Wrong sister, Right man

chapter 3

Blackwood Tower had a lobby so quiet I caught myself whispering to the security guard. He handed me a visitor badge on a lanyard, printed CARTER TEXTILES, 3:00, and I clipped it on and felt like a kid on a field trip to a museum of people richer than me.

The elevator moved so smoothly that I only knew we were going up because my ears popped. Thirty-eight floors. A woman in a headset was waiting at the top. She introduced herself as Ms. Adler, Mr. Blackwood's assistant, took one look at my face and said, "You're not Vanessa Carter."

"My sister's unwell."

"Of course she is," said Ms. Adler, in a voice with nothing in it. She had the manner of someone who'd learned a long time ago that being surprised was a luxury. "This way. He's running behind."

Running behind turned out to be an understatement. As we came down the long hallway, I heard voices before I saw anyone: a woman's, high and cracking, and under it a man's, so low and flat that it took me a moment to realize it was a person speaking and not the building.

"...please, Damian, just let me explain, one conversation..."

"Security's on their way."

"You don't mean that. You can't mean that, after everything..."

Ms. Adler stopped walking. She didn't turn around. She just stood there for a second with her eyes closed, the way you'd pause outside the dentist's office, then said quietly, "If you'd like to wait in the conference room..."

"It's fine," I said. I don't know why. Curiosity, maybe, or the particular stupidity of a woman who'd had the worst twenty-four hours of her life and wasn't going to let a hallway scare her.

We turned the corner, and there they were at the door of the corner office, which had his name on it in small, discreet letters, as if he didn't need them to be big.

She was beautiful in a way that looked rehearsed. Dark hair, a cream dress, mascara just starting to run in a way that somehow looked tragic instead of messy. Both her hands were wrapped around his sleeve.

And him. I'll be honest. The photograph hadn't done him justice, which was irritating, because I'd been counting on the photograph. He was tall, in a charcoal suit that looked like it had been built around him. He had a hard, still face that gave nothing away, and he was looking at the woman holding his arm the way you'd look at a stain on a tablecloth. Not angry. That was the thing. Not even angry. Just finished.

"I made a mistake," she was saying. "One mistake. You're really going to throw everything away over one mistake?"

"Let go of my arm, Celeste."

"Please. I'm begging you. I'm on my knees, Damian, look at me..."

She actually was. I watched her sink, still holding on, and the sleeve of that beautiful suit stretched between them like something about to tear.

"Let go," he said again.

She didn't. He pulled his arm free. It wasn't a shove, and I want to be fair about that, even now, even to him. But it was sharp, one hard yank from a man who did not want to be touched, and she was already off balance in those heels, and she went down. Her hip hit the carpet, then her hand, then, half a second later, her head touched the wall with a soft little thud.

Something about it looked wrong. She went down slowly, like a coat sliding off a hook, and I remember thinking it was strange. But I put it down to shock. I'd have gone down badly too, in front of strangers.

Damian didn't move.

That's what I can't get past, even now. He stood there with his sleeve wrinkled, looking at a woman on the floor, and he didn't offer her a hand. Didn't crouch. Didn't even look away. "Ms. Adler," he said, without turning his head, "have someone bring her a chair and a glass of water. Then see her out."

"Damian." She was crying properly now, or close enough. "My father will hear about this."

"I'm sure he will."

Then he noticed me.

I'll give him this: he didn't pretend he hadn't been seen. His eyes went to the lanyard first, then to my face. Gray eyes. Cold the way a lake is cold, from depth and not from intention. He looked at me for a count of two, and I understood that I'd just been assessed, filed, and found no more interesting than the woman on the carpet.

"You're not Vanessa," he said.

"No."

"Where is she?"

"Unwell," I said, and stood a little straighter.

"Convenient."

"I'm Mia Carter. I'm here to sign the share transfer."

"Then sign it." He turned and walked into the office, and after a second I realized I was supposed to follow.

The office was all glass and nothing else. A desk with a laptop on it, one document, and a mug of coffee that had gone cold hours ago, a thin skin of milk on top. No photographs. No plants. Not a single thing that said a person lived here. He sat down without inviting me to, and slid the paper across the desk.

"Ten percent of Carter Textiles to Blackwood Group," he said. "Signature at the bottom, initials on every page. Don't bother reading it. Your lawyers have."

"I'd like to read it."

"Then read it quickly."

So I read it. Every page, slowly, out of pure spite, while he watched the clock and the silence settled over us like an insult. Through the open door I could hear Ms. Adler's low voice, and a sob that stopped and started like a tap. Once, he checked his watch. That was all. He didn't look toward the door.

"Is she all right?" I asked, before I could stop myself. "The woman outside. She hit her head."

"She's fine."

"You don't know that."

"I know her." Flat. Final. "She's been fine since the day she was born."

And that, I decided, was that. I'd been raised by a man who believed in giving everyone one chance to explain themselves before you decided what they were, and I had given Damian Blackwood exactly that, and he'd spent it telling me that a woman who'd just fallen was fine. I signed the last page hard enough to dent the paper.

"Thank you for coming," he said, in the voice of someone reading off a card.

"Of course," I said, in the voice of someone not throwing a stapler.

He nodded, picked up his cold coffee, and that was the whole conversation. He was reading something on his laptop before I reached the door.

In the hallway, Celeste was sitting in the chair Ms. Adler had found for her, with a glass of water and no visible injury. She looked up as I passed. Her eyes were red and perfect. She gave me a small, shaky smile, the kind you give a stranger who's seen you at your worst, and I felt a surge of fellow feeling so strong it embarrassed me.

I knew what it was to be the one left in the room by a man who didn't care. Last night, that had been me. Maybe that's why I was so sure.

In the elevator I leaned my head against the mirrored wall and thought about Vanessa. Not the bed, not Ryan, not what she'd done to me. Just the idea of her standing in that office for the rest of her life across a desk from that man. For the first time, I understood a little of why she'd run.

My phone buzzed as the doors opened onto the lobby. Mr. Hale.

*Blackwood's office just called. He's accepted both your conditions. He's asked for the proposal. All forty pages. Needs your answer by Monday.*

I read it three times, standing in the quiet lobby with my visitor lanyard still around my neck.

He'd said yes. To all of it. He'd said yes to the retool, to me running it, to the one thing my own father had refused to take seriously for four months, and he'd said it before I had even left the building. He hadn't mentioned a word of it to my face.

I didn't know what that meant. What I knew was that a man who could leave a woman on the carpet without offering her a hand had somehow agreed to give me exactly what I wanted, and I did not trust it for a second.

I handed the badge back to the guard.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Perfect," I said, in my calm professional face, and walked out into the rain-bright afternoon wondering who exactly I'd just signed myself over to.