The mistake that made us

Chapter 7

Alexander's POV

FIVE YEARS LATER.....

The twins were arguing again.

I could hear them from the hallway, two distinct voices going at each other with the particular intensity of people who share a face and cannot agree on anything else. I stood outside the door for a moment and listened, not because I intended to intervene but because some mornings it was the only noise in this apartment that felt completely honest.

George was insisting that his sister had taken his car. Gina was denying it with the confidence of someone who had absolutely taken the car and had no intention of admitting it. This had been going on for approximately five years. I had stopped expecting it to resolve itself.

I pushed the door open.

Two identical pairs of eyes turned toward me. Dark, serious, the kind of eyes that missed very little and forgave even less. They had gotten that from somewhere I had spent five years trying not to think about.

"She took my car," George said immediately.

"It was in the middle of the floor," Gina said. "That means it is nobody's."

"That is not what that means—"

"Enough." One word. They both went quiet, which was the one reliable thing about mornings in this apartment. "George. There are twelve other cars in that box. Use one of them. Gina. Put it back when you are finished."

Gina considered this with the expression of someone weighing whether the principle was worth the argument. She put the car back.

I left them to their breakfast and walked to my office at the end of the hall, closing the door behind me, and that was when my phone rang.

My grandfather's voice came through the way it always did when he had already decided he was right about something. Loud. Certain. With the particular weight of a man who had built an empire from nothing and wanted everyone within a ten mile radius to remember it.

"Five years, Alexander." Not a greeting. Never a greeting with him. "Five years and you still cannot find one woman. One. Do you understand how that sounds? Do you have any idea how that reflects on this family?"

"I understand your frustration—"

"Do not tell me you understand my frustration. You do not understand anything. If you understood anything you would not have been so careless in the first place." A pause filled with the specific quality of disapproval only a seventy three year old man who had never made a mistake in his life could produce. "You had children, Alexander. Children you have never properly accounted for. And the woman who carried them is out there somewhere living God knows what kind of life while you sit in that office doing what exactly?"

"I have people looking—"

"Your people have been looking for five years and have found nothing. What does that tell you about your people?"

I said nothing. He was not wrong and we both knew it, which made the conversation significantly worse.

"Your cousins called me this week," he said.

I went still.

"Seth specifically. He had a great deal to say about the direction of the company. About leadership. About what it means to be the kind of man who is fit to run something his grandfather spent forty years building." Another pause. Deliberate this time. "He made some interesting points."

"With respect, Seth has never made an interesting point in his life."

"Do not be clever with me. Not today." His voice dropped, which was always more dangerous than when it was raised. "I am not going to watch everything I built go to a man who cannot manage his own life. Find her, Alexander. Find her and sort out whatever mess you made of that situation. You have until the end of the year. After that I start having very different conversations with very different people about the future of this company."

The line went dead.

I set the phone down and looked at it for a moment. Then I looked out the window at the city spread below me, thirty floors down, moving through its Tuesday morning completely indifferent to the fact that my grandfather had just handed me a deadline.

End of the year. Four months.

Four months to find a woman who had spent five years making herself unfindable.

From down the hall I could hear George laughing at something Gina had said, and the sound of it did something I did not have a name for and did not examine closely.

"Alex." The door opened without a knock, which was something I had asked Charlotte not to do approximately forty times. She came in the way she always entered a room, with the practiced ease of someone who had spent years making sure people noticed her arrival. She was dressed for somewhere that was not my office, which meant she wanted something. "You look terrible. Who were you on the phone with?"

"My grandfather."

"Oh, the old bear." She waved a hand and settled into the chair across from my desk like she lived there. "You need to stop letting him get to you. You run that company, not him."

"He owns sixty percent of it."

"Details." She smiled at me, the smile that worked on everyone except me, because I had seen it deployed too many times in too many directions to find it anything other than calculated. "I need to talk to you about something."

"Charlotte—"

"It will take two minutes. Less." She leaned forward. "The Meridian Pictures project. The lead role. You know I have been working toward this for months, I have done everything right, I have been completely professional and completely prepared and now I am hearing that they are considering replacing me." Her voice tightened on the last three words. "With Skylar."

She said the name the way people say the names of things they have stepped on barefoot in the dark.

"I need you to make some calls," she said. "You know people on that board. A word from you and this goes away."

I looked at her. "You want me to use my board connections to secure you a film role."

"I want you to support your fiancée." She tilted her head slightly. "Is that really so much to ask?"

It was, in fact, quite a lot to ask, and she knew it, and she was asking anyway because that was how Charlotte operated. She pushed until she found the edge of what was tolerable and then she pushed a little further, and because it was almost always less exhausting to give her what she wanted than to have the conversation that followed if you did not, most people eventually gave her what she wanted.

I was not most people, but I had my own calculations to make.

"I will make a call," I said.

She brightened immediately. "I knew you would. You are going to love this film, Alex. It is exactly the kind of project that—"

"Is that everything?"

A small flicker of something crossed her face. She reset it quickly. "The audition is Thursday. Two o'clock. I would love for you to be there."

"I have meetings Thursday."

"You always have meetings."

"Because I run a company."

She stood, smoothing her dress with the careful movements of someone managing their own irritation. "One hour," she said. "That is all I am asking. You could leave the meetings for one hour."

"I will try," I said, which we both understood meant no.

She came around the desk then, and I knew what was coming before she moved, and I shifted back slightly, just enough, the way you shift when something is moving toward you that you do not want to make contact with. She stopped. Looked at me for a moment with something behind her eyes that was not quite hurt and not quite calculation but somewhere between the two.

"You know," she said quietly, "most men would be grateful."

"I am sure they would be."

She left. The door closed behind her, slightly harder than necessary but not quite a slam, which was Charlotte managing herself on the way out.

I gave it thirty seconds. Then I pressed the intercom.

"Send David in."

He arrived in under two minutes, which was one of the things I valued most about him. David did not make you wait for things you had already decided you needed.

"Close the door," I said.

He closed it and stood across the desk with his hands clasped, the posture of someone ready to receive information and act on it, no preamble required.

"Where are we," I said.

He did not ask what I meant. We had been having variations of this conversation for five years. "Nothing new," he said. "No public records under her name. No registered address, no employment records, no financial activity we can trace back to her. No social media presence. Nothing that would show up in a standard search." He paused. "It is not accidental, sir. Someone with accidental invisibility still leaves traces. She has left none. She does not want to be found."

"I know she does not want to be found." I kept my voice even. "What I need is for her to be found anyway."

"Yes, sir." Another pause. "The conventional channels have been exhausted. We have tried every legitimate route available to us."

"Then we stop using legitimate routes."

He looked at me steadily. "Private investigators. Off the books."

"The best ones. Not people who will talk, not people who will cut corners and hand me bad information. People who are thorough and quiet and understand the meaning of discretion."

"I know exactly who to call," David said.

"Good." I turned back to the window. "I want weekly updates. Not monthly. Not when something interesting surfaces. Weekly, whether there is news or not."

"Understood."

"And David." He stopped at the door. "Find out who she was before she disappeared. Not just her name. Her mother, her family, anyone she was connected to. If she is hiding that thoroughly she had help from someone. Find the someone and we find her."

He nodded and reached for the door handle. Then he stopped.

"It is probably nothing," David said carefully. "The resolution is poor and we cannot confirm anything from this alone. But Meridian Pictures is based in this city. And if she has any connection to that company she will be at the auditions."

I looked at the photograph for a long moment.

Charlotte's audition was Thursday.

"Clear my Thursday meetings," I said.

David's expression did not change but something behind it did. "Of course, sir."

"And say nothing to anyone about this until we know more."

He left.

I looked at the photograph for a long time after he was gone. It was probably nothing. A resemblance, a coincidence, the kind of thing desperate searches produced when they had been running long enough.

But my grandfather had given me four months.

And Charlotte had just given me Thursday.