Chương 7
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Did you leak it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Who did?”
“You should ask Vale.”
“Why would Adrian leak a forged contract accusing himself of buying me?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Powerful people do strange things when they’re trying to control a story.”
The sentence had the smoothness of something repeated before.
Claire wrote it down.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t think that matters.”
“Then why call?”
“Because I saw what they’re saying about you.”
“What are they saying about me?”
He exhaled.
“You don’t want to read it.”
“Tell me.”
“That you knew.”
Claire said nothing.
“They’re saying you knew about the payment. That this whole relationship was arranged. That you benefited financially.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Nora reached for her phone and checked something.
Her expression hardened.
A second article had appeared.
This one included an anonymous source claiming Claire had “long been aware of the financial understanding between the families.”
Daniel said quietly, “This is what men like him do, Claire. They protect themselves.”
She thought of Adrian sitting in his office after she slapped him.
I will not contact you again unless you ask.
She thought of him admitting the payment immediately.
She thought of all the things he had not admitted until forced.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Tell the truth.”
“Which truth?”
“That he interfered in our family. That he paid me. That he pursued you afterward.”
“All of those things are true.”
“Then say them publicly.”
There it was.
The request.
Claire looked at Nora.
“Why?”
“Because if you stay quiet, he’ll define what happened.”
“What happens to you if I say it?”
Daniel’s breathing became audible.
“Nothing.”
Claire waited.
He had always hated silence.
“When did you last speak to a reporter?” she asked.
“I haven’t.”
“Dad.”
“I told you—”
“When?”
His voice sharpened.
“You call me after years, interrogate me like I’m some criminal, and meanwhile the man who paid to remove me from your life is upstairs in his palace and somehow I’m the problem?”
Claire pulled the phone slightly away.
The old volume.
The old pivot.
She could see herself at fourteen standing beside the refrigerator while Daniel shouted because she had asked why the electricity had been turned off.
Nora pointed toward the phone.
Claire brought it back.
“Did you alter the agreement?”
“No.”
“Do you have your original copy?”
“Yes.”
“I want to see it.”
“What for?”
“To compare it.”
“With his?”
“Yes.”
Daniel gave a low laugh.
“That’s smart.”
Claire waited.
“You always were smart when you weren’t angry.”
“Can I see it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“When?”
“I said I’ll find it.”
“Today?”
“Claire, I don’t organize my life around your deadlines.”
The line went dead.
She looked at Nora.
Nora put down her pen.
“Well.”
Claire rubbed both hands over her face.
“Please don’t say interesting.”
“I was going to say your father is unpleasant.”
“Thank you.”
“Also interesting.”
Claire groaned.
Nora turned the yellow pad around.
She had written four lines.
He knew precise disputed clause.
Denied envelope immediately.
Wants Claire public against Adrian.
Claims he has original but resisted producing it.
“None of that proves forgery,” Nora said.
“I know.”
“But it gives us something better than a feeling.”
That afternoon a document examiner collected the forged contract.
Claire refused Adrian’s offer to pay.
She refused his offer to send his security team.
She also refused a car when leaving Nora’s office and immediately regretted it because two photographers followed her for half a block asking whether her father had “sold” her to Adrian.
One of them was a young man with acne scars and an apologetic face.
“Claire, just one comment?”
She kept walking.
“Did you know about the payment?”
Nothing.
“Do you feel betrayed?”
That nearly stopped her.
Because yes.
The answer was still yes.
She entered a pharmacy to escape them and spent ten minutes pretending to compare toothpaste.
An older woman beside her held two boxes and said, “They make too many kinds.”
Claire looked at her.
“What?”
“Toothpaste. I just want toothpaste. Why does it need a résumé?”
Claire laughed.
A real laugh.
It startled her.
The woman held up one box.
“This says charcoal. Why do I want charcoal in my mouth?”
“I have no idea.”
“Exactly.”
They stood together under fluorescent lights while strangers online debated whether Claire Mercer had been sold by her father to a billionaire.
For ninety seconds, she talked about toothpaste.
It was the best part of her day.
Adrian did not sleep that night.
Claire did, eventually, on Melissa’s couch in Brooklyn because photographers remained outside her building.
At three in the morning she woke to the sound of a delivery truck braking on the street below.
For several seconds she did not know where she was.
Then she saw the forged contract inside a clear sleeve on Melissa’s dining table.
She remembered everything at once.
Melissa was asleep in an armchair with her mouth open.
Claire found a blanket and covered her.
On the kitchen counter sat stacks of ivory envelopes.
Claire stopped.
Melissa’s stationery shop used at least six shades of cream paper. The envelope from the morning looked ordinary here.
She picked one up.
Same weight.
Different texture.
She put it back.
The fact disappointed her.
She had wanted the envelope to solve something.
Objects were easier than people.
The next morning Adrian’s board met without him for forty minutes before inviting him inside.
That detail irritated him more than it should have.
His younger sister, Elise, sat near the end of the table.
She owned less of the company than Adrian but enough to be dangerous when angry.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Good morning.”
“You should button your shirt.”
He looked down.
It was buttoned.
Elise smiled without humor.
“You checked.”
Peter Walsh muttered, “Can we not do sibling material today?”
The board chair, Margaret Sloan, slid a tablet toward Adrian.
May you like
The company statement had slowed the story but not ended it.
Vale Holdings confirmed that Adrian Vale had made a private payment to Daniel Mercer in connection with a legal settlement unrelated to the company. The document published online contained material alterations and an unauthorized reproduction of the corporate seal.
