Chương 7
“No.”
“I assumed.”
“What kind?”
“I did not let him get specific.”
“Let him.”
Naomi paused.
“You want to hear it?”
“I want to know what he thinks this is worth.”
The answer arrived the next afternoon.
Damien would resign as chief executive after a ninety-day transition.
He would support an independent review of the disputed corporate consent.
He would transfer certain voting rights temporarily.
In return, Evelyn would agree not to pursue a civil claim arising from the penthouse incident and would issue a statement saying that the confrontation “arose from a private relationship dispute unrelated to company operations.”
Criminal matters were outside her control, but the language was designed to weaken them.
There was also money.
Enough to insult her.
Not because it was small.
Because it was large.
Evelyn read the proposal twice.
Then she called Naomi.
“He thinks I want him fired.”
“He thinks everyone wants something that can be negotiated.”
“He wants me to say the company had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes.”
“He assaulted me while demanding I sign a company document.”
“Yes.”
“And Sloane heard him.”
“We don’t know what Sloane will say.”
Evelyn looked toward the window.
That was true.
Three days had passed since Sloane’s text.
Nothing since.
“Decline it.”
“I will.”
“Wait.”
Naomi waited.
Evelyn hated the next question.
“If the investigation finds the consent was legitimate?”
“Then we deal with that.”
“And I become the woman who nearly blew up a company because her ex scared her.”
“No,” Naomi said. “You become the woman whose ex assaulted her after she raised a question that turned out to have an innocent explanation.”
“That isn’t how people will say it.”
“No.”
The directness helped.
Naomi did not promise fairness.
Evelyn had enough people willing to promise things they could not control.
“Decline it,” she said.
Two hours later, Damien released a statement through a public-relations firm.
He denied assaulting Evelyn.
He described the evening as “an emotionally charged personal disagreement.”
He said he had complete confidence in the integrity of Vale Cross Development’s records.
He expressed regret that a “private conflict between former partners” had become entangled with corporate governance.
The statement did not mention the pendant.
It did not mention her phone.
It did not mention the door.
It did not mention the forged consent allegation.
It sounded reasonable.
That was its purpose.
By evening, people online had divided into camps despite knowing almost nothing.
Some called Damien an abuser.
Some called Evelyn vindictive.
Some said both rich families deserved each other.
One person posted that the entire confrontation was probably staged to manipulate the company’s stock price, although the company was privately held.
Evelyn read that one twice.
Then she deleted the app from her phone.
At nine that night, someone knocked on her apartment door.
Evelyn froze.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Two more.
She looked through the peephole.
Adrian stood in the hallway holding a paper bag.
She opened the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“Bringing soup.”
“You don’t bring soup.”
“I purchased soup.”
“That I believe.”
He held up the bag.
“Marisol said I was not permitted to arrive with security unless invited.”
Evelyn looked past him.
The hallway was empty.
“She trained you?”
“Apparently I am trainable.”
“Debatable.”
She let him in.
He went directly to the kitchen and set the bag on the counter.
Then he opened the wrong cabinet looking for bowls.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Your kitchen is irrational.”
“My kitchen is twelve feet long.”
“Exactly.”
She found bowls.
They ate at the small table near the window.
The soup was too salty.
Neither mentioned it for ten minutes.
Finally Adrian put down his spoon.
“I knew about the liquidity problem.”
Evelyn looked up.
“What?”
“Not the consent. The liquidity problem.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I told Damien in September he needed to slow acquisitions.”
“And he didn’t.”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell the board?”
“He said the gap was temporary.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I believed him.”
Evelyn stared at her father.
Adrian rarely admitted believing the wrong person.
It made her uneasy.
“Why?”
He looked at his soup.
“Because I wanted him to succeed.”
The answer irritated her before she understood it.
“For me?”
“No.”
She waited.
Adrian rubbed his thumb against his finger.
“For his father.”
Thomas Vale had died eight years earlier.
Heart attack.
Fifty-seven years old.
Adrian and Thomas had built the original development partnership together. Their friendship had survived lawsuits, recessions, two disastrous projects, and one eleven-month period when they communicated almost entirely through assistants.
After Thomas died, Adrian pushed the board to give Damien more responsibility earlier than several directors wanted.
Evelyn knew that.
She had not known why.
“I told myself I was giving him room,” Adrian said. “Maybe I was avoiding admitting he was in over his head.”
“You were protecting him.”
“Yes.”
“From the board.”
“Yes.”
“Did Damien know?”
“Probably.”
Evelyn leaned back.
Something cold moved through her.
“How many times?”
Adrian’s expression changed.
“What?”
“How many times did you smooth something over?”
“Nothing illegal.”
“That was not my question.”
He looked away.
There it was again.
The old Cross instinct.
Answer the narrowest question available.
Evelyn stood and took her bowl to the sink.
“Go home.”
“Evelyn.”
“I mean it.”
“I never covered falsified documents.”
“You don’t know whether there were falsified documents because you trained him to think problems could be handled privately.”
Adrian stood.
“That is not fair.”
“No. It isn’t.”
She turned.
“But neither was teaching him consequences were negotiable and then acting shocked when he tried to negotiate mine.”
The sentence hurt him.
She saw it.
Part of her wanted that.
She hated the part.
Adrian picked up his coat.
At the door, he stopped.
“I loved his father.”
Evelyn folded her arms.
“I know.”
“I thought loyalty meant not abandoning his son the first time he struggled.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded.
“Maybe I stayed too long.”
Evelyn looked down.
May you like
The anger had nowhere clean to go.
“That doesn’t make what Damien did your fault.”
