Six Hours.
Six in the evening. The clock on the wall ticks like it is counting down to something. It is.
Adelina Quiñones-Mar sits at the head of the long table in her office. My uncle Tobias sits across from me. He has been smiling since I walked in. He smiles the way some men sharpen knives.
"Shall we begin," Adelina says.
"Please," Tobias says. "Sabine and I have been waiting two weeks for this."
I do not look at him. I look at the folder under Adelina's hands. Cream paper. My grandfather's stationery. I would know the weight of it in the dark.
"The estate of Aldo Marchetti," Adelina begins. Her voice is careful. She has known me since I was eight. "I will read the principal clauses first, and then we will move to the conditions."
"Conditions," Tobias says, light as a man asking about the weather.
"Yes," Adelina says.
She reads. The hotel in Lake Como. The Forty Second Street building. The shipping division. The textile division. The art on three continents. The bank accounts. The trust. Everything comes to me. Everything. He told me on the phone six weeks before he died. “Everything is yours, my girl. I built you for it.”
Tobias is still smiling.
Adelina turns the page.
"There is a clause," she says, and her voice changes. "Section nine. The principal beneficiary, Sabine Marchetti Kane, must be lawfully married by the conclusion of her twenty fifth birthday. Should she fail to meet this condition, the estate transfers in its entirety to the secondary beneficiary."
The room goes quiet.
I keep my face still. I have practiced this for years.
"Read the secondary beneficiary," I say.
Adelina hesitates.
"Read it, Adelina."
She lifts her eyes to mine. "Tobias Halford Kane."
Across the table, my uncle exhales a long breath, as if a great weight has been lifted. He folds his hands on the table. He looks at me with what is supposed to be sympathy.
"Sabine," he says. "Darling."
"Do not call me darling."
"Sabine, then." He inclines his head. "I want you to know that I take no pleasure in this."
"You are smiling."
"I am not."
"You have been smiling for forty minutes."
He spreads his hands. "Even so. None of us wanted this outcome. My father was a brilliant man. He was also, in his last year, perhaps not the man he had been. This clause is, frankly, cruel. I will be the first to say it."
"My twenty fifth birthday is today," I say.
"Yes."
"It ends at midnight."
"Yes."
"You have known about this clause for how long, Uncle."
He blinks, just once. "I learned of it when Adelina did."
"Adelina."
"He filed it twenty three months ago," she says.
I look at my uncle. "Twenty three months."
"I did not know."
"You did know."
"Sabine."
"You knew, and you spent the last two years trying to marry me off to men who would have signed prenuptial agreements handing the company to you the day after the wedding. You knew, and you broke my engagement to Henrik because his lawyers caught it. You knew, and you sent Dorian Ashcroft-Lyle to my door three months ago with a ring he had not paid for and a contract you had drafted yourself."
"Now that is a very serious accusation."
"It is a fact."
Adelina clears her throat. "I will remind both of you that this is the reading of a will, not a deposition."
I keep my eyes on him. "Why this clause, Uncle. What was he protecting me from."
He smiles again. He cannot help it.
"He was an old man," he says. "Old men have ideas."
"He was the sharpest man either of us has ever known."
"Sabine. Even if you wished to contest the clause, you would lose. He filed three separate affidavits of mental competence. Two physicians signed. A judge witnessed. It is unwinnable. Adelina, tell her."
"It is unwinnable in the time available," Adelina says, carefully.
"In the time available," Tobias repeats, savoring it.
I look at the clock on the wall.
Six oh five.
I stand up.
My chair makes no sound on the carpet. I have practiced this. Not for today. For every day.
"Where are you going," Tobias says.
I do not answer.
"Sabine. Sit down. We have things to discuss. The transition will be smoother if we begin tonight."
I pick up my bag.
"Sabine."
"Adelina," I say. "Thank you."
"Sabine, wait." Adelina rises too. "If there is anything I can do."
"There is one thing." I meet her eyes. "If I am married before midnight tonight, by a sitting judge, with the certificate filed before twelve, does the clause hold."
Tobias laughs. It is the first sound that has not been smooth all evening.
"Married before midnight," he says. "By whom, Sabine. By the cab driver outside."
"Adelina."
"Yes," she says. "If the marriage is lawful and the certificate is filed, the clause holds. The will requires marriage. It does not specify to whom."
"Thank you." I turn for the door.
"Sabine," Tobias says. He has stood up too. His smile is gone. "This is beneath you."
"What is."
"Marrying some stranger in a courthouse to keep a building."
I turn at the door. I look at him for the first time properly all evening.
"It is not a building, Uncle. It is everything my grandfather built. It is the company my mother was supposed to run. It is the company I was supposed to run after her. You have been stealing from it for ten years and you think I do not know."
His face does something then. It is gone so fast I almost miss it.
"You are tired," he says. "You are grieving. We will speak tomorrow."
"We will speak in court."
I walk out.
Six oh seven.
The hallway outside Adelina's office is long and carpeted and quiet. I do not run. I have practiced not running. I walk to the elevator. I press the button. I get in. I press the lobby. I keep my back straight. The doors close.
The moment the doors close my hands begin to shake.
I close my eyes. I count to five. I open them. The shaking is still there. I make a fist. I make another fist. I press them against my thighs.
Five hours and fifty three minutes.
The lobby. The doorman. The cab at the curb, the way Adelina always arranges it.
I get in. The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror.
"Where to, miss."
I have not allowed myself to say this address out loud in three years. I say it now.
His eyebrow goes up. It is in the magazines. It is on the side of the tower.
"Yes," I say. "That one."
"You got it."
He pulls into traffic.
I take out my phone. I do not call Pilar. She is in surgery until eight and she will worry. I do not call the lawyer I just left. I open the search bar.
I type the name I have not allowed myself to type.
Rafael Dante Ferreira-Khoury.
The photographs come up. A man in a charcoal suit who does not smile for cameras. A man who stood in my grandfather's library at twenty three and asked me what I was reading and listened to my answer like the answer mattered.
I close the search before I can look too long.
"Rough day," the cab driver says.
"You could say that."
"You want music."
"No."
"You want quiet."
"Yes please."
He nods. He drives. The city slides past. A man walks a dog. A woman runs with a stroller. A boy on a skateboard cuts in front of us and the driver swears under his breath and does not slow down enough to make me feel it. I love this city the way you love a person who has hurt you and never apologized.
"Here we are, miss."
Six twenty one.
The tower with the black glass.
The doorman at the tower has the kind of face that has seen everything and remembers none of it. He opens the cab door. He does not ask my name yet.
"Ma'am."
"I am here to see Mr Ferreira-Khoury."
"Do you have an appointment."
"No."
"I am afraid Mr Ferreira-Khoury does not see anyone without an appointment."
"My name is Sabine Marchetti Kane."
He looks at me for the first time. Really looks. He picks up a phone. He turns away from me. He speaks low. He listens. He says my name a second time. He listens longer. He hangs up.
When he turns back, his entire face has changed.
"Top floor, Ms Kane." He gestures to the elevator. "He is waiting."
"He is waiting."
"Yes ma'am."
"I have not called ahead."
"I know, ma'am."
I get into the elevator. The doors close. I see myself in the mirrored walls and I look away. The floors climb. My ears pop. The numbers go by like years.
The doors open onto a hallway in dark stone. There is no one at the reception desk. There is a single door at the end of the hall. The door is open.
I walk. My heels make no sound.
He is standing at the window with his back to me. He is in shirtsleeves. The jacket is on the back of the chair. The desk between us is the size of a small country. He is taller than I remember and he is exactly as tall as I remember.
He does not turn around.
"Sabine."
He has said my name once. He has said it like a man who has been saying it under his breath for nine years.
"Rafael."
"Come in."
I come in. I close the door behind me. I do not know why I close it. I close it.
"Sit," he says.
"I would rather stand."
"All right."
He is still at the window. The city beyond him is going gold. The light on the river. The light on the bridges.
"You knew I was coming."
"I have known you were coming since six oh four this evening, when Adelina's office called me."
"Adelina called you."
"She did."
"Why."
"Because your grandfather asked her to, two years ago, in the event of certain outcomes."
I feel my hand on the back of the chair behind me. I did not put it there. It is there.
"You knew about the clause."
"I knew there was a clause. I did not know the specifics until ten minutes ago."
"Ten minutes."
"Yes."
"And you are at the window."
"Yes."
"Why."
"Because if I turn around right now, Sabine, I am going to say something I have spent nine years not saying. And I want to give you the chance to say what you came here to say first."
The room presses in. The light presses in. The clock on the wall behind him says six thirty nine.
"I have five hours and twenty one minutes," I say.
"I know."
"I need a husband. By midnight tonight. The inheritance is conditional. If I am not married by twelve, my uncle gets everything my grandfather built. I am asking you to marry me. Tonight. I will sign anything. I will give you whatever percentage of the company you want once I have control. I am not asking you to love me. I am asking you to stand in a courthouse with me and sign a piece of paper before midnight. That is all."
The silence has weight. It presses on the room. It presses on my chest. I do not let it press on my face.
He puts one hand flat against the glass.
"Sabine."
"Yes."
"Say it again."
"What."
"What you just said. The part where you asked me."
"Why."
"Because I want to hear it twice."
My throat tightens. I do not let it close.
"Rafael Dante Ferreira-Khoury. Will you marry me tonight."
He closes his eyes. I see it in the reflection in the glass. He closes his eyes the way a man closes them when something he has waited for has finally arrived and he is afraid to look at it directly in case it disappears.
He opens them.
He turns.
He looks at me.
He looks at me for a long time. I have seen men look at women in courtrooms and on television and at galas. I have never been looked at like this. I cannot breathe through it. I keep my face still anyway. I have practiced this most of all.
"Sabine."
"Yes."
He walks to the desk. He does not sit. He puts his hands on the wood. He looks at his own hands for a moment, the way a man looks at hands that have just done something he cannot take back, even though they have not moved.
He lifts his eyes.
"I have been waiting nine years for you to walk through that door."
The clock on the wall behind him says six forty one.
"Yes," he says.
He looks at me.
"With one condition."
