I don't care.
I walk toward her, each step measured and deliberate. The officers see me coming and one of them raises a hand but I'm already past him.
She looks up at me.
For a fraction of a second her expression registers something I almost recognize. Something like a flinch that precedes impact.
I dismiss it. It doesn't change anything.
"Sienna Cross." I say her name flat, like I'm reading charges. "I'm going to make sure you answer for this."
She doesn't respond. Her chin dips a fraction, her shoulders curling inward, and something in her posture folds in a way that is so practiced, so automatic, that it almost stops me.
Almost.
I step back. Square my shoulders. Fix my gaze on hers until she looks away first.
The canyon is silent except for the low idle of engines and the intermittent crackle of a police radio. The eucalyptus tree holds the Volvo. The air tastes like burnt rubber and something ruined.
I turn back to Charlotte.
Behind me, Sienna Cross stands perfectly still under the flashing lights, arms wrapped around herself, small and bruised.
She has no idea what's coming. She just made herself my problem.
2
ADRIAN
The air conditioning hums. Other than that, just the expensive silence of a conference room designed to make people feel smaller than the decisions being made inside it.
Paula Cross is still talking.
"She didn't even come to the funeral." Paula leans forward, manicured nails pressing half-moons into the leather portfolio she brought. Her perfume reaches me again, gardenia layered over something synthetic, sweet enough to coat the back of my throat. "Her father was buried a week ago and she couldn't be bothered to show up."
I let the silence hold for a beat longer than necessary. There's information in how people fill the space you give them. And Paula fills it exactly the way I expected. With volume, repetition, and the particular brand of outrage that only surfaces when someone is performing grief rather than experiencing it.
"That's why we're here, Mrs. Cross." I keep my voice level and unhurried. "Conrad didn't leave a will. This meeting is to discusshow the estate might be divided under California intestate succession law."
"Divided." She says the word like I've insulted her. "I was with him for fourteen years. I held his hand in that hospital. I was the one, Adrian. Not her."
I can identify the architecture of a transaction at fifty paces. Paula Cross is a cathedral of it.
I wouldn't normally take this case. Probate disputes are tedious, the legal questions settled before the conversation starts. But William asked. William wants Cross Manor in Hidden Hills, and whatever angle he's working requires Paula in a favorable negotiating position. I don't know the full picture. I don't need to. William's motives are his own, and my job is representation within the boundaries of the law.
"I understand your position," I say. "And I'm here to advocate for your rights, within the legal framework. That's what you're paying me to do."
"What I'm paying you to do is make sure that junkie daughter of his doesn't see a cent." Paula straightens in her chair, and the performance sharpens. "Do you know what she was like? Drugs, parties, disappearing for weeks. Conrad covered for her, paid for everything. She's an addict, Adrian. She'll blow through whatever she gets in six months."
I've heard all this before. Many years ago. But last time I heard the name Sienna Cross, it was because she was sentenced to be committed to a very reputable rehab facility.
I hope she's doing okay. I hope that going to Greenhaven helped her.
Paula is still going. Her voice has found a rhythm, rising and circling, circling and rising, each sentence a variation on the same theme. I deserve this. She doesn't. I was here. She wasn't.
I look at her while she speaks. She's attractive. Objectively, precisely attractive, maintained with investment and discipline.Mid-thirties, bone structure that photographs well, the specific tension around her eyes that comes from either Botox or sustained calculation. Under different circumstances, a different version of me would have filed her as someone worth an evening, once the paperwork cleared. I have a reputation of sorts.
Serial flirter, some call it. Others are less generous with the terms they use.
