Chương 3
“She is pregnant with your child.”
“That does not make every accusation true.”
Serena reached for her clutch. Her fingers trembled as she opened it, but she did not take anything out. “I am not making accusations.”
“You just said I lied about owning the apartment.”
“You did.”
“I said I had access to it.”
“You said you paid for it.”
“I paid incidental expenses.”
“With whose money?” Eleanor asked.
Adrian looked at Charles again.
Charles stood. “This conversation is over for tonight.”
“No,” Eleanor said.
“You are in shock.”
“So is Serena.”
Charles’s gaze moved to the pregnant woman, and for the first time his control slipped enough to reveal anger. “Ms. Blake exercised extraordinarily poor judgment.”
Serena’s shoulders drew in.
Eleanor stood so quickly that the chair scraped across the floor.
“Do not begin there.”
Charles looked at his daughter.
“Adrian is engaged to me,” Eleanor said. “He had authority over the apartment. He supervised Serena’s work on three corporate events last year. You do not begin with her poor judgment as though he wandered innocently into someone else’s deception.”
“I did not say he was innocent.”
“You did not need to.”
Adrian pushed his chair back. “I never threatened Serena. I never used my position against her.”
Serena stared at the table.
Eleanor turned toward her. “Did he?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Adrian sat again.
Serena pressed her lips together. “Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?” Natalie asked.
Serena looked at Charles, then Eleanor. “I do not know what I am allowed to say.”
“You are allowed to tell the truth,” Eleanor said.
Charles’s expression hardened. “There are employment matters and confidential negotiations involved.”
“That is not an answer,” Natalie said.
“It is the answer of someone who understands liability.”
Eleanor felt a cold clarity settle over her. “Dad, leave.”
Charles blinked.
“This is my engagement dinner. My fiancé. My employee. Leave the room.”
“I am not leaving you alone with this.”
“I am not alone.”
“You are not thinking clearly.”
Eleanor touched the place where her ring had been. The skin beneath it looked pale.
“I have never thought more clearly.”
Charles’s eyes moved toward Adrian, then Serena, then the half-open ballroom doors. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Then we go upstairs. Nothing leaves this room tonight.”
He walked out.
Natalie followed after telling Adrian she would speak to him later. Her tone suggested he should not look forward to it.
The doors closed.
Only Eleanor, Adrian, and Serena remained at the long table.
For several seconds, none of them spoke. Somewhere beyond the wall, a service cart rattled across tile. The ordinary sound made the ballroom feel even more unreal.
Eleanor sat again.
“Start at the beginning,” she said.
Adrian leaned back. “We do not have to humiliate each other.”
“You have mistaken the stage of this conversation.”
“Eleanor, I love you.”
Serena looked down.
Eleanor watched Adrian’s face. He had said those words to her that morning while fastening the clasp of her bracelet. He had stood behind her in the mirror, kissed her shoulder, and complained that Charles had invited too many bankers.
Now the words seemed not false but insufficient, which was somehow worse.
“When did it start?” she asked.
Adrian’s eyes shifted.
Serena answered. “Fourteen months ago.”
Eleanor counted backward automatically. Fourteen months ago, she and Adrian had been in Seattle for the opening of the Vale North. He had returned to New York three days early because he said Charles needed him.
“Where?”
“The Hanover apartment,” Serena said.
Adrian shook his head. “The first time was not planned.”
“No affair begins with a planning committee,” Eleanor said.
He flinched.
Serena pulled the ultrasound photograph from beneath the place card and placed it fully on the table. It showed a profile Eleanor could not interpret beyond the curve of a forehead and a small closed fist.
“I had been coordinating the Ellison fundraiser,” Serena said. “We worked until two in the morning for almost a week. The hotel had a pipe failure in two staff offices, so Adrian said we could use the apartment for planning meetings.”
“Who else attended?”
“At first, two assistants. Later, just us.”
Adrian folded a receipt from his pocket without seeming to realize he had taken it out. He creased it lengthwise, then again.
Eleanor looked at the paper in his hands.
“When did you tell her our engagement was an arrangement?”
“I never said that.”
“You said there were pressures she did not understand.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It was close enough for her to hear what you wanted her to hear.”
His mouth tightened. “You have already decided I am a monster.”
“No. Monsters make this easier. You are a man who chose each step.”
Serena shifted in her chair. “I knew he was engaged.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“I am not going to pretend I didn’t. I knew. He said you lived mostly separate lives. He said you had postponed setting a wedding date because neither of you wanted it.”
“We postponed because my mother was dying.”
Serena’s face lost color.
Adrian closed his eyes briefly.
Eleanor’s mother had spent eleven months moving between treatments, brief improvements, and the calm lies families tell when they need dinner to feel normal. Adrian had sat beside Eleanor in hospital cafeterias. He had brought Charles clean shirts. He had held Eleanor while she listened to her mother’s final breaths.
During those same months, he had been visiting Serena on Thursdays.
Serena whispered, “He did not tell me that.”
Adrian spoke sharply. “You knew she was ill.”
“I knew she had cancer. I did not know that was why the wedding was delayed. You said Eleanor used family crises to avoid decisions.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened against the tablecloth.
“Did I?” she asked Adrian.
He looked at her. “I was frustrated.”
“Did I use my mother’s death to avoid marrying you?”
“That is not what I meant.”
May you like
“What did you mean?”
He stopped folding the receipt. “You never chose me without considering your father, the company, the board, the newspapers. Everything with you had to survive an institutional review.”
