Dominic's POV
They suspend me by a margin of seven to four.
It takes eleven minutes.
I sit through all of it, in my own chair, at my own table, in my own tower, with my cracked ribs and my bandaged hand and the warm, white smell of lilies in my throat. Helen Aldridge reads the motion in a voice like a judge pronouncing sentence. Prescott Wynn seconds it, with a long and rather hurt speech about trust. Theodore Lund checks his phone.
I count the hands.
Seven up. Four down. Marguerite Osei, who lifts hers a fraction too late, and looks at the table, and doesn't look at me.
"Interim chief executive," says Augustus Brandt, gently, from the head of the table, "will be myself. Until the investigation is concluded."
"Of course," says someone.
"Dominic, my boy. I hope you understand."
I stand.
I pick up my pen, my phone, my folder, and my jacket from the back of my chair. I put them in my case with great care. I take my time.
"I understand perfectly," I say.
"There's no ill will."
"None at all."
"I'll see that your things are sent to the apartment."
"Thank you, Augustus."
He smiles.
It's his warmest smile. It's the smile he wore at my father's funeral, and my wedding, and my wife's grave.
I walk out of the boardroom, and down the long corridor past the portraits of my grandfather and father, and I do not look back, because if I look back I'll go back, and if I go back I'll kill him in front of eleven witnesses and a security camera.
Marcus is waiting by the elevator.
"Boss."
"Is she out?"
"Not yet."
"Where's Torres?"
"In a grand jury room in Foley Square. She says she'll call the moment she's out."
"How long?"
"She says Thursday."
"It's Monday."
"I know."
The elevator opens.
We step in.
***
She comes out of the precinct at ten past six, in the dark, in the rain.
I see her through the windshield of the car, a small straight figure in a charcoal suit, standing on the top step with her arms wrapped round herself. Her bob's gone flat with damp. The red lipstick has worn off. She's holding a clear plastic bag with her watch and her belt and her wedding ring in it, and she's looking down the street at the rain with an expression I've never seen.
I'm out of the car before Marcus has stopped it.
"Serena."
She turns.
She doesn't run.
She walks down the steps, one at a time, quite slowly, as if each of them might break. And when she reaches the bottom, she stops a foot away from me, and looks up.
"Hello," she says.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Did they..."
"No."
"I'm so sorry."
"Dom." Her voice is steady. "It wasn't your fault."
"It was."
"It was his."
I take her face in my hands.
I can't help it. I just do it, right there in the street, in the rain, in front of a dozen reporters I haven't noticed behind the barrier. Their cameras flash. Somebody shouts a question.
I don't care.
I kiss her forehead.
I feel her breath leave her in a long shuddering rush, and her hands come up, and grip the lapels of my coat, and her face goes against my chest.
"He told me," she says into the wet wool. "In the boardroom."
"I know. I saw your face."
"He said... Your father begged, too."
I go still.
"He said, At the end of the pier. He said your name."
The street is full of rain and noise. The cameras. A bus. A siren somewhere, and the tick-tick-tick of the engine behind me.
I hold her.
I hold her very hard, with my cracked ribs screaming and my bad hand curled in her hair, and I say nothing, because there's nothing in the language to say.
"He killed him," she whispers. "Dom. He killed my father."
"I know."
"He said it to my face."
"I know."
"And I couldn't do anything."
"You will."
"How?"
"I don't know yet." I lift her chin. "But I'll tell you one thing. He's made a mistake."
"What?"
"He's confessed. To you. To a woman he's just had arrested." My voice is very low. "And one day you'll say it under oath, to twelve people, and he'll look at you in a courtroom, and he'll know."
"Will he?"
"I'll make sure of it."
She looks at me.
There's a long moment.
"Who paid my bail?" she says.
I frown.
"I didn't."
"I know."
"It wasn't me. I was in the boardroom. I didn't know you were out until Marcus..."
"It was the Larkspur Trust."
I stop.
"They paid five million dollars," says Serena, "to get me out of jail."
"Why?"
"I thought you'd know."
I think.
I stand in the rain with my wife in my arms, and the cameras flashing, and my mind goes to work with the cold bright speed it has in a crisis.
Larkspur. Funded by the Hale Family Trust. Trustee: Vance. Owned Marlin Capital. Owned Caleb's debt. Paid for the bomb.
And now it's paid for Vera Lowell.
"Oh," I say.
"What?"
"It's the photograph." I turn her toward the barrier, toward the lenses. "Look at them. They're not photographing you. They're photographing a woman whose bail was paid by an offshore shell tied to the very company that's been ruining my family."
"Oh God."
"It'll be on every channel by nine. Impostor's bail paid by Hale brother's lender. They'll say you're in league with Caleb's creditors. That you and Larkspur planned it together. That you're the brain."
"He's made me look guilty."
"He's made you look like a woman who's been in the pay of the people who bankrupted my brother."
"Then why did he let me out?"
"So we'd run."
She looks at me.
"A woman out on bail, with a false passport, a hundred million dollars and a fear of prison," I say. "What does she do?"
"Leaves the country."
"And then?"
"They have a fugitive. A confession by flight." Her eyes widen. "And nobody to testify against him."
"Exactly."
"Or someone to hunt."
I don't answer.
I don't have to.
Marcus is at my shoulder with the umbrella.
"Boss. We should go."
"Where?"
"Your place. It's the only place they can't enter without a warrant."
"They own the building."
"They own the lobby." He lets that sink in. "Not your door."
***
At eleven that night, I'm sitting on the floor of my penthouse, with my back against the sofa and a glass of Scotch I haven't touched, watching my own face on the television.
SUSPENDED CEO'S MYSTERY WOMAN FREED ON BAIL.
Serena's asleep on the sofa above me.
She dropped like a stone at nine. She's lying on her side, with a blanket I fetched and her shoes still on, and one hand trailing on the carpet. Her hair's drying in dark auburn waves. She looks about nineteen.
I haven't moved from the floor in two hours.
I don't want to wake her.
I don't want to leave her.
On the table, my phone buzzes.
I pick it up.
An unknown number.
Open the door.
My heart does a heavy, slow turn.
I get up.
I go down the corridor in my socks. I check the peephole. I take the gun out of the hall drawer, the one Marcus insisted on, and flick off the safety. I hold it at my side.
I look.
There's a small figure outside in the corridor, under the cold light of the elevator lobby, in a torn camel coat. A bruised face. A bandaged hand. A pair of enormous brown eyes, the colour of tea.
She holds up something between her finger and thumb.
A tiny silver stick.
A USB drive.
I open the door.
"Tessa," I say.
"Don't be angry," says Tessa Quinn. "I walked out. Nobody noticed. They were watching the wrong door." She swallows. "I didn't tell Rena. I didn't tell the agents. I didn't tell anyone."
"Tell me what?"
"I took this too." She presses it into my palm. "In my shoe. In Edmund's cellar. It was in the safe, under the texts."
"What's on it?"
"I don't know." Her mouth trembles. "It's locked. But it's got a label on it, in his writing. A single word."
I turn it over.
The sticker is white. The ink is black. The hand is spidery and small.
WALTER.