Chương 3
“I want off the boat.”
Ethan turned.
“We’re already going back.”
“I mean I’m done.”
“You’re panicking over nothing.”
She gave him a look that was almost bored.
“I’m wearing jewelry taken off a dead woman.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sienna held up the brooch.
“She does.”
“She’s grieving.”
Victoria flinched.
Ethan saw it.
He had found the familiar opening.
He softened immediately.
“Vic.”
The nickname was worse.
He came closer but did not touch her.
“You’ve had a terrible year. I know that. I know what your mother’s things do to you. But there are explanations you don’t have.”
Victoria stared at him.
“You had fourteen months to give them to me.”
His eyes moved briefly toward the guests again.
“This isn’t the place.”
“You picked the place.”
“I didn’t pick anything.”
Sienna laughed once.
It was not a pleasant laugh.
Ethan turned toward her.
She shook her head.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t make me the crazy woman too. I know that trick.”
Victoria looked at her.
Sienna noticed.
For an instant, an unwilling understanding passed between them.
Then Sienna’s expression closed.
She slipped the brooch into a small satin clutch.
Victoria’s hand tightened.
“I said give it to me.”
“And I said I didn’t steal it.”
“You know what it is now.”
“I know what you claim it is.”
Ethan exhaled.
“Sienna, just give it to her.”
She looked at him with real contempt for the first time.
“How generous.”
“Sienna.”
“No. You don’t get to hand me the criminal part of your evening and then become reasonable.”
Victoria could almost admire the sentence.
Almost.
Instead, she looked at the woman who had slept with her husband and thought about how absurd human beings were. There were moments when pain should have simplified the world. Wife. Husband. Mistress. Victim. Betrayer.
Instead, everything became more specific.
Sienna was frightened.
Ethan was calculating.
Victoria was standing barefoot inside one shoe because her heel had slipped halfway out while she stopped on the staircase.
She looked down.
The sight of it was so ridiculous she almost lost her balance trying to fix it.
For a few seconds nobody spoke while Victoria slid her heel back into place.
The yacht moved steadily toward shore.
A server silently collected untouched glasses from a nearby table. Another guest looked toward the black water.
Life refused to arrange itself properly around catastrophe.
Victoria straightened.
“I’m not going to take it from you.”
Sienna blinked.
“Good.”
“But when we dock, I’m asking my attorney to seek an emergency preservation order for the brooch and everything in that safe.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have an attorney on standby for this.”
“My mother’s estate does.”
“You’re making legal threats you don’t understand.”
“Maybe.”
That answer unsettled him more than argument would have.
Victoria continued.
“So I’ll let someone who does understand make them.”
Ethan’s mouth tightened.
Sienna watched him.
“What’s in the safe?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t what you said five minutes ago.”
“Insurance documents.”
“Those are something.”
He ignored her.
Victoria folded her arms, then unfolded them when she realized she was cold.
Her coat remained on the staircase.
Ethan noticed.
For one humiliating instant, she thought he might pick it up for her.
He did not.
The trip back took forty-three minutes.
Victoria knew because she watched the clock on the wall near the bar without meaning to. Later, those forty-three minutes would stretch in memory, but living through them was strangely ordinary. The engine kept its low vibration. The night remained beautiful. The guests quietly dispersed to different parts of the yacht, pretending to give privacy while creating the peculiar public silence of people who knew they would discuss everything later.
Victoria sat alone at the end of a curved bench.
Ethan stayed ten feet away.
Sienna remained near the railing with her clutch held against her hip.
Nobody left the triangle entirely.
At 11:18 p.m., Victoria’s phone showed three missed calls from Ethan even though he was in the same room.
She looked at him.
He held up his own phone.
“Answer me privately.”
“No.”
“You’re turning this into theater.”
“You brought your girlfriend to a family charity dinner wearing my mother’s burial jewelry.”
“She is not my—”
Sienna looked over.
Ethan stopped.
Victoria stared at him.
Sienna said, “Finish that sentence.”
He didn’t.
Victoria looked back at the clock.
At 11:23, Ethan sat beside her.
She shifted away.
He spoke quietly.
“I made mistakes.”
She watched the black water outside.
“Plural is doing a lot of work there.”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You’re trying to get ahead of whatever is in that safe.”
His silence lasted a little too long.
Victoria turned.
“What’s in it?”
“Business documents.”
“For what business?”
“Mercer.”
“My mother’s company?”
“Our company.”
“My mother’s company.”
“Your mother is dead.”
Victoria looked at him.
He regretted the sentence immediately.
She could see it.
His mouth opened.
Then closed.
Across the deck, Sienna turned her face toward the sea.
Ethan lowered his voice.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“How did you mean it?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I’m learning that I don’t.”
“Victoria, listen to me. Mercer has liquidity problems.”
She stared.
He went on before she could answer.
“Temporary ones. We were exposed on the coastal properties when the refinancing window changed. The Newport redevelopment went over budget. We had payroll, insurance renewals, vendor commitments. Your mother had built a company with almost no tolerance for modern debt structure.”
Victoria’s mind caught on one phrase.
“We?”
He rubbed his thumb against his finger.
“We. The board. Management.”
“You’re not management.”
“I advise you.”
“You advise me.”
“I’ve spent six years cleaning up that company.”
“You’ve spent six years telling me I was too emotional to understand it.”
“That’s not fair.”
Victoria laughed softly.
There was nothing humorous in it.
Ethan leaned closer.
“I used assets as temporary collateral.”
She stopped laughing.
“What assets?”
“Noncore estate holdings.”
“What assets?”
May you like
“Some jewelry. Artwork. Private notes.”
Her skin went cold again.
