Chương 5
Ethan sat again.
Nobody spoke for several minutes.
Victoria checked her email.
Her attorney had responded to the message she had sent from the deck.
Do not confront further. Preserve objects and communications. Do not consent to removal of anything from vessel. I am contacting estate counsel and local law enforcement liaison. We will meet you at the dock.
Victoria read it twice.
She did not feel rescued.
She felt embarrassed that a professional had needed to tell her not to keep arguing.
She had spent forty minutes doing exactly that.
Ethan glanced at her screen.
She turned it away.
He smiled without warmth.
“So now we’re calling police.”
“I don’t know.”
“You said evidence.”
“I was angry.”
“At least you admit that.”
Victoria looked at him.
“I can be angry and still be right.”
His smile vanished.
The yacht entered the harbor shortly before midnight.
No sirens waited.
No dramatic line of officers stood at the dock.
There were simply three black vehicles near the marina office, two members of Mercer Holdings’ private security team, Victoria’s estate counsel, and a local detective who remained far enough away that the arriving charity guests could not immediately turn the scene into a spectacle.
The lack of spectacle made everything feel more serious.
Before anyone disembarked, Victoria received instructions by text.
Do not touch Sienna’s clutch. Do not open safe yourself. Captain has secured access log. Counsel will handle.
Sienna read over her shoulder.
“At least somebody thinks I’m dangerous.”
Victoria slipped the phone into her pocket.
“I think you make bad decisions.”
Sienna looked toward Ethan.
“So do I.”
Ethan moved toward the gangway.
A security officer silently blocked him.
Ethan stared at the man.
Victoria had seen that officer hundreds of times at corporate events. He had once carried Ethan’s luggage during a storm because the valet service was delayed.
Now he simply waited.
Ethan turned to Victoria.
“Really?”
She said nothing.
He lifted both hands.
“This is my home.”
The yacht was not their home.
They had slept aboard four nights in six years.
But Victoria understood what he meant.
It was his territory because he had treated everything connected to her family as eventually belonging to him.
The security officer motioned toward a seating area.
Ethan sat.
Sienna removed the brooch from her clutch without being asked.
She held it for a moment.
Then placed it on the table.
Victoria stared at it.
Up close, there was no uncertainty.
The crooked diamond.
The faint scratch across the sapphire’s lower right quadrant from the night Eleanor had dropped it in a hotel bathroom in Paris and refused to admit she had been drinking.
On the back, beside the old French clasp, were two tiny engraved initials.
E.M.
Victoria reached toward it.
Then stopped.
The estate attorney silently shook her head.
She pulled her hand back.
For the first time all night, she began to cry properly.
Not loudly.
The tears simply came and would not stop.
She turned away from everyone because she could not stand to be watched again.
The marina smelled like salt, diesel, and wet rope.
A forklift beeped somewhere beyond the building.
Someone laughed in a parking lot, far enough away to belong to another life.
Victoria pressed her coat against her stomach and waited for herself to become functional.
When she finally turned back, the brooch had been placed in a clear evidence pouch.
Sienna looked sick.
Ethan looked furious.
Nobody was arrested.
That surprised Victoria.
The detective spoke separately with counsel, then with Ethan. Victoria could not hear the conversation. Ethan answered with short movements of his head. He was allowed to leave after surrendering access to the yacht and agreeing through counsel not to enter any Mercer estate property pending review.
Sienna left in another vehicle.
Before she did, she stopped near Victoria.
“I have messages.”
Victoria looked at her.
Sienna’s lips parted.
Whatever she intended to say, she changed her mind.
She took out her phone instead.
Victoria stared at it.
Sienna typed something.
A moment later Victoria’s phone vibrated.
A new message appeared from an unfamiliar number.
I am not deleting anything.
Victoria looked up.
Sienna had already turned away.
Ethan stood beside his car.
His jacket was open now. His hair had fallen slightly forward, ruining the careful swept-back shape he had worn all evening. He looked less like a wealthy husband in a magazine profile and more like a tired man who had discovered that doors did not always open for him.
“Come home,” he said.
It was the first thing anyone had spoken aloud on the dock.
Victoria stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because this is still our marriage.”
She looked at the evidence pouch containing her mother’s brooch.
“No.”
“Don’t decide tonight.”
“I already decided where I’m sleeping.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
His eyes flicked toward the people nearby.
He lowered his voice.
“You’re going to regret making this public.”
Victoria looked around.
Nothing about it was public yet.
Not really.
That told her what he feared.
Not losing her.
Exposure.
She put on her camel coat.
“I think you should stop telling me what I’ll regret.”
She got into the waiting car.
During the drive to the Mercer house in Greenwich, Victoria did not think about divorce.
She did not think about criminal charges.
She did not think about Sienna.
She thought about a drawer.
Her mother’s bedroom had a shallow drawer lined in faded green velvet where she kept jewelry she wore often. When Victoria was a child, she would stand on tiptoe and watch Eleanor choose earrings before dinners. The sapphire brooch lived in the back left corner. Eleanor rarely wore it because it was too heavy for modern dresses, but she always touched it when opening the drawer.
Once, when Victoria was ten, she had asked why she kept something she almost never used.
May you like
Eleanor had said, Because not using something is different from not wanting it.
At the time, Victoria had thought it was one of her mother’s unnecessarily complicated answers.
