Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Westhaven Women’s Patronage Dinner was the kind of thing Bea still couldn’t believe existed outside of period dramas. Overly delicate china, a string quartet playing waltzes, blazing candelabra. She half expected footmen in matching livery.
She sat beside her mother-in-law, who was the architect of her presence here. Although Selene ignored a hundred invitations like this, she’d told Bea that this one was important: here, philanthropy met power and wine loosened tongues that were usually trained into restraint.
Upon arrival, Bea had endured a brief moment with Elena King. Elena’s politeness was glacial. If there were any lingering disappointment, it didn’t show. But there was no future where their paths didn’t overlap. Avoidance would only make things louder.
At a nearby table, Catherine Vale rose before slipping through a side exit, phone already buzzing in her palm. Bea had spent the past hour waiting for her to be alone. Anticipation and dread weighed in her gut, but she pushed the discomfort down. Oliver Fox’s words echoed in her mind:
You’ll have a better sense of who carries grudges.
Bea was just about to stand when one of the women at their table spoke.
“Selene, you look wan.” Daniella Langley’s concern was perfectly applied, like lipstick. Two women angled closer, pretending they weren’t. “The situation in Malaysia sounds dreadful. First the accident, and now your overseas partner isn’t cooperating?”
Bea’s shoulders drew in, ready.
Selene’s smile was breezy, but it carried teeth.
“My son is overworked, as is my husband. Malaysia will be handled.” Daniella was poised to press, but Selene continued.
“Speaking of dreadful, I was sorry to hear Cassian Montenegro took another deal from your family.” A pause, polite as a condolence card.
“After that time at the Harvest Summit, I imagine twice must sting.”
Daniella’s face smoothed into something blank. Bea felt an absurd urge to applaud. Clearly she wasn’t needed for backup.
“Mama,” she murmured, “I’ll be right back.”
Selene’s eyes sharpened. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I just need air.”
Selene’s hand covered hers briefly. “Go.”
Bea rose and made her way through the same exit she’d seen Catherine disappear through. Her heels made no sound on the carpet. The corridor was cool and deserted, the music fading to nothing. Her necklace suddenly felt too tight.
Catherine stood beneath a gilt-framed pastoral scene, phone lowered. It was strange being the one to approach, instead of the one cornered.
This was something she’d insisted on doing alone, and one of the few concessions Rafael had made. Bea felt the old reflex to shrink, but she stayed tall. “Catherine.”
The woman turned, surprise breaking through. Then the mask slid down. “Bea.”
They stood two steps apart, close enough that their perfume mixed, far enough that the air stayed formal.
“It’s nice to see you,” Bea said, because her upbringing refused to die.
“You as well,” Catherine returned, automatic.
A pause gathered between them, full of history neither of them needed to narrate.
“I’m going to ask you something,” she said. “And I need a direct answer.”
“Go on.”
Bea kept her voice even. “Did you send something to Oliver Fox?”
The pause was small, but it existed. “What are you talking about?”
“Photos.” Bea watched her face. “Of me.”
“Why would I have photos of you?” Catherine’s tone cooled. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“I’m not accusing. I asked a question.”
“You think I’d risk my reputation by being a source to a podcaster?”
“You’ve offered other half truths when it suited you,” Bea said quietly. “It’s not the first time.”
Color rose faintly in Catherine’s cheeks. Anger, or embarrassment. “I didn’t send anything,” she said, insulted.
Bea held her gaze. If it was a lie, it was a convincing one.
“We crossed paths at an art exhibition a week ago,” she added, arms crossing. “He asked questions. I answered a few. That was all.”
“You’re Catherine Vale,” Bea pointed out. “What you say has weight.”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “We talked about St. Ives. Not you.”
Bea clocked the rigid way Catherine held herself. She wouldn’t get more, not from Catherine herself. She turned, intending to leave it there.
“Bea.”
She paused.
Catherine hesitated, as if forcing the words out. “You and Rafael. You suit.”
Is she kidding? Bea spun. “Because I wasn’t good enough for Gage?”
“No,” Catherine said. “I’m trying to say, I don’t want to add anything further to what’s already been…complicated.”
How convenient, now that Gage was no longer the axis between them.
“Is that you calling a truce?”
For a long moment she didn’t reply.
“Gage hasn’t spoken to me in a long time,” Catherine said quietly.
“That’s between you and him.”
Catherine exhaled a short laugh that wasn’t amusement at all. Her expression changed, became almost human. “Do you think Oliver will use them? The photos?”
“I hope not.”
“Me, too,” Catherine said. “You’re a wife of the UR now. It wouldn’t be dignified.”
Bea held her gaze a moment longer, then turned back toward the light of the dinner.
RAFAEL
Gavin Trenor’s office wasn’t an office anymore. It was a borrowed room above a logistics firm, the kind of place men rented when they were pretending they hadn’t fallen. The stairwell smelled faintly of diesel. There was no receptionist, just a door with a temporary plaque.
Rafael had kept loose tabs since the dismissal. Men who lost status rarely lost resentment.
He knocked. Trenor opened the door with the reflex of a man accustomed to subordinates. The authority faded the instant he registered who stood there.
A smile assembled itself. “Mr. Griffin.”
They had never met. It didn’t matter.
“Trenor,” Rafael said. “Do you have a minute?”
He stepped back and gestured inside. Cain followed him in and glued himself to a wall; Voss stayed in the hall.
The room was small but bright. Rafael moved past the secondhand desk without asking and paused by the window, studying the container yard below. His fingers drifted across the sill, brushing away a thin line of dust. He rubbed the grit between his fingers before glancing back at Trenor.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Sit,” Rafael said, gesturing to the mismatched leather armchairs.
Trenor’s brows lifted. “This is my office.”
“Sit.”
The smile thinned. After a beat, he took a seat, slowly. Pretending it was voluntary.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” Rafael lifted a cheap ballpoint pen, clicked once, twice, and set it back down in a slightly different place.
Trenor’s eyes flicked to the pen, then back to Rafael. His fingers stilled on the desk, as if resisting the urge to move it back. “And if I don’t answer?”
Rafael tilted his head. “Then I’ll ask them again somewhere less comfortable.”
Silence.
Trenor’s fingertips tapped on the desk like a nervous tic. “What is this about?”
“You were removed from your post.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face. “I resigned for health reasons.”
Rafael didn’t answer immediately. He drifted a few steps along the wall, and straightened a crooked calendar with two fingers. Over his shoulder he said, “We both know that’s not true.”
Trenor watched with visible irritation. “Men fall. Men return. And?”
Rafael about-faced. “There are photographs of my wife.”
The tapping stopped. “Photographs?”
“From last year,” Rafael continued, picking up a paperweight, rolling it across his palms. “During the time she was auditing you.”
A pause. Then Trenor gave a small laugh, the kind men use when they want to pretend something is beneath them. “Is this what marriage does to you, Griffin? Paranoia?”
“I want to know if you know anything about them.”
The man leaned back, his chair complaining under him. “Your wife walked into my world and blew it up because of six stipends. I worked my ass off to get that position.”
Clearly, he held no remorse.
“So you retaliated?”
“Do you think I’m stupid enough to come for her with my own hands now that she’s married?”
Which only meant that, if she wasn’t, he would have.
“And if I did,” Trenor added, sharp now, the veneer cracking, “why the hell would I tell you?”
Rafael’s mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile. That seemed to drain something out of Trenor. His bravado faltered.
“I’m not saying I know anything,” he added quickly.
A framed photograph sat near the desk lamp: a golden retriever in an absurd red bandana leaning proudly against a man’s leg. Trenor shifted in his chair as Rafael held the photo. He glanced at Cain, who hadn’t moved from his spot against the wall.
Seconds passed.
“Did you send them?”
“No.” Then, quietly, and with more bitterness: “But I understand why someone would.”
Rafael’s free hand flexed at his side. A single punch and that mouth would stop moving.
“I don’t care what you did with those stipends, or what you tell yourself to live with it,” Rafael said. “This exile is administrative. If you did this…it will be personal.”
He peered down once more at the photograph of the golden retriever and regarded it for far longer than necessary. When he set it down, it rested squarely in the center of the desk, facing Trenor.
Then he turned for the door.