Chương 2
Claire had once found the habit endearing.
Now she wanted to break every window in the room.
“For staying away from you,” he said.
“You already said that.”
“He had been coming to your building.”
Her mouth opened.
No sound came.
“He had been calling your office from numbers you hadn’t blocked. He had contacted two people on your museum committee. He told one of them he was worried about your mental stability.”
Claire’s face changed.
Adrian watched it and looked immediately sorry he had said the last part.
She backed away from the desk.
“That was you?”
“What?”
“The calls stopped.”
“Yes.”
She stared at him.
For seven years she had remembered the silence as the first piece of luck she had been given in a long time.
Daniel had gone from six calls a week to none.
No messages from strangers.
No forwarded emails containing apologies that became accusations by the second paragraph.
No photographs of her childhood dog.
No reminders that her mother would have been ashamed of her.
Nothing.
Claire had believed her father had finally tired of hurting her.
Then, when enough months passed, she had allowed herself a more dangerous belief.
Maybe he had understood.
She had never known there was money underneath the silence.
“You bought him off.”
“I settled a claim he was threatening to bring against you.”
“What claim?”
“He said you owed him money from the sale of your mother’s house.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Adrian said nothing.
Claire’s stomach dropped.
“How did you know?”
He rubbed the side of his mouth with his thumb. A faint smear of blood appeared where one of his teeth had cut the inside of his cheek.
“Adrian.”
“I had someone review the trust documents.”
She stopped breathing again.
“You investigated me.”
“Your father.”
“My trust documents.”
“He was threatening you.”
“I never told you that.”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
The air between them changed.
Adrian did not look at the door this time.
He looked at Claire.
And she saw something she had not expected to see that morning.
Shame.
Not guilt at being caught in the contract.
Something less convenient.
More human.
“I heard him threaten you,” he said.
Claire said nothing.
“At the Kessler benefit. The first night we met.”
She stared at him.
“That was eleven months before we started dating.”
“I know.”
“You spoke to me for maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Twenty.”
Despite herself, she almost laughed.
He looked away.
It was such an absurd Adrian correction that for a second the office returned to what it had been before she entered: a place where they knew each other’s irritating reflexes.
Then the papers on the desk brought the room back.
Claire remembered the Kessler benefit.
Not the part Adrian meant.
At first she remembered a waiter spilling champagne down the back of a hedge-fund manager’s tuxedo and Adrian standing beside her at the bar saying, with complete seriousness, “I think we just witnessed the first event tonight that wasn’t scheduled by a publicist.”
She had laughed.
She had not wanted to.
He had been too handsome, too controlled, too obviously accustomed to rooms opening for him.
She had expected arrogance.
Instead he had asked whether the museum’s broken west elevator had finally been repaired because his mother complained about it every time she visited.
They had talked about bad building renovations.
Then Daniel had appeared near the coat check.
Claire’s hand tightened around the torn envelope.
Her father had been wearing a brown jacket that made him look professorial from a distance. He had kissed her cheek without permission and whispered, smiling, “You don’t get to erase what you owe me just because rich people invite you to dinner.”
She had left before dessert.
Adrian had apparently heard.
“You followed him?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“You just happened to investigate him?”
“I asked my security director who he was.”
“After twenty minutes.”
“Yes.”
“That is not normal.”
“No.”
The answer surprised her enough to stop her.
Adrian picked up his water and drank. His hand shook once against the glass.
He noticed.
So did she.
He set it down.
“I thought he might be dangerous.”
“You didn’t know me.”
“That didn’t make him less dangerous.”
“You had no right.”
“I know.”
She gave him a hard look.
“No, you know now.”
A muscle moved in his jaw.
“Fair.”
She hated that too.
It would have been easier if he fought every accusation.
She gathered the forged pages and slid them back into the torn envelope.
Adrian reached for the document.
Claire pulled it away.
“I need that.”
“So do I.”
“It was sent to me.”
“It contains a forged company seal and my signature.”
“And my name.”
Neither moved.
Dawn had brightened around them. The skyline beyond the glass was no longer black and silver but blue-gray, office windows beginning to come alive one by one.
On the floor, the fallen chair looked embarrassingly theatrical.
Claire bent and set it upright.
The ordinary motion nearly undid her.
Adrian crouched to collect the pages that had fallen during the slap. One was the cover sheet. One was a copy of a wire transfer. One was blank.
He picked them up without comment.
Claire watched him smooth a bent corner against the desk.
“You really paid him.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when we started seeing each other?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The night we had dinner at your apartment and the smoke alarm kept chirping.”
She stared.
He gave a tired nod.
“You kept hitting it with a broom.”
“The battery was dying.”
“I know that now.”
“You offered to replace the entire alarm system.”
“I was nervous.”
That almost made her smile.
Almost.
He continued.
May you like
“You told me your father had finally stopped contacting you. You said it was the first peaceful year you could remember.”
Claire could see the kitchen suddenly: bare feet on cold tile, the broom in her hand, Adrian standing on a dining chair because he had refused to let her climb up in a silk robe, both of them laughing at two in the morning while the alarm chirped every forty-three seconds.
