Chapter 1

Chapter Two:

Four Applications

Elish did not run. She was proud of that later, lying awake in the rented room in Queens with the ceiling going gray. She stood there on the terrace with her hands on cold stone and the whole plan she had built over two years sliding sideways under her feet, and she did not run.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

“Okay.” Grant nodded like it was a reasonable answer. “Then I’ll talk and you can not know.”

He did not come closer. She noticed that. Kept the length of the terrace between them, hands in his pockets, like a man approaching a horse he did not want to spook.

“Lancaster Group got four applications in fourteen months from four different women,” he said. “Different names. Different cities on the résumé. Marketing analyst, then compliance, then executive assistant, then something in facilities, which, honestly, points for range. Every one of them listed a reference at a company that dissolved in 2009. And every one of them had the same typo in the cover letter. Receive. Same place, second paragraph.”

Elish felt her face go hot and hated it.

“HR flagged the third one. Somebody in security ran it. Took him maybe twenty minutes to get to a woman named Elish Calloway, daughter of Edmund.” He let that sit. “Its not a good spy story. I’m sorry. It was a decent effort.”

“It’s a spelling error.”

“It was a very consistent spelling error.”

She wanted to laugh and she wanted to throw the clutch at him, and the two feelings kind of collided in her chest and produced nothing. Just heat. Her mother would have said see, I told you. Her father would not have said anything. Her father had been dead twenty years and still she could feel him not saying it.

“So you knew,” she said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. “The whole time. And you did nothing.”

“I did nothing because I did not know what you wanted.” He tilted his head. “Still don’t, honestly. Four applications, no threats, no leaks to the press, no lawyer. Just a woman who really, really wanted a badge and a desk in my building. It’s a strange kind of revenge.”

“Who said anything about revenge?”

“Nobody. But I am not stupid, Miss Calloway.”

“It is Elish.”

“Elish.” He tried it out. She wished he had not, it sounded strange in his mouth, too ordinary for the way she had built his family up in her head, like monsters should not know how to say a plain name. “I read the old files when I got the chair. My father kept a folder in your fathers company. A big one. It was not friendly.” A pause. “Calloway defaulted on the Meridian Bay financing and Lancaster ate four hundred million dollars in a single quarter. My grandfather almost lost the firm. So when I say I know who you are, I do not just mean your name. I mean I know what my family thinks your family did to us.”

Elish stared at him.

“Thats not what happened.”

“Isnt it?”

“Your family took everything. My father signed a deal in good faith and your people pulled the credit line the night before closing.” It came out fast, a run of words she had said to the mirror so many times they did not feel like hers anymore. “Every ship. Every port. They called it foreclosure. He called it theft. He said it until the day he died, so please, don’t stand there and tell me you were the ones who got hurt.”

“I did not say hurt. I said four hundred million.”

“Same thing to you people.”

“Maybe.” He looked at her steadily. “Or maybe two families got told two different stories and nobody ever lined them up.”

She almost missed it. That was the thing. It went by so quietly, so casually, she nearly let it pass, and then it caught in her like a fishhook. Two different stories. A Lancaster saying that. A Lancaster standing in the cold with his tie undone admitting, out loud, that there might be a second version.

Careful, Elish. That is how they do it. That’s how they get you to soften.

“What do you want from me?” she said.

“Thats my question.”

“You first.”

Something like a smile touched the corner of his mouth, tired and brief. Gone. “You were behind that pillar for six minutes. You heard the clause. Say it back.”

She hesitated. Then, because there was no point pretending anymore, she said it flatly. “Married within six months of the reading. Legally. Registered. Or the voting shares go to Pierce.”

“And why would you care?”

“Because I think you are going to lose.”

That one landed, she could see it. His jaw tightened, and for a second the polite face slipped and what was underneath looked so exhausted it startled her.

“My grandfather,” Grant said, “loved me very much and trusted me almost not at all. He wrote that clause after I turned down the last three people he introduced me to. He said a man who couldn’t build a family had no business running one.” He laughed once, a dry sound. “He also put a line in that says the marriage has to be bona fide. Which means the court gets to look. Someone can challenge it. Pierce will, the day I file. He’s already got a lawyer on retainer whose whole job is to be very interested in my personal life.”

“So it has to be real.”

“It has to look real. To people whose job is to look closely.” He watched her. “I could hire an actress. I have thought about it. I’ve thought about it a lot of nights. But an actress signs a contract and then sells the story, or gets scared under oath, or gets a better offer from Pierce. I need somebody who wants to stay married for the right reasons.”

“What reasons?”

“That’s what I am asking you.”

Wind came off the river and she pulled her arms in. He shrugged out of his jacket and held it out without a word, no gesture attached, and she looked at it and thought, absurdly, it probably costs more than my rent. She did not take it.

He put it on the railing between them anyway.

“You did not come tonight for a job,” he said quietly. “Nobody sneaks into a charity gala with a fake name tag for a job. You came for something in my family. Somewhere in that house upstate, or somewhere in that building, there is something you want.” Gently, “And you cannot get it as an outsider. You already tried.”

The city hummed below them. Somewhere inside a string quartet had started playing something slow.

Elish thought of the envelope from Delaware. Empty. She thought of her mother, thinner every year, holding a mug in both hands. She thought, very clearly, if I say it out loud, it’s real.

“Im not telling you what it is,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.”

“That does not bother you?”

“It bothers me enormously.” He said it mildly. “But I am out of options and you are not stupid. So.”

The terrace door opened.

Warm air, violins, and Pierce Lancaster in the doorway with a drink in one hand and his easy, lovely, terrible smile.

“There you are. Walter said he lost you.” Pierce’s eyes moved to Elish. Then to the jacket on the railing. Then, very briefly, to the clutch under her arm. “And you are?”

Grant stepped between them, and it was smooth, so smooth, one hand landing at her back like it had been there a hundred times. His palm was warm through the thin fabric. She almost flinched. She almost leaned into it, which was worse.

“Pierce, Elish Vance. She’s been keeping me company.” Grant picked up the jacket, settled it across her shoulders with a small deliberate care, and his voice did not change at all. “Weve been talking about the foundation.”

“How lovely,” Pierce said. He held her gaze a beat too long. “Vance. I do not think I know the family.”

“Youd remember,” Elish heard herself say.

Pierce laughed. Genuinely, it seemed. Then he lifted his glass to them both and went back inside, and the door swung shut on the violins.

Neither of them spoke.

Grant’s hand was still at her back. She felt it lift, slowly, like he had only just noticed it there.

“My office,” he said, low. “Tomorrow. Seven a.m., before the building wakes up. Use the loading dock on Pine Street, I will tell security.” He looked at the closed door, then at her. “And Elish. That name tag. Keep it.”

“Why?”

“Because he just asked for it,” Grant said. “And he does not usually ask twice.”