Part 2
Adrian watched the ambulance pull away beneath the stone porte cochere. Its red lights moved across the mansion windows, the parked cars, and the faces of guests who had come outside despite the cold. The first video was already online before the gates opened.
Leah held her phone toward him without speaking.
The clip began with Reed falling out of frame. It showed Adrian looking down, then turning to the witnesses.
He made a scene in front of everyone.
The video ended on his hand covering the violet ribbon.
The caption read: BILLIONAIRE BLAMES ELDERLY VETERAN AFTER GALA INCIDENT.
“I’m not a billionaire,” Adrian said.
Leah stared at him.
“I know that isn’t the point.”
“Good.”
She slipped the phone into her purse. “We need the security recordings before someone on staff decides to become a documentarian.”
“Nolan controls them.”
“Nolan works for you. Tonight that makes him less credible, not more.”
Adrian looked back through the open doors. The reception hall was emptying unevenly. Some guests left through the front entrance, trying not to appear hurried. Others remained near the champagne tables, asking one another what they had seen and revising their answers while they spoke. Foundation volunteers gathered abandoned glasses. The photographer stood alone beside a marble column, studying the screen on the back of her camera.
On the raised platform at the far end of the room, a blue curtain concealed the architectural rendering Adrian had intended to unveil at ten o’clock: the Vale-Reed Center for Veterans and Families, a glass-and-brick complex to be built six miles inland after the foundation sold its aging harbor property.
His name had been placed first.
Reed had objected to that before he objected to anything else.
Gordon Pike came through the crowd, buttoning his dinner jacket. At sixty-eight, he had silver hair that never seemed disturbed by wind or weather and the faintly disappointed expression of an attorney reviewing someone else’s avoidable mistake. He had served as counsel to the Vale family for thirty years and as treasurer of the Harbor Light Veterans Foundation for eleven.
“How bad is he?” Gordon asked.
“Conscious,” Adrian said.
“Did you touch him?”
“No.”
Gordon glanced toward Leah. “That is the sentence. Nothing more. Mr. Vale did not touch Colonel Reed. Medical distress appears to have caused an unfortunate fall.”
“We don’t know that,” Leah said.
“We know Adrian didn’t touch him.”
“We know Adrian says he didn’t.”
Gordon’s eyes hardened almost imperceptibly. “You are employed to communicate his position.”
“I’m employed to keep him from communicating himself into a lawsuit.”
Adrian rubbed the heel of his hand against his jaw. He could still hear the glass breaking. “Reed came at me during the donor reception.”
“He approached you,” Leah said.
“He was shouting.”
“He raised his voice once.”
“You were ten feet away.”
“So were thirty cameras.”
“There were not thirty cameras.”
“There will be by morning.”
Gordon looked toward the curtained rendering. “The announcement must be postponed. Not canceled. Postponed.”
“The transfer documents are supposed to be signed tomorrow,” Adrian said.
“They still can be.”
“While the founder is in a hospital?”
“Especially while the founder is in a hospital, if he intends to obstruct the board again.”
Leah exhaled through her nose. “You should hear yourself before somebody records that too.”
Gordon ignored her. “The foundation needs the sale. Vale Coastal needs the development rights. The bank expects confirmation by noon. Those facts did not change because Samuel lost his balance.”
Adrian looked at the place where Reed had fallen. A dark crescent of champagne remained on the marble near the cocktail table. Tomas was crouched beside it with a towel, though another waiter had told him twice that cleaning could wait.
“Don’t touch that,” Adrian said.
Tomas froze.
“Nobody touches the floor, the table, or anything near it until Nolan photographs it.”
The waiter rose slowly. His eyes moved to Adrian’s face and then away. “Yes, sir.”
It was the first useful decision Adrian had made since the fall. It brought no relief.
By midnight, the gala had become a collection of unfinished things. The band packed its instruments without performing the final set. Caterers sealed trays of untouched desserts. A florist asked what to do with four hundred white roses and was told to leave them. Donor cards sat in silver bowls beside the exits, many of them blank.
Adrian stayed in the reception hall while Nolan copied security footage onto two encrypted drives. Leah stood over the process. Gordon objected to giving her a copy and then objected more strongly when she insisted the second drive be sealed for the foundation’s independent counsel.
“The foundation’s counsel is me,” Gordon said.
“Not for this,” Leah replied.
Adrian sat on the edge of the platform, beneath the curtain hiding his proposed future. His bow tie lay beside him. He had unbuttoned his collar but not removed the violet ribbon.
The ribbon had belonged to his father. Stephen Vale had received it from Reed at the foundation’s twentieth-anniversary dinner. Adrian had been nineteen, home from college and irritated that his father had made him attend. He remembered the room applauding while Reed pinned the ribbon to Stephen’s lapel and said something about stewardship. Adrian had been looking toward the doors, calculating how soon he could leave.
After Stephen died, the ribbon was found in a cedar box with cuff links, foreign coins, and a motel key from somewhere in Wyoming. Adrian had worn it at every Harbor Light gala since. People assumed it was a donor honor. He had allowed the assumption.
He unclipped it now.
A pinprick of blood appeared on his finger. He watched it gather, wiped it on the inside of his cuff, and placed the ribbon in his pocket.
Leah came to sit beside him. For several seconds they listened to staff rolling banquet tables across the adjoining ballroom.
“The first clip has eight million views,” she said.
May you like
He closed his eyes.
“A local reporter posted a photograph of Reed in Korea.”
