Page 72 of Reckless Heir
I know enough. The file, the photograph, the debt that was real but the timing that wasn't. I've assembled enough of it tohave the shape of it — I've just been deciding what to do with the shape.
"Whatever you think you have," I say, "I'm not interested in getting it from you."
"That's a principled position," he says. He sounds like he means it. "It won't last."
He steps back, giving me space, and something about the ease of it — the certainty — makes my skin prickle in a way his proximity hadn't.
"There's a gala next month," he says. "The Met. You'll be there. So will I." He holds my eyes for one beat too long. "Think about what you know, and what you don't, and what it means that those gaps exist. That's all I'm saying."
He turns and walks back the way he came.
I stand under the arch for a moment, the gargoyles above me, the empty corridor ahead.
Niko's phrase sits in my head.
I know the structure. I've been mapping it since October.
What I'm less certain about is who built it — and who's still moving the pieces.
He's in the study when I come back that evening.
I know because the door is half-open — which it never is when he wants privacy, and always is when he's making himself available without admitting it — and I can hear the quiet sound of something being reviewed on his laptop. Racing data, probably. Telemetry. The language of numbers he understands better than the other kind.
I should go to my room.
I push the door the rest of the way open.
He looks up. His expression does the thing — a single frame of something unguarded before the control slides back into place. He closes the laptop.
"The Hamptons is Friday," he says. "The car leaves at noon."
"I know. You sent the details."
"Good."
I lean against the door frame. The study is all dark wood and lamplight, his version of warmth — contained, structured, not quite welcoming but not hostile either. He sits behind the desk like a man who is very comfortable behind desks, which means the desk is a barrier and I've always known this about him.
"Are you going to keep pretending nothing happened?" I ask.
His jaw tightens. Just slightly. "Something happened. It's over."
"It's not over. We're still in the same building. We eat at the same table. You poured my tea on Wednesday?—"
"Sofia."
"—and then immediately looked out the window so you wouldn't have to acknowledge that you'd done it."
A beat. He looks at the closed laptop.
"You notice too much," he says finally. It doesn't sound like criticism.
"You make it very easy." I push off the door frame and come further into the room, because I have already decided I'm doing this and there's no point in being cautious about it now. "I'm not asking you to— I'm not trying to make it into something dramatic. I just need to understand what we're doing."
"What we're doing," he repeats.
"What the rules are. Because the rules keep changing and no one's telling me how and I need—" My voice holds. Barely. "I need to know where I stand."
He is quiet for a long time.
