Serena's POV
I do the worst thing I've ever done on a Wednesday.
It takes four minutes.
"Short position's live," says Odile, over a burner phone, from a car somewhere in Queens. "Four million shares. Another six by lunch."
I'm in the ladies' room on the sixty-first floor with the tap running, staring at a woman with red hair and a scarf.
"And the leak?"
"Gone to three reporters at nine thirty. The Journal, the Times, a trade blog in Rotterdam."
"With the documents?"
"Every page."
"Good."
"Serena."
"Don't use that name."
"I'm in a car."
"I don't care. Don't."
A pause. Rain on a windshield. Her voice goes low.
"You've been quiet since the elevator," she says.
"I'm fine."
"Vance has your voice on tape."
"Vance has a word he doesn't understand. It could be anything."
"Could it?"
"It could be damn. It could be mom. It could be Don." I turn off the tap. "Nobody knows what I said. Not even me."
"Dominic does."
My hands go cold.
"What do you mean?"
"You told me yourself. He was holding you."
"He said I said nothing."
"And do you believe him?"
I look at the mirror.
I don't answer.
"I'm only saying," says Odile carefully, "that a man who lies for you is a man who knows something. And you've got a plan to take his company apart in ninety days."
"It's not his company I'm taking apart."
"No?"
"It's Brandt's. And Vance's. It's every board seat and shell and signature that made the theft possible."
"And the man who's standing in the middle of it?"
I say nothing.
"He's collateral, Serena."
"He didn't do it."
"You don't know that."
"I know it in my..." I stop.
I can't finish that sentence. I don't know what the end of it is. Heart sounds like an insult. Bones sounds like a lie.
"Do you still want the leak?" says Odile quietly.
I look at my phone.
I look at the little flashing envelope.
"Run it," I say.
***
By ten forty, the whole floor knows.
You can hear it before you see it. A kind of rising whine, like a dentist's drill. Phones ring in every office. A junior analyst bolts down the corridor with a printout, white as paper. Posy appears in my doorway with her cardigan buttoned wrong and her eyes enormous.
"It's on Bloomberg."
"What is?"
"Hale Meridian Hid Sixty-Million-Dollar Related-Party Loan in Lisbon Deal." She reads it from her phone in a voice of doom. "The stock's down eight per cent. Eight, Vera. Eight. It's the biggest drop since the... since three years ago."
"Since the yacht."
"Yeah."
I make my face go slack with shock.
I've practised. It's the same face I used on Augustus.
"Where's Dominic?"
"Boardroom. With the lawyers. With everyone." She hesitates. "He asked for you."
"For me?"
"He said, 'Get Vera.' And then he said, 'Please.' I've worked for him four years. He's never said please."
I go.
The boardroom is chaos.
It's full of men in suits holding phones. A man from compliance is shouting at a woman from communications. Edmund Vance sits at the far end with his fingertips together, calm as a lamp. Augustus Brandt is at the head of the table, grey, shaking, a glass of water in his hand and a pulse jumping in his jaw.
He looks at me.
Just for a second.
It's the look of a man who has spotted a face in a crowd and can't remember where he's seen it.
Dominic stands at the window.
He's in his shirtsleeves. His tie is loose. When he sees me, something goes across his face like a draught through a door, and he lifts his hand.
"Everyone," he says. "Out."
"Dom..." says a banker.
"Out. Ten minutes. Edmund, you stay. Augustus, you stay. Ms Lowell, you stay."
The room empties.
The doors close.
It's very quiet.
"It's true," says Dominic.
Augustus puts down his glass. "Dom..."
"The loan. It's true."
"It was a related-party facility," says Vance smoothly. "Perfectly legal. Approved by the finance committee. There was a minor disclosure issue..."
"Sixty million dollars."
"It was folded into the terminal financing."
"Who signed it?"
Silence.
Brandt clears his throat. "The finance committee."
"Who chairs the finance committee?"
"I do."
Dominic closes his eyes.
I watch his face. I watch the thing happen to it, slowly: the slide of a stone down a hill. He looks at his godfather, at the soft, tired, patient face he's known all his life.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he says.
"It was a small thing."
"It was sixty million dollars."
"It was to protect the company. The Portuguese side wanted a guarantee. I thought..." Augustus lifts a trembling hand. "You were in no state, Dom. After Serena. I took it on myself. I thought I was helping."
I say nothing.
I'm watching a man lie so beautifully that I almost believe it.
He's good. He's the best liar I've ever seen. He pulls it off with a break in his voice and a look of old, wounded love.
And Dominic believes him.
I see him believe him, in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand unclenches. A man so desperate to find a reason not to hate that he'll accept the first one anyone offers.
Something in my chest twists.
"What do we say?" he asks, quietly.
"That it was an oversight," says Vance. "A technical lapse. We'll commission an independent review."
"It'll look like a cover-up."
"It will look like governance."
"It will look," says Dominic, "like I knew."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Then we say so."
"That won't be enough."
I hear myself speak before I decide to.
"May I?"
Three heads turn.
My voice is steady. I don't know where it comes from.
"Don't call it an oversight," I say. "It makes it sound like carelessness. It sounds like a man who wasn't watching."
"Go on," says Dominic.
"Say you've discovered something. Say the moment you saw it, you acted. You've asked the finance committee to step aside. You've commissioned an external forensic audit, and you'll publish the results in thirty days, whatever they are." I breathe. "Say you didn't know. Say you want to know."
"The committee won't like it," Vance says.
"The committee doesn't have to like it."
"Ms Lowell..."
"Edmund," says Dominic.
The lawyer stops.
"She's right."
"Dominic," says Augustus softly, "I really think..."
"Thank you, Augustus. I'll take it from here."
He says it kindly, absolutely, like a man pushing a door closed.
I feel something go through the room, a very small, silent shift, like a plank sliding under a floor.
Brandt's eyes meet mine.
For an instant I see something behind the warmth. A black, sudden, calculating gleam, like a fish turning in deep water.
It's gone before I can be sure.
"Of course, my boy," he says. "Whatever you think best."
***
At six, I'm back at my desk, writing Dominic's statement.
He didn't ask me to.
He's gone to the roof to think. The floor is empty except for the cleaners and a security guard. The city is a sheet of lights below me. I've drafted six paragraphs, and every one of them is better than anything I could have written for myself.
I'm helping him.
I've spent four months building a weapon to hurt him, and here I am, in a half-light, polishing his shield.
I put my head in my hands.
My burner buzzes.
Odile.
I pick it up.
Lowell Ridge's switchboard just got a call, she writes. From the Chairman's private line.
He asked to speak to the principal.
He'd like to meet. Lunch. Tomorrow. Alone.
I stare at the screen.
What did you tell him?
That I'd check her diary.
Her.
Serena. He said "her." He said "I understand the principal of Lowell Ridge is a woman."
My mouth goes dry.
I've never told anyone that.
A pause.
Three dots.
Then:
I know.