Chương 6
Do not engage. Forward anything further to legal.
Three words beneath the instruction had been typed, deleted, and preserved in the email archive’s revision history.
I can’t do this.
He stared at them.
Eva had written that one attempt failed because of his family, one because of her, and the last because of him. Celeste had stopped the visit. Eva had abandoned one attempt herself. Damian had rejected the final contact without reading it.
He sat back.
The refrigerator motor turned on. Pipes clicked somewhere in the wall. A delivery truck groaned in the street twenty floors below.
For years he had imagined the unanswered part of Eva’s disappearance as something done to him. Now the unanswered part had a timestamp, an attachment he had refused, and his own instruction beneath it.
At seven, Malcolm called.
“The clip has twelve million views.”
Damian closed his eyes.
“Lily’s full name is on several sites,” Malcolm continued. “Someone identified Naomi through a hospital staff page. Reporters are outside her building.”
Damian stood so quickly that the chair scraped across the floor. “Send security.”
“You were told not to.”
“To the block, not the apartment. Plain clothes. Keep distance. Notify the police about obstruction and harassment, not the paternity issue.”
“There is more. The board wants an emergency meeting at noon. Investors are asking whether the child creates inheritance or control complications.”
“She is not an unreported subsidiary.”
“I did not phrase it that way.”
“Tell them I will attend remotely after I see Lily.”
“Your mother has requested that the meeting occur before any unsupervised contact.”
“My mother has no authority over my contact with anyone.”
“She controls enough votes to make your morning unpleasant.”
Damian looked at Eva’s letter.
“Then she can be unpleasant without me.”
Naomi’s apartment occupied the third floor of a narrow brick building beside a laundromat. By ten thirty, four camera crews waited across the street. A reporter stood beneath a blue umbrella rehearsing a sentence that included the words secret child and billionaire bloodline.
Damian arrived in a plain sedan driven by his security director, Owen. He wore the same black suit from the gala because he had not slept or changed. Owen glanced at the crowd.
“The diner is compromised.”
“I know.”
“We should relocate.”
“Naomi will decide.”
“Sir, once you step out—”
Damian opened the door.
Questions hit before his shoes reached the sidewalk.
“Mr. Cross, did you know about your daughter?”
“Was Evelyn Arden receiving payments from the Cross family?”
“Will the child inherit voting shares?”
“Did your mother conceal the pregnancy?”
Damian crossed the pavement without answering. Owen and two security officers kept the cameras from closing around him but did not touch anyone. A microphone struck Damian’s shoulder. He continued toward the building.
At the entrance, Naomi waited with her arms folded.
“I said no photographers.”
“I did not invite them.”
“You knew they would come.”
“I knew after we arranged the meeting.”
“You could have warned me before seven this morning.”
“I called at seven thirteen.”
“My phone was off because a child who buried her mother six days ago finally fell asleep beside me.”
Damian stopped beneath the dripping awning. “You’re right.”
Naomi seemed briefly wrong-footed. “You say that a lot.”
“Recently.”
She looked past him at the reporters. “Lily saw her face on television.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She thinks she did something bad.”
“May I speak to her?”
“Not while this circus is outside.”
Damian turned to Owen. “Clear a path to the car. Naomi chooses where we go.”
Owen nodded.
Naomi did not move. “You don’t get to put us into a vehicle and make us disappear.”
“I am not trying to.”
“You keep saying the correct thing after creating the incorrect situation.”
“That is fair.”
“It is not meant to be fair. It is meant to be infuriating.”
“It is both.”
For the first time, Naomi looked as tired as she had sounded the night before.
“Lily wants pancakes,” she said. “The diner owner has a back entrance through the laundromat. My sister is distracting the reporters by yelling at them from a window.”
A voice from above shouted, “Get a real job!”
Naomi glanced up. “That would be her.”
They entered through the laundromat. Warm air and the smell of detergent rolled over them. A man folding towels recognized Damian, frowned, and deliberately looked away.
Lily waited in a rear booth at the diner wearing the same cream dress beneath a borrowed blue cardigan. Her ivory bow had been retied slightly crooked. Mr. Gray sat beside her, the ring looped around his uninjured ear by the faded red thread.
Damian stopped at the end of the booth.
“Hello.”
Lily looked at his suit. “Did you sleep in that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I forgot to change.”
Naomi slid into the booth opposite Lily. “He means he was too busy being tortured by his past.”
Damian sat beside Naomi, leaving the place across from Lily empty.
The waitress approached with a coffeepot. She stared at him, then at the front windows, where several reporters had discovered the diner.
“You people buying breakfast or the building?”
“Breakfast,” Naomi said.
“Good. Building’s a nightmare.”
Lily ordered chocolate-chip pancakes. Naomi ordered eggs. Damian asked for coffee.
“You have to eat,” Lily said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Mom said people who say that are usually lying.”
“What did she make when you said it?”
“Toast cut into triangles.”
Damian ordered toast.
The waitress wrote it down without comment.
For several minutes, Lily arranged sugar packets by color. Damian watched her hands. Her fingernails had chipped blue polish. A small scar crossed the knuckle of her right thumb.
“What happened there?” he asked.
“Cat.”
“Yours?”
“Mrs. Bell’s. He doesn’t like children.”
“He doesn’t like anyone,” Naomi said.
“He likes tuna.”
“He tolerates tuna.”
The waitress poured coffee. Damian took one sip and found it terrible. He drank again because the ordinary unpleasantness steadied him.
May you like
Lily tapped the ring against the table.
“Do you want a blood test?”
