Chương 5
“Did you ever see me on television and think—”
“I changed the channel.”
He bent and began stacking the scattered pages.
“Don’t.”
“I’m helping.”
“You don’t know the order.”
“They have sheet numbers.”
“They also have revisions, and the most recent set is marked by hand.”
He stopped.
Sloan knelt despite the doctor’s instructions and separated the pages. Griffin sat on his heels across from her.
“What is Rainier Commons?” he asked.
Her eyes lifted.
“You looked me up.”
“The press did.”
“And you read it.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a city-owned property your company wants.”
“I know what the property is. I didn’t know you were bidding.”
“You don’t review every project?”
“I review investments above a threshold.”
“Human beings live below your thresholds.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No. Affordable housing in Seattle isn’t fair. That’s why we’re working on it.”
He placed one blueprint on the desk. A hand-drawn courtyard filled its center, surrounded by apartments, a daycare, and ground-floor stalls.
“My company’s proposal includes affordable units.”
“Twelve percent.”
“Which exceeds the current minimum.”
“Congratulations on clearing the lowest available bar.”
“Your coalition’s financing isn’t complete.”
“It will be.”
“The city’s staff report says there’s a forty-million-dollar gap.”
“You’ve been reading for five minutes and already sound like your proposal memo.”
“My point is that if your plan fails after selection, the city loses years.”
“My point is that your plan succeeds exactly as designed and still pushes out the people who live there.”
The monitor taped to Sloan’s wrist began to beep.
She pressed the button to silence it.
Griffin looked at her. “You need to stop.”
“I need to finish a revision.”
“You collapsed.”
“And your company has a submission deadline Friday.”
“So does yours.”
“That’s why I was awake.”
“You could ask for an extension.”
“From a city council committee already worried that our team is too small?”
“Your doctor can provide documentation.”
“And the article can provide context. I’m sure the review panel will love reading that the competing bidder’s owner may be the father of my children.”
Griffin stood.
“I will withdraw Drake Urban.”
Sloan stared up at him.
“No.”
“You think my involvement compromises the process.”
“It does.”
“Then I’ll remove the conflict.”
“You’ll remove your proposal, and everyone will assume I asked you to. My work becomes a gift from the rich man I slept with.”
“That isn’t what happened.”
“It won’t matter what happened.”
He paced once to the window and back. “Then what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing.”
“That is not possible anymore.”
“It was possible for eight years.”
He turned sharply.
The silence after the sentence was ugly and deserved.
Sloan looked down at the stained blueprint. “Go home, Griffin.”
“I don’t know where that is tonight.”
“That sounds expensive. I’m sure someone can solve it.”
He picked up his watch but left the cream ribbon.
At the door, he stopped.
“Did they ask about me?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t know where you were.”
“You knew exactly where I was.”
“No,” Sloan said. “I knew where your buildings were.”
The door closed behind him.
The paternity test was scheduled four days later at a medical laboratory near Lake Union. Sloan chose the facility. Griffin’s attorney reviewed the consent form, then Sloan refused to sign the revised version because it included language allowing Drake representatives to retain samples for confirmatory analysis.
“It’s standard,” Griffin said.
“It’s unnecessary.”
“It protects everyone.”
“It protects you.”
“It protects the validity of the result.”
“The laboratory’s chain-of-custody procedure protects the validity.”
Griffin looked at his attorney, a narrow woman named Elise Ward, who sat at the opposite end of Sloan’s drafting table.
“Remove it.”
Elise removed it without expression.
Sloan had expected more resistance. The absence of it made her suspicious.
The twins sat in the living room eating toast. They had been told that the test would answer whether Griffin was their biological father. Hazel wanted to know whether it hurt. Iris wanted to know who owned the information afterward.
“Both are reasonable questions,” Elise said.
Sloan disliked her slightly less.
At the laboratory, a technician swabbed the inside of each person’s cheek. Griffin went first because Hazel asked him to. He made a show of surviving.
“That was very brave,” Iris said flatly.
“I’ve endured worse.”
“You have your own helicopter. Nothing bad happens to you.”
Griffin looked at Sloan.
She did not rescue him.
“Bad things happen to everybody,” he said.
“Name one.”
He sat back. “My mother died when I was twenty-six.”
Iris’s posture changed.
Hazel lowered the swab waiting in her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“How?”
“Cancer.”
“Did Mom know her?”
Griffin looked toward Sloan again. This time, she answered.
“No. His mother died before we met.”
Iris climbed into the technician’s chair. “That counts as a bad thing.”
“It does,” Griffin said.
The results would take three business days.
By the time they left, three photographers waited across the street.
Daniel guided them through a side entrance into an underground garage. Hazel pressed close to Griffin when a camera flashed through the vehicle window. Iris moved closer to Sloan.
The arrangement felt like a forecast.
At school the next morning, a boy in Hazel’s class asked whether her father could buy the school. Another child told Iris that billionaires stole children for organ transplants. A teacher intervened, but not before Iris shoved the child hard enough to send him into a bookshelf.
The principal called Sloan at work.
Griffin learned from Hazel, who texted him using Sloan’s phone after copying his number onto a gum wrapper.
IRIS IS IN TROUBLE AND MOM IS MAD AT EVERYONE.
He arrived at the school twenty minutes later.
Sloan was already in the principal’s office with Iris. She wore a charcoal blazer over her white blouse and had tied her hair back badly, several strands escaping around her face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
May you like
“Hazel contacted me.”
Hazel, sitting outside with the school secretary, waved through the glass.
