Page 36 of Breaking the Ice Queen
Sienna's breathing steadied. Adriana's matched it. Two women breathing together in the dark, the taste of each other still on their lips, the beginning of a truth neither of them had the courage to name.
Sienna held the love in her chest and let it settle. It was heavier than she'd expected and warmer than she'd imagined, and it was hers, and she would tell Adriana when Adriana was ready to hear it. When the defenses were down enough that the words would land as a gift and not a weight.
Not tonight. Tonight was enough.
14
ADRIANA
Adriana told herself, as she left the office at seven o’clock the following evening with a legal folder under her arm and her jacket buttoned to the throat, that she was going to Sienna’s apartment to discuss the Marcus Reed interview protocol.
Andrew watched her leave from his desk, where he was reviewing a brief for the streaming platform litigation. He looked up when she passed his door, took in the jacket, the folder, the set of her jaw that meant she had made a decision and was not open to discussion about it, and said nothing.
Then, as she reached the end of the corridor: “The interview protocol could have been emailed.”
Adriana stopped. She didn’t turn around. “It requires in-person review.”
“Of course it does.”
The smile was in his voice. Not mocking. Affectionate. The tone of a man who had spent nine years watching his partner make decisions and who recognized, with what looked like relief, a decision that was being made for the right reasons even if it was being justified with the wrong ones.
“Good night, Andrew.”
“Good night, Adriana. Tell Sienna I said hello.”
She drove to Echo Park with the legal folder on the passenger seat and her heart beating at a rate that no professional document review had ever produced. The city moved past the windows in its usual Friday evening configuration. The sun was setting behind the buildings, casting long horizontal light through the car’s windows, and the city looked gilded, temporary, beautiful in the way of things that only exist for minutes before changing.
Adriana had not slept well. She had left Sienna’s apartment at six in the morning, driving home through the early dawn streets with the taste of Sienna still on her lips and the impression of Sienna’s body still mapped against her skin. She had showered, dressed, gone to the office, and spent nine hours in a state of heightened productivity that Andrew recognized immediately as displacement behavior.
“You’re not thinking about the Meridian brief,” he had said at three o’clock, watching her type at a speed that suggested the words were coming from somewhere deeper than obligation.
“I am thinking exclusively about the Meridian brief.”
“You’ve drafted four pages in forty minutes. Your usual pace is two pages per hour. Something is either very wrong or very right, and your face suggests the latter.”
She had not answered him. She had continued typing, and Andrew had gone back to his own work without pressing the point.
At 4:30, a problem arrived that had nothing to do with the Meridian brief or Sienna Ramirez or the tightness in Adriana’s chest that had taken up residence since last night. One of the documentary’s corroborating sources, the retired awards administrator who had testified to the voting manipulation, had left a voicemail on the firm’s secure line. His voice was tight, clipped, stripped of the careful steadiness he had shown during his interview. Burty’s people had contacted him. Not directly. Through a former colleague, the kind of intermediary who could claim the conversation was casual if anyone asked. The message was clear: reconsider your involvement or the pension review board would receive a formal complaint about irregularities in his employment record.
Adriana listened to the voicemail twice. She transcribed it. She drafted a response plan in twenty minutes, a legal shield that would protect the source from retaliatory action and document the intimidation attempt as evidence. She called Sienna’s office line at five o’clock to relay the information and reached Dani instead.
“Sienna’s at the gym,” Dani said. “She goes when she can’t think straight. I’ll tell her when she gets back.”
Adriana explained the source situation.
Dani’s voice went hard. “Same playbook as the Garson project,” Dani said. “They’re picking off the weakest links. We need to get ahead of this before another one folds.”
“I’m handling it. The legal protection will be in place by Monday. Tell Sienna the source is safe.”
“I will.” A pause. Adriana heard Dani’s chair creak. “And Adriana?”
Adriana’s hand tightened on the phone. “Yes?”
“She’s okay. In case you were wondering.” A pause. “She didn’t sleep much either.”
Adriana hung up and stared at the phone for longer than the call warranted. Then she gathered the interview protocol folder, put on her jacket, and left the office.
Sienna opened the door before Adriana knocked. She was wearing a soft gray t-shirt and bare feet and her dark curls were down, and she looked at Adriana with the warm directness that had been undoing Adriana for weeks.
