
“Do you do that a lot?”
“What?”
“Decide what people need before asking them.”
Adrian did not answer immediately.
“My father did.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
She waited.
“Yes.”
His honesty disarmed her slightly.
She disliked that too.
“I saw Claire’s statement,” Elena said.
“So did several million other people.”
“Did you really make her think you couldn’t walk?”
“I didn’t tell her I couldn’t.”
“That’s lawyer language.”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“You employ enough of them.”
He exhaled.
“The accident damaged nerves around my hip. I can walk. I could walk the day after the crash. Not far. Not well. I use the chair for distance and long events. Claire knew some of that.”
“Some?”
“She knew the doctors expected me to recover most function. She didn’t know how much I already had.”
“Why?”
“Because she stopped asking.”
Elena looked at the blank television.
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“It did when I said it.”
“What’s the unrehearsed version?”
Adrian was quiet.
“When she left,” he said, “I wanted to know if she was leaving because I was difficult or because I looked damaged.”
Elena leaned back.
“And?”
“I made it impossible to know.”
That was the first thing he had said she completely believed.
Adrian continued.
“She had reasons to leave me before the accident. I wasn’t easy to live with.”
“That’s a gentle way to describe whatever you did.”
“I checked her phone once.”
Elena blinked.
“What?”
“I thought she was seeing Grant.”
“Was she?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make checking her phone okay.”
“I know.”
“Did you know then?”
“No.”
“So you invaded her privacy and got lucky.”
“I wouldn’t use the word lucky.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Elena stood and walked to the window.
The photographer was across the street pretending to study his camera.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you call?”
“Because my company is calling you, strangers are taking your picture, and it happened because I turned a private grudge into a public experiment.”
Elena looked down.
There it was.
Not enough.
But something.
“Okay,” she said.
“I also want to make sure your job is protected.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not offering you anything.”
“Good.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Another silence.
Then Adrian said, “Were you serious about applying for banquet captain?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“No, wait. I wasn’t going to interfere.”
“That sentence is interference.”
“You’re right.”
“I know.”
She disconnected.
Adrian sat alone in his father’s study with the phone in his hand.
The room smelled faintly of leather and old paper even though nobody had smoked in it for years.
He opened the bottom drawer of Robert Cole’s desk.
Inside were three hotel keycards, two expired passports, a roll of peppermints, and a small black notebook.
Adrian knew the notebook.
His father had carried versions of it for decades.
Names.
Meetings.
Observations.
Adrian opened it.
A page from two years earlier contained four lines.
Claire — charming under pressure.
Grant E. — wants access more than partnership.
Samuel — still tells me no. Keep him.
A. trusts badly. Thinks skepticism is intelligence.
Adrian stared at the last line.
Then laughed.
It came out ugly.
He closed the notebook.
His father had tested everyone.
Including him.
Especially him.
The next afternoon, Claire arrived at Grant’s office without warning.
His assistant looked frightened to see her.
Grant did not.
He stood beside the windows overlooking the harbor with his jacket off and his tie loosened.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Claire shut the door.
“That’s a lovely greeting.”
“We have a review underway.”
“We have had a review underway for six months.”
“Now we have a conflict review.”
Claire folded her arms.
“Because Adrian stood up?”
“Because Adrian’s board is looking for reasons.”
“They already were.”
Grant said nothing.
May you like
Claire walked to the conference table.
His champagne smugness from the ballroom had disappeared.
