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I’m at the door of the suite when his voice drops even lower.
Every word lands like a blade.
“Find out who had access to my valuation. Or start firing people.”
I close the door behind me so softly it doesn’t make a sound.
The elevator drops me into a lobby of black marble and gold. Over the revolving doors, in brass letters taller than I am, a single word catches the first gray light of morning.
SOVEREIGN.
I walk out under it carrying my heels, and I don’t look back.
4
ISABELLA
On Monday morning, I walk into Archer PR to find it crawling with federal agents.
Blue windbreakers. Banker’s boxes marching out of the partners’ offices. Our receptionist crying into a box of tissues.
“Ms. Medina?”
The woman who stops me has white-blond hair scraped into a ruthless bun and eyes the color of a glacier. Her badge says MERCER.
“Special Agent Olivia Mercer,” she says. “I’d like a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
I mind. I go anyway.
She questions me for forty-five minutes about Everett Shaw, one of our founding partners, who spent six years moving client money to the Caymans and is, as of Friday, in the Caymans himself.
I answer every question straight. When she asks for my files, I log in and turn the monitor toward her without calling a lawyer first.
At the end of it, she closes her notebook and studies me.
“You know you’re the first person in this building today who hasn’t tried to lie to me?”
“I don’t have anything to lie about.”
“That’s rarer than you’d think.” She stands, handing me a card. “If you remember anything, call.”
I keep the card. I don’t know why.
The next week is a slow-motion car crash. Clients call to “pause” their contracts, which is what clients say right before they disappear. The account I spent four months landing is gone by Wednesday.
On Saturday, Mom texts: Your sister says your company is on the news. Are you still getting paid?
Not are you okay? Just the money.
On Thursday night, digging through my purse for a pen, I find my birth control and stop. One whole row of pills is still sealed in its foil. The week Mark ended things, I apparently forgot every single day and never noticed.
I stare at it for a long moment. Then I tell myself it’s fine. That was before the hotel. That’s how it works.
Probably.
I swallow tonight’s pill and zip the pack back into my bag.
Every night that week, I fall asleep thinking about patient hands and a voice cold enough to frost glass. I don’t know his name. I tell myself that’s a blessing.
