14. WILLIAM
WILLIAM
"What do you mean she doesn't want to sell?"
The question reverberates cold and menacing in the office. The room echoes it. Stone, dark walnut and smoked glass, nothing soft anywhere to catch the edge of it.
Good.
Paula Cross goes still across from me.
Behind Paula's head, Century City sits in flat morning light through the floor-to-ceiling windows, in my corner office.
Paula's perfume is gardenia over something synthetic.
It arrived before she did, moved ahead of her down the corridor into the room, and it has been coating the back of my throat for the past twenty minutes.
That's how long she's been sitting in one of the black leather chairs across from my desk, carrying out this performance. And now, she lets me know that Sienna refuses to sell, even with the absurd price I’m willing to pay.
Paula sets her hands flat on the armrest. The composure is deliberate, aiming to appear natural, but I can see the practice and effort behind it.
"She's being unreasonable, like always." she says.
Her voice is measured and careful. Calibrated.
"She has no real attachment to that house.
She didn't care about it when her father was alive.
And now suddenly she's claiming the one property that matters. "
I watch her.
Paula Cross is really good at this. The performance is precise.
There is a slight catch in her voice at the right moment, controlled rather than genuinely ragged.
Her shoulders carry the specific angle of a woman trying not to fall apart with emotion.
She is the grieving widow who only wants her home, her final piece of the life she built.
Every element of it is present and correctly placed.
"It was the only real home I ever had," Paula says.
Her gaze moves toward the window. The hills in the distance, the pale morning haze.
She wipes with the tip of her manicured fingers a non-existent tear.
Then, she looks back to me, making sure I've tracked the significance.
"Conrad and I built that life together. Every room in that house has something of ours in it.
And now she wants to take it from me." A pause timed precisely.
"She's doing it to be cruel. She is a cold vindictive bitch. "
I can’t explain the impact those words have on me and why. My body wants to jump out of the chair when I hear what she says. Not so long ago I would say something similar regarding Sienna Cross. Now…I’m not so sure.
I drag my thumb once along my lower lip, holding the words that I instinctively want to say. Paula is still talking, and I let the words register as sound while I locate the thing that just happened in my chest before it disappears.
Why do I feel the need to defend Sienna?
I know who she is. I know what she did.
Paula is still watching me. She is waiting for the agreement. The nod that tells her we are on the same page.
I don't give it. If I can’t get what I want through Paula I will have to get it directly from Sienna. Find out what her angle is and pay whatever price she wants. Everybody has a price.
"Well, it was worth a try," I say, aiming for unbothered, "I guess we will move to another property."
Paula blinks. The widow impression adjusts, recalibrates. "Another property?"
"One that is available. I’m sure you understand."
"Of course." Her hands settle differently in her lap.
I stand. Paula takes her cue and stands too, smoothing her jacket with both hands, taking her bag from the chair. She moves toward the door at the correct pace. Not rushing, not dragging. Socially fluent, as always.
Then she slows near the lounge area. One hand comes to rest on the back of a low black leather sofa. Light. Considered. She turns.
"William." The posture has opened slightly. Repositioned. The grieving widow has stepped aside and someone else has taken her place. A different version, warmer, more personal. "I want you to know how much I enjoyed our time together. Truly."
"No need to mention. It was good trying to do business with you."
"Of course." The smile holds longer than it should. "It's just, if there's ever anything I can do. For you. In any capacity."
"There isn't."
A beat in which the smile stays on her face past the point where it is natural.
I cross to the door and pull it open. And I curse myself.
Carter and Adrian are in the lobby.
I look at them and the Bali project meeting comes back to me in a single cold rush. Carter's permits brief, the partnership structure decision, the Q2 timeline. I had forgotten all about it in the rush to meet with Paula and find out if she was successful in persuading Sienna to sell.
I don't forget meetings. Ever.
Carter is standing near the lobby window with his laptop and folders under one arm. Adrian is leaning against Mia's desk, talking to her in a low voice. Mia is blushing and giggling at what he is saying.
This situation has disaster written all over it. I let none of my reaction show.
Paula stops talking when she sees Adrian and she recognizes him. “Mr. Kade?”
Adrian straightens. The ease of his manner doesn't shift, not visibly. "Mrs. Cross." A brief nod. "What a pleasure to see you again.”
Paula takes a step towards him, tilts her head and asks: “Do you have business with William Martin?”
He glances at me once, then back to Paula. Managing it. “I'm the attorney for MH Group. For a long while."
Paula looks at him. The look has no warmth in it and no performance either. This is the real Paula, the one that exists underneath the grief widow and the social flirt, and she doesn't bother covering it up for Adrian.
"I see." she says. The voice is quiet and specific.
And without any more words she walks past Adrian without slowing down. The elevator at the end of the lobby opens as she reaches it, as if it was waiting, and she steps in. The doors close.
The lobby is quiet for a moment.
Adrian looks at me. "Do I want to know?"
"No." I turn and step back into my office.
I take a seat at the top of the conference table. Carter and Adrian take the chairs nearest the center. Carter opens the briefing he brought. Adrian doesn’t bother with papers and is just watching me.
"What was Paula doing here?" Adrian asks.
"I believe you can make an educated guess." I open the laptop and pull up the Bali permits file. "Where are we on the Tabanan assessment?"
Carter looks up from his notes. "Are you still trying to get Cross Manor?"
"One way or another." I reply dismissively, trying to change the subject.
Adrian tips back in his chair. "You're obsessed."
"Me? I'm not the one who's obsessed. I’m not the one who was holding hands with Sienna." I look at him directly. "I'd check yourself on that one. "
I can see the change of emotions occur in real time in Adrian’s face, and how he tries to control it. "I’ve spent time with her," he says, not backing down. "She doesn't seem like the person you and Paula make her out to be."
"You know what happened." I fight to control the anger in my voice.
"And now she's doing to Paula what Conrad did to my family.
Using leverage to push someone out of their home only because she can.
" I pause and make sure to give a meaningful look both to Adrian and Carter.
"Soon, she will show you her true colors. "
Adrian looks at me. I look back.
Carter sets his pen down flat on the folder. Both of us turn. "Bali," he says. "Let's talk about Bali."
He pushes the permits summary to the center of the table. The meeting comes into order.
Carter walks the construction timeline. Adrian reviews the partnership liability clauses. Questions get asked, items get marked for revision, decisions get made. I try to contribute as best as I can. To track the conversation, hit the marks, say the correct things in the correct order.
But my mind keeps wondering about Sienna and the chaos that she is bringing to my life. Again.
I’m restless, so I get up and pace to the windows while answering Carter's questions. The Century city is out there, in its clean geometry, pale hills past it, the morning haze thinning in the early heat.
I turn from the window.
My eyes land on the desk. The dark pot at the edge of the leather pad. Keith.
Charlie asked me, from her hospital bed, to take it to her apartment when I had the chance. She wants it waiting for her when she is released in two days.
I'm not entirely sure when I decided to bring it here instead.
It made sense in the moment, or I told myself it did.
It was better if the plant was with me, so I could take care of it.
I spend more hours in this office than I spend in any room of my apartment.
If something is going to be cared for properly, this is where it needs to be.
That's a rational conclusion. I stand by it.
I cross to the desk and move the pot a few inches to the left. The shadow it casts shifts against the stone wall behind the desk. Longer. The dark shape of it reaches further than it did a moment ago.
Komorebi.
That's the word Sienna used back in the hospital. I looked it up.
In Japanese culture, komorebi means appreciating the fleeting, the bittersweet awareness of the impermanence of things.
It describes the interplay of sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees and the shifting, dancing shadows that this creates on surfaces like walls, floors, or curtains.
The shadow patterns change every second with the wind and the angle of the sun.
I stand there looking at it.
I move the pot back the other way. I watch the shadow shift again, lengthen differently, reach a different corner of the stone.
"Since when do you have a plant?" Carter asks noting my actions.
I look down at the pot in my hands.
Since Sienna came back to my life.
The thought arrives without permission. Flat, clear, no argument attached to it. It simply lands.
I set the pot down on the edge of the desk and I turn back toward the table.
"It's Charlotte’s," I say. "She asked me to look after it."
Carter holds my gaze for one second. Then he looks back at his notes.
The meeting continues.
The shadows reach farther across the wall than they did before.