Chapter 7 - The Man Who Used My Absence

By the following week, Detective Park had enough information to ask me to come in for another interview. She met me at a small table, with Leah beside me and the envelope photographs arranged in clear sleeves. I recognized my own image immediately: a woman carrying a black bag, trying not to be noticed. It was strange to see the most private decision I'd made in years treated as evidence.

Park explained what investigators had confirmed so far. The original recording had been exported through Rafe Calder's senior operations credentials. Access records tied the session to a device used at his office. A separate series of payments from a riverfront company led to the freight brokerage whose representative had come to Mara's shop. The timing placed both within the days when Nico's internal audit was questioning that company's accounts.

She spoke carefully. The evidence did not prove that Rafe had taken every photograph himself, or that he personally delivered the envelope. It did establish a reason to investigate whether someone in his operation had used my movements to put pressure on Nico.

"Why me?" I asked.

Park looked at me without pity. "Because you were close to him and because whoever sent that note believed he would respond."

I thought of Nico laughing behind a closed door, making sure Arthur understood how little I mattered. He'd spoken as though the worst thing anyone could do was see that he needed me. Then he'd sent people searching, making his fear visible to the very men he wanted to impress.

The contradiction wasn't lost on me.

Later that day, Arthur asked to speak with Leah and me. We met in the same library room where he'd returned my documents. He brought no new photographs. Instead, he brought the kind of admission that seemed hardest for men in Nico's world: he had missed something obvious.

"Rafe knew Nico was reviewing the riverfront invoices," Arthur said. "He also saw how quickly Nico ordered a search when you vanished. The footage gave him a way to join those two things."

"You warned Nico not to pursue Rafe immediately."

"I did. Nico listened, but Rafe had already accessed the files."

Arthur explained that Rafe had overseen storage routes and used subcontractors to move shipments through the riverfront facilities. Some recorded invoices did not correspond to services the companies could document. Investigators were examining whether the difference represented misappropriated funds and false accounting. When Nico demanded an explanation, Rafe apparently tried to turn his superior's personal panic into bargaining power.

He didn't need to invent affection. He only needed to notice Nico's response to my absence.

"What was he asking for?" I said.

"He wanted the audit suspended and control over certain storage accounts transferred away from Nico's review. The note you received was part of that pressure."

The explanation settled with an unpleasant clarity. I wasn't Rafe's enemy. I was a means of reaching Nico. In one man's eyes I had been convenient; in another, useful. Both had treated my choices as something they could turn to their advantage.

"Did Nico agree?"

"No. He didn't know about the note until you brought it to the police."

I looked at Arthur. "And what happens if Rafe decides being warned isn't enough?"

"That's why the police have the evidence," he replied. "And why I'm here to tell you what I know rather than ask you to stay quiet."

I had never heard Arthur speak so openly about their business. He knew he could not undo the years when I'd been excluded from decisions that affected my life. But he could stop excluding me now.

"You asked Nico to take me somewhere," I reminded him. "Back in the study."

Arthur's scar tightened slightly as he looked away.

"I saw you getting smaller in that place. I thought a vacation might help. I should have asked you what you needed instead of asking him."

The admission hurt because it was true. Even Arthur, who'd meant well, had imagined my needs as something Nico could decide to satisfy.

"I needed him to listen," I said. "Not take me to Italy."

Arthur nodded.

The detective called later with a request for any messages I still possessed from the days after I left. I forwarded Nico's emails through Leah: Where are you? Call me. I didn't know you were there. I was talking to Arthur. The messages showed how Nico had responded, though they did not prove who had sent the threats. I submitted them because I no longer wanted the story told entirely by men who claimed to understand my intentions.

That evening, Nico asked whether I would meet him again. I agreed because I had one question, and because a refusal or a meeting would both be my choice. We sat across from each other at Leah's office with the door open to her adjoining room.

He looked at the denim jacket I'd repaired. His eyes paused at the torn sleeve, the one he'd once threatened to throw away. He said nothing about it.

"When you told Arthur you could forget me," I asked, "were you lying to him, or to yourself?"

Nico stared at his hands. I'd watched him hold a room full of men silent with a glance. He looked less certain across a plain conference table.

"I wanted him to believe I was impossible to hurt," he said. "I'd spent my life making sure people believed that. I thought if I admitted needing you, I would be giving them a weapon."

"So you gave them one anyway."

He nodded. "Yes."

"You made my love sound like something you'd bought."

"I know."

"Then stop explaining why you said it as if the explanation changes what I heard."

He lifted his eyes. There was grief there, but I had seen grief on Nico's face before. It had never automatically made him kinder.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked.

I thought about answering with something impossible, then recognized that I didn't want another promise large enough to hide his failure to keep small ones.

"Don't retaliate against Rafe. Don't send people to protect me without asking. And don't use your feelings about losing me as an excuse to control what happens next."

He listened without interrupting.

"I can do that," he said.

"Then do it."

Before I left, Nico told Leah that his lawyers were arranging to turn over the full riverfront accounting records requested by the investigators. Those records could expose far more than Rafe's misconduct. They would also reveal how Nico's own businesses were run, and he understood that.

"You don't have to protect me from what those records say," I told him.

He looked at me for a long time.

"I know."

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When I stepped outside, the cold air felt clean after the conference room. I didn't know whether Nico would keep choosing accountability when it began to cost him. But for the first time, there was a way to find out without returning to the penthouse or trusting his word alone.

The records would speak for themselves.