Miss CEO, EX-Convict

Larkspur Holdings

Adrian opened the door with his jacket already off, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"Vale." It wasn't really a question. He said it anyway. "You have the projection?"

"Not yet."

"It's not Thursday yet either. You're early for once." He stepped back to let me in, and I realized I'd been holding my breath since the elevator, which was a stupid thing to notice about myself at a moment like this, but I noticed it anyway.

I didn't sit. He noticed that too, and something in his face shifted from mildly annoyed to something closer to paying attention.

"What."

"Can I ask you something personal."

"No."

"I'm going to anyway."

He almost smiled, same as Tuesday. "Fine. Ask."

"Do you know who your father is?"

The room went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with sound. He didn't answer right away, and I watched him decide, in real time, whether to lie to me or shut the conversation down entirely, and for a second I thought he'd pick the second one.

"That's an odd question for a consultant to ask her boss."

"I know."

"My father died when I was young. Car accident. I don't remember much about him."

"What was his name?"

"Why does that matter to you."

"It doesn't matter to me. It matters to you. You just don't know it yet."

He crossed his arms. I watched the muscle in his forearm shift with the motion. My mind needed somewhere to go that wasn't the next thing I had to say.

"You're going to want to sit down," I said.

"I don't sit down because someone tells me to."

"Then stand. I don't care. Just listen."

I told him about Larkspur Holdings, and box forty-seven, and the folder marked Personnel, Historical, Non-Active. I told him about the birth record, the mother's name, the blacked-out line where a father's name should have been. I didn't tell him about Julian, or the ledger, or any of the three years that had brought me to this building in the first place. That wasn't his to carry yet. Maybe it never would be.

I told myself I was doing this to protect him. That wasn't true either. I needed him rattled enough to lead me to her, because he was the only door into that family I had left.

He just stood there with his arms crossed and his jaw set. Nothing in his face moved. That was the part that scared me more than if he'd shouted, or thrown something, or told me I was lying.

"Elena Reyes," he said, once I'd finished. Not a question. Just the name, said once and left there.

"Yes."

"You're telling me I'm a Reyes."

"I'm telling you what the document says."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

He walked to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a phone I hadn't seen before, an old one, a model from years back. He'd kept it in that drawer for a reason he never explained, even to himself. He turned it over in his hand without opening it.

"I need you to leave," he said.

"Adrian—"

"I need you to leave the office, and I need you to not mention this to anyone until I've had time to—" He stopped. Didn't finish the sentence. He set the old phone down on the desk without opening it.

I left. I didn't argue, because there wasn't anything left to argue about, and because some part of me understood that a person needs a room to fall apart in that isn't full of witnesses.

I was three steps down the hall when I remembered the calendar entry. Reveal. Tomorrow, ten in the morning. I hadn't told him about it. I turned back toward his door, already reaching to knock, and stopped with my hand an inch from the glass.

Through the glass, I watched him pick up his desk phone, not the old one, the regular line, and dial a number he clearly already knew by heart.

"It's me," I heard him say, muffled through the door. "I need to see my mother's estate lawyer. Tonight."

His mother's estate lawyer. Not his mother.

Because his mother, as far as anyone in this building or that photograph in the paper knew, had been dead for three years.

I stood in the hallway with my hand still an inch from the glass, and I didn't knock.