Not that I’m overly concerned.
Money can buy its way out of situations like this. Even when money’s fighting with money.
But I suspect enough people got my fight with Tobias Merriweather-Brown on video—including all of the things Daphne said to him after the deputies restrained me—that he won’t be able to hide from his part in it.
Namely, the parts where he insulted Daphne. Where he tried to cut her to the bone.
The parts where you can see that me punching him was justified.
“Everything will be okay,” I tell her.
“We’ll be all over the internet. Everyone’s going to see.”
Yeah. Thought about that.
Gonna make next week harder. The board won’t be as inclined to listen to a CEO who got arrested for punching a supposed friend while running away.
And that has another thought cementing more firmly in my head.
“Daph?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to go back. To Manhattan.”
Her face drains of color.
“You don’t,” I say quickly. “You shouldn’t go back. You shouldn’tevergo back. Not where I’m going. You should go home. Be where you’re happy. But I—there are things I need to handle myself.”
She grips the bar of her cell, which is across the hall from mine, so I can’t even touch her. “It’s bad for you,” she whispers.
“It is,” I agree. “But I need to leave it the right way. Not running away. I need to take ownership one last time.”
“Oliver—”
“I was going to settle somewhere west of the Mississippi in a flyover state. New name, new identity, pay whatever I had to pay in back-alley channels to get set up in a small town where I could meet my neighbors and get a job mowing grass or popping popcorn behind the ticket counter at a movie theater.”
“You didn’t know where you were going? At all?”
“Everyone would expect me to disappear to a beach in another country.”
She drops her forehead to the bars, a small smile playing on her lips. “I honestly thought you were going to Mexico to pretend to be an Italian banking executive.”
“And you wouldn’t be the only one. Hence, staying in the US, but in some obscure town I’d never heard of before, because if I’d never heard of it, I never would’ve mentioned it, and they wouldn’t have the first clue where to start looking.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“Thank you. I hope it’s the last brilliant thing I ever do.”
She laughs a little. “You would love Simon. He’d say the same thing.”
“Daph?”
“What?”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him. Bea too. And her brothers.”
Her eyes blink open, and she stares at me. Her face puckers under all of that glowing red-orange hair with her new dye job, and her eyes go shiny.
