Rich Beyond His Lies

Chapter 5: Dinner with a Stranger

I did not get in. My legs wanted to run. But Silas drove beside me for a full minute at walking speed, talking through the window in a gentle voice.

"I am not like them," he said. "I only want to tell you what I know. It will save you a week of guessing."

At last I opened the door and sat down.

He explained the Cross family the way a man explains a storm. They owned banks, power plants and software companies across the country. Their wealth was bigger than the Hartwells' by a long way. Their heir, Julian Cross, was twenty nine. He had doubled the family fortune in six years and shook hands with no one he did not respect.

"Last night my father got a call," Silas said. "The Crosses proposed a marriage agreement. They asked for you by name."

"Why me?"

"I do not know. But the Hartwells would give anything for a tie like that."

"What is he like?"

Silas rubbed his nose. "Quiet. Very serious. People say he does not like crowds. They say he never smiles. I have never met him."

"That is not an answer."

He sighed. "They say he is cold, and hard in business, and that people who cross him vanish from the market. But marriages in our world are not about love. They are about protection. With the money you inherited, you will have a target on your back. Without a strong friend, you will not last a month."

I looked out the window. A week ago I would have laughed at the idea of marrying a stranger for protection. Today I was a woman whose first marriage had been a stack of lies.

"A man like that cannot be worse than the one I had," I thought. A fake marriage had made me a stepping stone. A real agreement with open terms might make me a partner. Vivian and Reuben had already shown their teeth. A will and a blood test would not be enough if they came with lawyers and bodyguards.

"All right," I said.

Silas nearly drove into a lamp post. "All right? You are agreeing?"

"I will have dinner with him and hear what he wants."

I went back to the Whitlock house that evening. It was empty. A maid told me Dean, Celeste and Milo had driven to an art show in another city and would be back tomorrow. A short message waited on my phone. Milo wanted to see the paintings with Ms. Navarro. It was a long drive, so I went with them.

What a thoughtful family, I thought. They had even sent me a note.

Their absence helped. I called two movers and quietly asked the maids to help me pack. One of them looked at my open boxes and said, "Madam, are you going on a trip?"

"Yes," I said. "Please do not bother Mr. Whitlock about it. He is very busy."

By midnight, my clothes, books and passports were gone, loaded into a van and driven away to a storage unit with my name on it.

But two things I could not find. The first was my master thesis, with five years of research. I had locked it in my desk drawer. The drawer was open, and the folder was gone. The second was my project code for Dean's company, the heart of everything I built. It lived on the company server, and my access had been shut off.

Those two things were mine. I would not leave them with a liar.

At dawn Dean called. I could hear the highway behind his voice.

"Amara, did you see my message?"

"I did," I said, and stirred my coffee.

"I am sorry I did not ask first. But Ms. Navarro is our guest, and I could not let her take Milo alone."

"No need to apologize. It is only natural."

He stopped. He had expected a storm. "You are not upset?"

"I was busy yesterday. I looked at a few properties and met some clients. I hardly saw my phone."

His breath came out in relief. "I knew it. You work too hard. I worry about you."

My breakfast turned sour. Behind him a little voice yelled, "Papa, hang up! Stop talking to her!" Then I heard Celeste hush him, and the line went dead.

At the office I searched Dean's desk, his files and his computer. Nothing. While I was still looking, his secretary hurried in with a stack of papers.

"Miss Lawson, Mr. Whitlock is away. These funding contracts need a signature today."

I read them. They were deals I had built myself, harder to win than anything the company had ever done. If they slipped now, half would collapse. This was Dean's usual trick. He leaned on me when he needed a rescue, but never gave me a title or a share. When I decided something while he was away, he corrected me in front of the board.

"Leave them on the desk," I said. "I will look later."

When I was alone, I pushed them aside. I had a dinner to prepare for.

I spent the afternoon at a quiet spa, and at five I walked into the boutique on Harbor Street. I chose a lilac dress with thin straps and layers of soft, shimmering cloth. It was the kind of dress that looks plain on a hanger and like a spell on the right woman. In the mirror I looked like someone I had forgotten.

Two years. I had lost two years to a man who made me small.

"You look better than our campaign model," the sales girl whispered.

At the counter I reached for my wallet. She shook her head. "Everything is paid, Miss. The dress, the bag, the shoes, the jewelry."

"By whom?"

"He left only a surname. Cross."

My heart bumped. I turned and searched the shop. Nobody was there.

Outside, a long black car waited at the curb. A man in a black suit and sunglasses opened the back door. He had curly hair and a wide, easy grin.

"Miss Lawson? I am Tobias, Mr. Cross's aide. I am just a driver tonight. He is waiting."

I slid in. We drove through the lit harbor streets, past ferries and cranes, until the car stopped at the Harbor Glass Hotel. Tobias walked me through the lobby, into an elevator and down a quiet hallway to a tall wooden door.

"Good luck," he whispered. "He will not bite. Probably."

The door opened onto a private dining room. A long table held two plates. Past it stood a wide window with the lights of the harbor blinking below. A man stood there with his back to me, in a dark suit, hands in his pockets.

He turned slowly. He was tall, with black hair and gray eyes and a jaw like a closed door. He looked at me for a long time, as if I were a page he had read before and wanted to read again.

When he spoke, his voice was lower than I expected, and it was not cold at all.

"You still have the scar on your chin, Pip."

Nobody had called me Pip in twenty years.