Serena's POV
Rule one: never touch him.
Rule two: never say his name in the old way.
Rule three: whatever he asks you, whatever he does, however close he stands, remember that one of the people in this building tried to kill you.
I wrote them on a hotel napkin in London and burned it in the sink.
By seven fifteen on Tuesday morning, I've already broken rule one.
Not on purpose.
He passes me a folder in the corridor outside his office and our fingers brush. That's all. A line of heat across my knuckles.
I drop the folder.
"Sorry," I say.
"My fault." He crouches to gather the pages. "I'm told I walk too fast."
"You do."
He glances up, one eyebrow lifting.
"Not what you said yesterday," he says. "Yesterday you said I was wet."
"That was an observation."
"This is a complaint?"
"A note for your file."
He laughs.
It's short. Surprised. It leaves the corridor very quiet afterwards, as if the building is holding its breath. He stands, hands me the folder and goes back into his glass box with his shoulders a little looser than before.
I stand there with my heart going like a trapped bird.
Don't do that, I tell myself. Don't make him laugh. That's the first thing he ever loved about you.
"Okay," says a voice. "Who are you and what did you do to him?"
A woman is leaning out of the small office next to mine. Mid-twenties, braids pinned up in a gold clip, a cardigan the colour of a sunrise, and the look of a person who has been waiting for a good story since the age of six.
"Posy Adeyemi," she says. "Executive assistant. I'm the one who knows where the bodies are."
I stiffen.
"Figure of speech," she says, kindly. "Everyone's weird about bodies here. It's the boat thing."
"The boat thing."
"His wife." She drops her voice. "Three years in October. We don't talk about it unless he does. Which he doesn't. Which is why that laugh is giving me chills."
I look down at the folder.
My own name is on the first page. S. Hale, Estate Matters. It's the probate file on me.
My fingers go numb.
"Right," I say. "Where do I start?"
"Honestly? Coffee. And then the calendar, which is a crime scene. And then I'll tell you who's going to hate you."
"Who's going to hate me?"
"Everyone who liked Gordon." She grins. "So everyone."
***
By noon I know three things.
One: Gordon Pratt, my predecessor, did not quit. He was removed. There is a very quiet memo on the system that says mutual agreement and the kind of severance that says please shut up.
Two: every email Dominic sends has been copied to a shared inbox called Chair's Office. Augustus Brandt's office. For three years.
Three: nobody here has deleted my face from the walls.
Not literally. But on the sixty-first floor, down the long glass corridor that leads to the boardroom, hang six framed photographs of the Hale family. Charles Hale at a ribbon-cutting. Dominic and Caleb on the Halcyon's first launch. Dominic shaking a senator's hand.
And one more.
I stop in front of it.
It was taken at Windward the summer before the end. We're on the porch. I'm laughing, and I've got my hand over my mouth and a paintbrush stuck in my hair, and he isn't looking at the camera.
He's looking at me.
I look at the girl in the photograph.
I don't know her.
She has a different mouth and a different jaw and two undamaged shoulders. She trusted everyone. She thought the worst thing a person could do was forget an anniversary.
"Beautiful, wasn't she?"
I don't turn around fast. I've practised not turning around fast.
A man stands behind me, silver-haired, in a charcoal suit that costs more than Abel Thorne's boat. Late sixties. Warm brown eyes. A small pin on his lapel, a gold anchor, which I once saw him wear to my father's funeral and then never mention again.
Augustus Brandt.
Chairman of the board. Dominic's godfather. The man who read the eulogy at my memorial in a voice that broke on my name.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to stare."
"My dear girl, everyone stares." He smiles. It's a lovely smile. "We lost her too young. You'd have liked her, I think. Everyone did."
"I'm sure."
"You must be Ms Lowell." He holds out his hand. "Augustus Brandt. I run the board, which is to say I'm the one who has to say no."
I take the hand.
Dry. Smooth. A heavy signet ring. It's the hand that signed my father's dismissal letter. It's the hand that, according to Odile's files, signed the transfer of two hundred and twelve million dollars out of the Ironbridge dockworkers' pension trust, twelve years ago, on a Tuesday.
It doesn't tremble.
Neither does mine.
I've had a lot of practice.
"A pleasure, Mr Brandt."
"Augustus, please." His fingers hold mine a moment longer than they should. "Where did we find you?"
"A headhunter in Toronto."
"Lowell." He tilts his head. "Halifax?"
"Born there. Yes."
"My late wife was a Halifax girl. A Macpherson. Do you know any Macphersons?"
There it is.
Not a test, exactly. A gentle hand turning a stone to see what's underneath.
I've been ready for this.
"A few," I say. "I went to school on Quinpool Road. There was a Macpherson at the bakery."
"The bakery on the corner?"
"Fraser's. Their cinnamon buns were something else."
His eyes brighten. "Fraser's! My God. She used to talk about those buns."
"I'm sure she wasn't exaggerating."
"I'm sure she wasn't." He releases my hand at last and pats it twice, fatherly. "A pleasure to have you, Ms Lowell. Dominic needs someone steady."
"I'll do my best."
"I'm sure you will." He steps past me and looks at the photograph, one long breath. "Three years in a few weeks. He still hasn't taken it down, you know. Whatever else they say."
"Who says?"
He glances at me.
"Everyone," he says. "I never believed it, of course. Dominic would never have hurt her."
"No," I say.
"No." He sighs. "Poor boy. All he ever wanted was to protect her."
He goes.
I wait until the soft thump of his shoes has gone around the corner. Then I put my hand against the wall and let my knees do what they want.
Fraser's bakery.
Odile found it on a map of Halifax. A bakery on Quinpool Road, closed in 2016.
He didn't ask about the date.
He didn't need to.
He was never looking for the lie. He was looking to see if I'd flinch.
***
At four o'clock, I find a cup on my desk.
White. Paper. Warm.
I haven't ordered anything.
There's a note in thick black ink under it, in handwriting I'd know in my sleep, tight and slanted and pressing too hard on the downstrokes.
Welcome aboard. Don't let the board eat you. D.
I pick it up.
It's a small cup. A cortado. The foam has a dusting of cinnamon and a pinch of sugar on the rim.
My heart stops.
It's the exact way I took my coffee for ten years.
Nobody knows that. Not Odile. Not Ruth. I've told no one in three years, because it didn't seem important, because it was just a small ridiculous habit.
I stare at it.
Posy leans around the doorframe.
"Oh, he got you the cortado? He never does that. He said the barista was getting the order wrong, so he wrote it down himself." She squints. "He wrote it on the sleeve."
I turn the cup.
On the cardboard sleeve, in the same black ink, in his handwriting, is the order.
Cortado. Cinnamon. Pinch of sugar on the rim. Not stirred.
Not a note.
A list. The way you'd write down something you knew by heart.
"Coincidence," I whisper.
Posy tilts her head. "What is?"
"Nothing."
She leaves.
I sit there for a long time with the little cup in both hands, and the cinnamon cools, and through the glass wall of his office, I see Dominic Hale not looking at me.
He is very good at it.
He has not looked up from his screen once.
He has not moved a finger in four minutes.
And on his desk, face-down, beside the keyboard, there's an identical cup.
Untouched.