Chương 2
She looked at him.
There had been a time when she loved that voice. Or what it could do. Adrian could make a crowded room seem temporarily private. He had proposed to her in a restaurant kitchen because the dining room had felt too public, kneeling beside crates of fennel while a dishwasher shouted in Spanish ten feet away. She had laughed because it was absurd, and he had laughed too.
That had been before she learned that intimacy and isolation could resemble each other for a long time.
“It became an incident when you stepped on my phone,” she said.
His face emptied.
Camille set her champagne flute on the bar. “I think I should go.”
“No,” Adrian said.
Camille looked at him.
He did not raise his voice.
“You stay.”
A small silence followed.
Elena watched Camille understand something she should have understood sooner.
“I don’t work for you at midnight,” Camille said.
“You work for Cross Meridian whenever Cross Meridian is exposed.”
Marcus looked between them. “Exposed to what?”
Adrian turned toward him. “Nothing. Which is precisely the point.”
Elena felt the pendant warm against her skin. The white indicator faded. Nora’s team had acknowledged the alert. The device was not magic. It could not record a room or summon federal agents or prove anything Adrian had done. It did only three things: detect a violent disconnection from Elena’s paired phone after she had armed it, transmit her location through its own cellular module, and notify a short list of people that something had gone wrong.
Her father had insisted she carry it after a threat against the Vale family two years earlier.
Elena had refused for six months because it felt childish.
She had finally started wearing it when Nora promised the thing would remain dormant unless Elena armed it herself.
Tonight, Elena had armed it in the elevator.
That was the part she had not told Adrian.
Nora gestured toward the entrance. “Mrs. Cross?”
Elena took two steps and stopped.
On the coffee table lay a cream folder embossed with the Cross Meridian logo. Adrian had placed it there forty minutes earlier, before the argument became physical. The tab visible along the edge read RATIFICATION AND CONSENT.
She pointed at it.
“That stays.”
Adrian followed her gaze. “It’s company material.”
“It was presented to me for signature.”
“It’s privileged.”
Camille turned toward him. “It isn’t.”
He looked at her.
Camille’s mouth tightened. “I drafted the transmittal. It isn’t privileged.”
Adrian’s stare rested on her long enough to make the room uncomfortable.
Nora said, “Nobody is taking it. Nobody is touching it. The building manager can note its location until counsel addresses it.”
“This is insane,” Adrian said.
Elena looked at the folder.
On the drive over from the charity dinner, she had spent eighteen minutes convincing herself she was probably wrong.
By the time Adrian crushed her phone, she had stopped needing to be right about everything.
She only needed him not to erase what happened next.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
Adrian moved toward her.
Nora stepped between them without drama.
He stopped.
“Elena,” he said, “if you walk out with him, you’re making a decision you cannot take back.”
Marcus answered first. “Good.”
Elena closed her eyes for half a second.
“Dad.”
Marcus looked away, irritated with himself.
She faced Adrian.
“I made that decision before you broke the phone.”
His expression sharpened.
That was the first thing she had said all night that truly frightened him.
Nora escorted Elena through the vestibule. Marcus followed. The private motor court smelled faintly of rain dragged in by tires, though no rain touched the windows this high above the street. Elena climbed into the back of the black SUV and sat with both hands on her knees while Nora spoke to the building manager outside.
Marcus got in beside her.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
The city moved behind tinted glass.
Marcus glanced at the pendant.
“You armed it.”
“Yes.”
“You never arm it.”
“I did tonight.”
He rubbed his thumb across the side of his index finger, an old habit from meetings when he was trying not to interrupt someone. Elena had inherited neither his height nor his patience, though he believed she had inherited everything else.
“What happened before we got there?”
“I’m not doing this in the car.”
“Fine.”
He lasted perhaps twelve seconds.
“Did he touch you?”
“Yes.”
Marcus turned sharply.
“On the shoulder.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking.”
“I know.”
“Elena.”
She stared through the glass.
“I said I’m not doing this in the car.”
He leaned back.
“All right.”
Nora got into the front passenger seat. The driver pulled away.
Marcus looked at the back of Nora’s head as if considering whether to argue with her instead. Apparently deciding against it, he pulled out his phone.
Elena held out her hand.
He stopped.
“What?”
“No calls yet.”
“I’m calling Daniel.”
“No.”
“Daniel is your attorney.”
“Daniel is the family’s attorney.”
“He represented you on the foundation restructuring.”
“He represented the trust.”
Marcus frowned. “There is a distinction only lawyers enjoy.”
“There’s a distinction I enjoy tonight.”
He lowered the phone.
“What do you want?”
The question irritated her more than it should have. Perhaps because for years both Marcus and Adrian had asked it only after preparing a list of acceptable answers.
“I want ten minutes where nobody tells me what I should do next.”
Marcus studied her face.
Then he put his phone away.
“Ten minutes.”
They drove in silence.
At minute four, Elena started shaking.
Not dramatically. Her teeth did not chatter. She did not cry. Her hands simply began to tremble against the crimson fabric covering her thighs, so she slid them under her knees.
Marcus noticed.
He said nothing.
At minute seven, he took off his jacket and put it across her lap.
She almost told him she was not cold.
May you like
Instead she left it there.
They went to Marcus’s townhouse on East Seventy-First because Nora did not want Elena in a hotel registered under her name and Elena refused to spend the night at any property connected with Vale Holdings. It was after one in the morning when she entered the guest room she had slept in occasionally since college. Her father’s housekeeper had changed the bedding since the last time; the pillowcases smelled like starch and something faintly floral.
