Under a Borrowed Name

Chapter 9: The Father Who Notices Too Late

Marcus Kane did not often visit the fortieth floor anymore. He preferred to run what remained of his influence from a private office two floors above, a space with better views and fewer people who might ask him questions he did not care to answer. But the Halloway story had made the papers twice now, and a man like Marcus did not wait for fires to reach him. He went looking for the source of the smoke himself.

"Ms. Marchetti." He appeared in the doorway of her borrowed office without knocking, the kind of man who had never once in his life felt the need to. Older than Damian, silver at the temples, but with the same sharp jaw, the same assessing eyes, aged into something colder rather than softer. "I don't believe we've properly met."

"Mr. Kane." Elena stood, extending a hand that did not shake, though every instinct she had honed over five years screamed at her to keep as much distance from this man as possible. Up close, he looked exactly like the photograph she had memorized from the hallway. Older, but unmistakably the same. "I've heard a great deal about you."

"I imagine you have. Most of it exaggerated, I'd hope." He did not take the offered hand right away, instead studying her with the particular patience of a man used to letting silence do his interrogating for him. "You've made quite an impression on my son in a short time. And on my daughter, though for rather different reasons."

"I was hired to fix a crisis, Mr. Kane. I've been doing my job."

"Your job." He finally shook her hand, his grip firm, testing. "Tell me, Ms. Marchetti, where did you go to school?"

"Zurich, and before that, a smaller program that no longer exists. I'm afraid my education isn't particularly interesting."

"Everything is interesting to a man who's spent forty years learning to read people for a living." He released her hand and wandered further into the office, glancing at the papers on her desk with the casual entitlement of someone who believed every room in this building belonged to him by right. "You remind me of someone. I can't place who. It's rather maddening."

Elena kept her expression carefully neutral, though her pulse had begun to hammer in a rhythm she despised. "I have one of those faces."

"Perhaps." Marcus turned back to her, and something in his eyes had sharpened, some old instinct clicking faintly into place that she could see him trying, and failing, to fully name. "My son trusts you a great deal. More than he trusts most people, and he does not trust easily. Neither do I, for what it's worth. I find it wise to look closely at anyone who earns that kind of trust so quickly."

"I'd expect nothing less from the man who built this company."

"Careful, Ms. Marchetti. Flattery works better on men with less to lose." He smiled, and it did not reach his eyes at all. "I'll be watching your work closely. The Halloway situation is unfortunate timing, and unfortunate timing has a way of unearthing old business better left buried."

He left without another word, and Elena stood very still for a long moment after the door closed, feeling, for the first time since she had walked through the glass doors of Kane Holdings, the true weight of exactly what she was up against.

Down the hall, Damian found his father in the private elevator, already reaching for the button to the upper floors.

"You went to see her," Damian said. It was not a question.

"I went to introduce myself to a woman who has more access to this company's secrets than my own children do." Marcus did not look at him, watching the numbers climb instead. "You should be more careful who you let that close, Damian. Especially now."

"Especially because of Halloway."

Something flickered across Marcus's face, gone before Damian could fully read it. "Especially because you have a reporter sniffing around old business that has nothing to do with the company as it exists today."

"Who is Alistair Cain?"

The elevator went very quiet. For a moment his father did not move at all, and Damian watched the older man's jaw tighten in the reflection off the polished doors, watched him choose, with visible effort, exactly how much of the truth to allow into the room.

"An old associate," Marcus said finally. "From a different era of this business. Nobody you need to concern yourself with."

"He was involved in the Voss deal."

"The Voss deal was handled cleanly and legally, whatever the papers are implying now." Marcus's voice had gone hard, final, the tone of a man closing a door he had no intention of reopening. "I'd advise you to focus on the company's future rather than digging through its past, Damian. Some ground is better left undisturbed."

The elevator doors opened onto Marcus's floor, and he stepped out without waiting for a response, leaving Damian standing alone with a name that had clearly meant something to his father, and an answer that had told him nothing at all except how much his father was still willing to hide.