Chapter 2 - The Man Waiting at the Curb

“Do you need a ride?”

Dante Vale said it as though we were standing outside a grocery store instead of the Drake Hotel, where I had just given my husband's mistress a family heirloom in front of three hundred people.

I looked at the black car. Then at him.

“Why are you here?”

“Because Roman is inside.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn't.”

There was something almost refreshing about a man admitting that he had avoided the truth. My husband had spent four years doing the opposite.

Wind lifted the loose strands of hair at my neck. I had left my coat upstairs. My purse, too. Somewhere beyond the hotel's glass doors, Roman was deciding whether to send someone after me. I knew him well enough to understand that he would consider my exit a public act of disobedience, not an ending.

Dante noticed me shiver. He took off his coat and held it out without stepping closer.

“You can refuse the coat,” he said. “You can refuse the ride. But I'd rather not watch you freeze just to prove you can.”

I accepted it. The sleeves covered my hands. It smelled faintly of cedar and cold air, nothing like Roman's expensive cologne.

“I don't know you,” I said.

“You saw me at the Larkin charity gala two years ago.”

“I know where I've seen you. I don't know you.”

A small smile touched his mouth and disappeared.

“Fair distinction.”

He opened the rear door, leaving the choice to me. I could see the driver inside and, through the opposite window, the passing cars. Nobody was blocking my way. I got in because my options were a cold sidewalk, a hotel full of Roman's friends, or a car belonging to a man who at least understood the word no.

“Where?” the driver asked.

I gave him the address of a twenty-four-hour hotel near the river. Not Dante's house. Not anywhere Roman would expect me to go.

We had barely moved when my phone's absence became unbearable. For four years, Roman had paid for everything and treated that generosity as a reason I should never need anything of my own. My purse, my identification, and my phone were still inside the ballroom.

Dante took a phone from his pocket and handed it to me.

“Call someone you trust.”

“Do you have a list of people I should avoid?”

“I'm sure you'd put me at the top.”

I almost smiled. Then I remembered Vanessa standing with the sapphire enclosed in her palm, and the feeling passed.

I called Sylvia Quinn, the attorney who had handled the remaining paperwork after my father's death. She answered on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep.

“Sylvia. It's Evelyn Moretti.”

Her tone changed immediately.

“Are you safe?”

“Yes. I need to see you in the morning.”

“About Roman?”

“About everything he has ever asked me to sign.”

There was a pause.

“Bring whatever you can remember. Don't sign anything tonight.”

I ended the call and gave Dante his phone back.

His eyes rested on the screen for a second, but he didn't ask whom I'd contacted.

“Now,” I said, “why were you outside my birthday party?”

He looked toward the moving streetlights.

“My company has been fighting Roman over the South Branch freight terminals. For months. I came tonight because a banker who is considering his financing was attending your party. I wanted a conversation after the speeches.”

“And instead you found me.”

“I saw you come out. I recognized you.”

“You expect me to believe that's the entire story?”

“No.”

He reached inside his jacket, carefully enough that I had time to watch his hands, and withdrew a business card. He placed it on the leather seat between us.

“Your father once asked me to review a proposal Roman brought him. It involved the same terminals. He died before we finished talking. I've wondered ever since why the proposal survived him.”

My throat tightened.

“My father never mentioned you.”

“We weren't friends. He didn't trust me completely.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted part of the business.”

It was an answer Roman would never have given. Roman preferred to disguise an appetite as a favor.

Dante continued. “The Moretti interests still have a stake in that property, unless the records I've seen are wrong. If Roman gets the financing he wants, the stake could be pledged against debts you never agreed to.”

I turned toward him.

“I'm not involved in his business.”

“Maybe that's what he told you.”

The sentence made me feel suddenly cold despite the coat.

I remembered the papers Roman had put before me after the wedding. Banking forms, tax forms, instructions from accountants. He'd said my father's assets were complicated. He would take care of them until I felt strong enough to make decisions again.

And I had been so grateful not to think about money or attorneys or the warehouse keys that still lay in my father's desk.

“What does any of that have to do with tonight?”

“A lender expects fresh consent from every substantial owner before Monday. Roman has been telling people you support the deal.”

“That's a lie.”

“Then the people lending him money ought to know.”

I pictured the room full of lawyers, donors, and aldermen. Roman's expression when I placed the sapphire in Vanessa's hand. It hadn't been the expression of a man merely losing an argument with his wife.

There had been fear.

But I didn't mistake Dante's information for proof. An enemy of Roman's had every reason to make him look corrupt, and I refused to be the instrument either man used against the other.

“Tomorrow I will ask Sylvia,” I said. “Until then, don't contact anyone in my name.”

Dante inclined his head.

“Agreed.”

At the hotel, he waited while the desk clerk arranged a room and accepted his card as a temporary guarantee. I asked the clerk to record the amount so I could repay it. Dante didn't object.

Before he left, I handed his coat back.

“You don't owe me anything for the ride,” he said.

“I know. And the ride doesn't mean I trust you.”

“Good. Don't trust anyone without checking.”

The elevator doors closed between us.

In the room, I stared at my bare left hand. A pale indentation circled the finger where the sapphire had rested for four years. For the first time, the absence of the ring felt less like losing something and more like discovering how much weight I had been carrying.

Then the hotel phone rang.

The clerk said a man claiming to represent my husband was asking for my room number.

“Don't give it to him,” I said.

“We haven't.”

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After I hung up, I drew the curtains and sat on the edge of the bed. Roman had already begun looking for me. In the morning, he would learn that I had begun looking into him.

And somewhere in the city's financial offices, there might be a document bearing my name that I had never seen.