Bound By Blackmail

Chapter 2: The Voice on the Line

Clara let it ring twice more before she answered, mostly out of principle. After eleven months of losing the customers she was able to convince and getting requests to bank money returned that the worst time to sound desperate is when people give up negotiating and start managing you. She wiped her palm on her jeans, cleared her throat once, and picked up on the fourth ring like a woman with a full calendar rather than one contractor and a stubborn wall.

"Montgomery."

"Ms. Montgomery." The voice was clipped, precise, unhurried in a way that suggested he was never the one who had to wait for anything. "My name is Julian Vance. I understand your firm is in some difficulty. I have a proposal that solves that. I'd like 15 minutes."

She almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the timing was so exact it felt orchestrated. A man who apparently researched vulnerabilities the way she researched load ratios, striking the moment the numbers were worst. Her eyes fell upon the blueprint that was laid out on the floor of her studio, the wall that would not stand up unless someone made the math stand up too. Something within her went straight.

"Ten! you have ten," she said. "I bill for the rest."

There was a pause on the line, the first one, she suspected, that hadn't been his idea. She let it sit there, unhelped, because she'd learned that silence was often the more expensive thing to fill.

"Ten will be enough," Julian Vance said finally, and something in his voice shifted, like a man recalculating an opponent he'd underestimated by exactly one variable. "I need a wife, Ms. Montgomery. I'm prepared to make it worth your while."

She should have hung up. Later, replaying the moment the way she replayed every load calculation that had ever gone sideways, she'd wonder what a smaller, safer version of her life might have looked like if she had. Instead she reached for the pen she kept clipped to her collar out of habit, the reflex of someone who took notes on things about to become structural, whether she liked it or not.

"That's an unusual proposal for a stranger," she said. "Most men lead with dinner."

"Most men aren't nineteen days from losing a company their grandfather built." A dry note entered his voice, something almost like humor, though she couldn't yet tell if it was aimed at her or at himself. "I don't have time for dinner. I have a charter clause that requires marriage before a board vote, a father who considers me a liability the moment I show weakness, and a very short list of people I'd trust not to make this worse. You're at the top of it, and you don't even know me yet."

"I know you well enough to know that it’s either flattery or a threat." She kept her voice level, though her pulse had picked up in a way she resented. "Which is it?"

"Neither. It's math." A bet. “For 18 months we will solve each other's problem on paper and then walk away with what we came for, you will have capital and spotless name and i will have a wife who don't fall in love with me and won't sell my secrets to the tabloids as soon as the ink dries."

She should have been provoked to offense. Instead, she found herself admiring nearly as much as she hated the audacity. The unblinking efficiency of a man laying out a merger rather than a marriage. Love was just a switch he had, more or less correctly, decided that he could turn off. It was the kind of confidence that got men like him entire skylines named after their grandfathers. It was also, she felt sure, the kind of confidence that had never once been tested by someone willing to push back.

"You don't know anything about me beyond a credit report and a scandal that wasn't my fault," she said. "But why do you feel sure I would accept such a thing?"

"I don't know that you will." For the first time, something in his tone eased, just slightly, like a man putting down a weight he hadn't realized he was carrying into the call. "I know that you haven't hung up yet. That tells me more than the credit report did."

Clara studied the blueprint on the ground again at the numbers that would either hold the building up or bring it down on top of everyone standing under it, depending on whether someone was honest enough to fix them before it was too late. Her father used to say a structure only failed when somebody took a shortcut around the math. She had spent her whole career refusing shortcuts. She was aware, with a clarity that unsettled her more than the offer itself, that she was seriously considering the biggest one of her life.

"I'm not agreeing to anything over the phone," she replied. "If this is real, you meet me in person. Vance Tower, tomorrow, 10 a.m. And Mr. Vance! I read contracts for a living. Don't waste my 10 minutes with anything you're not prepared to put in writing."

"10 a.m!" he agreed, and there it was again, that dry near-humor, warmer this time, like he'd expected the demand and respected it more for having been made. "I'll have the paperwork ready."

The call ended before she could figure out whether this made her happy or made her uneasy. She remained seated on the studio floor for a good while afterward, holding the phone in her hand, the sound of the bustling city rising up to her through the ancient windows without the slightest care about how her world had now been tilted off course. It would have been nice if she could have called her assistant or her lawyer or even her sister, who might offer her a voice of reason and talk her out of marrying an unknown man, just for the money.

Instead, she opened her calendar and blocked out 9:30 to 10:30 the next morning, typed Vance proposal into the slot like it was any other client meeting, and then sat back on her heels and stared at the words until they stopped looking like a decision and started looking like the only door left standing open.

Her phone buzzed again almost immediately, not Julian this time, but her bank, the message right in the preview visible without her even having to unlock the screen: URGENT: Account review required; possible fraud flag on Montgomery & Associates.