Dominic's POV
Her burner pings off a cell tower on Park Avenue at 6:14 p.m.
That's how I find out my wife is buying my company.
It isn't clever. It's a rainy Wednesday and a man with a laptop and a great deal of patience. Marcus lays it on the steel desk in the Lantern room at midnight: a list of calls, a map, a tidy line of red dots.
"The Lowell Ridge switchboard forwards to a burner," he says. "The burner moves. Queens in the morning. Midtown at noon. And at 6:14 this evening, on the sixty-first floor of Hale Tower, a phone with that number received a text from a Queens number belonging to Odile Park."
I look at the dot.
It sits exactly on top of my own building.
"You're certain."
"I'm certain."
"It's Vera."
"It's your chief of staff," says Marcus. "Who's also, as far as I can tell, the principal of the fund that's shorting your stock, buying your debt and leaking your documents to the Wall Street Journal."
I put my hands over my face.
I don't know what noise I make.
"Boss?"
"Give me a minute."
I hear him move away. A tap runs, a kettle clicks on, a cup is put down by my elbow. He's learned not to speak when I'm like this. After a while, I take my hands away.
"She wrote my statement," I say.
"I know."
"The one about the finance committee. It's the best thing I've ever read. It's going to save the company." I give a short, odd laugh. "She's tearing the building down and sweeping up behind her."
"Maybe she doesn't know which side she's on."
"She knows exactly which side."
"Boss..."
"She's after the people who killed her." I look at the wall, at the thread and the photographs. "The company's just the road. It's the only road. The chairman. The lawyer. Every signature that made it possible. If she brings down the Hale board, she brings them down too."
"And you?"
"I'm standing in the way."
"That's a hell of a way to say it."
"It's the truth." I rub my jaw. "Do you know what the worst of it is?"
"Tell me."
"I'd let her."
He stares.
"If she asked," I say. "If she came into my office tomorrow and said, Give me the keys. I'd put them on the desk."
"You can't mean that."
"I do."
"Fourteen thousand employees..."
"I know." My voice is very quiet. "That's why I haven't. But she hasn't asked. She's doing it the hard way, because she thinks I'm one of the four. And I can't tell her I'm not."
"Why not?"
"Because I'd have to tell her how I know who she is."
He's silent for a long moment.
"Brandt's called Lowell Ridge," he says. "He wants a meeting. Lunch, tomorrow, one o'clock, Le Bernardin. Odile Park will go in her place."
"How do you know?"
"I've got a man on Brandt's office. His secretary books everything through a system I own." He gives me a very small, very tired smile. "Technically."
"I want to hear it."
"Boss."
"Marcus."
"It's a big risk."
"I'm already in it."
***
At 12:51 the next day, I'm in a booth by the kitchen door of Le Bernardin, in a baseball cap, a pair of glasses and a thirty-dollar jacket, pretending to read a menu.
I look like a man having a breakdown. In this restaurant, that's almost normal.
Marcus sits across from me, eating a poached turbot with an expression of quiet agony. There's a small flesh-coloured bud in my left ear.
Through it, with the crisp clarity of a church bell, comes the sound of a table twenty feet away.
"Ms Park. How kind of you."
"Mr Brandt."
"Augustus, please."
"I prefer Mr Brandt."
A soft chuckle. A clink of glass. The voice of my godfather, warm as bathwater.
"Quite right. Quite right. Let's not pretend we're friends. We're here to be sensible."
"Are we?"
"I'd like to know what your principal wants."
"What does anyone want?"
"Money. Power. Revenge." I hear him unfold a napkin. "Of those three, I can only offer the first. I'd like to settle."
"Settle what?"
"Lisbon, naturally. The covenant. The bonds. I understand Lowell Ridge holds eleven per cent." The tone sharpens, very delicately, like a blade turning in the light. "We're willing to repurchase at a thirty per cent premium. Twelve months' standstill. A seat on the board for your principal."
There's a silence.
I picture Odile Park at the table, sharp-faced, black-bobbed, unreadable.
"That's generous," she says.
"I'm a generous man."
"Why?"
"Because I'd like to meet her."
My fingers go still on the menu.
"The principal?"
"Your client. I understand she's a woman." A pause. "I understand she's very able. I understand she has a certain interest in the history of Hale Meridian. In the Ironbridge matter, perhaps."
Odile doesn't answer.
"I'm an old man, Ms Park. I'd like to settle my affairs before I die. There are things in that file I'd like to explain. To someone who'd understand."
"To whom?"
"To whoever it is who's been looking."
"My principal doesn't give interviews."
"She'll give this one." He says it very gently. "Tell her there's a memorial at Windward on the fourteenth. A small thing. A service at the church, a lunch at the house. She'd be most welcome. I'd be glad to speak with her in private."
"On the anniversary."
"On the anniversary."
"That's... an odd choice."
"It's the only day I can bear to tell it."
I realise I've stopped breathing.
In my ear, I hear a long, slow exhalation, Odile choosing her next word the way a mountaineer chooses a handhold.
"I'll pass it on," she says.
"You're very kind."
"I'm not."
"No," says Augustus, warmly. "I don't suppose you are."
***
He doesn't stay long.
By two he's back in his car, and by three he's in my office, standing at the window in his charcoal overcoat with his hands clasped behind him, looking out at the park like a man at the end of a long walk.
I'm at the desk. My lunch clothes are in a carrier bag under it. My heart is thudding like a drum in a church.
"Dom."
"Augustus."
"I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
"The loan. I was an old fool." He turns. His brown eyes are wet. "You were right. I should have told you. I'll resign the finance committee tomorrow."
I stare at him.
It's the exact thing I wanted him to say.
It's the sort of thing a man says when he's got something else to hide.
"There's no need," I say.
"There is." He sits, slowly, like a man whose bones have turned to glass. "And there's something else. You've been so brave, my boy. So very, very brave. I've watched you hold this family together for three years, and I've never once thanked you."
"Augustus..."
"I know I don't say it. I'm a stiff old thing." He smiles, shaky and sweet. "I'd like to make it up. The fourteenth. I'd like it to be a good day. A gentle one."
"It never is."
"No." He pats my knee. "But perhaps with a friend beside you."
"A friend?"
"Ms Lowell." His eyes rest on mine, benevolent, patient, bottomless. "She's been a great comfort to you, I think. A remarkable young woman. You'll bring her to Windward."
"I thought it was only a suggestion."
"Dearest Dom." He gets to his feet with a small grunt. His hand falls on my shoulder, heavy and warm. "Take her to Maine. Let her stand at the water."
"Why?"
He smiles.
It's the kindest smile in the world.
"I'd like to see," says Augustus Brandt, "how she acts at the edge."