29. Celine
CELINE
Alexei calls my desk at eleven.
“The amendment language needs the original incorporation records,” he says. “Before digitization, nineteen ninety-one structure. They’ll be in the archive cabinet in Zane’s office, third drawer if memory serves. I need them confirmed against the new clause before I send anything to print.”
“I’ll get them this afternoon.”
“Today, if you can. The printer needs forty-eight hours.”
I tell him today works. I hang up and finish the email I’m writing, and at two o’clock I walk down the corridor to Zane’s office, which is empty; he’s on a call two floors down, and I let myself in with the key Roman gave me weeks ago for exactly this kind of errand.
The third drawer sticks, as it always does. I have to pull it twice before it gives.
The incorporation records are right where Alexei said they’d be, a thin folder near the front, tabbed in his own handwriting.
I pull it out. Behind it, pushed back further than the rest, is a second folder. No label on the spine. Just a date written in pencil in the corner, eight months before the job posting for Volkov Holdings ever existed.
I should put the drawer back. I have what I came for.
I open it instead.
Four pages.
The first page is a summary sheet, my name typed at the top, and a compilation date that confirms what the pencil mark already told me.
Below that, a list of prior employers, dates, and titles I gave during my interview, almost word-for-word, except that this document predates that interview by months.
The second page is financial. Account numbers I don’t recognize as having been shared with anyone, a single line item that makes my stomach drop before my mind catches up to why.
Outstanding medical balance, L. Varas, $—.
The exact figure from that month, the one I did the math on twice every morning because I couldn’t believe it was real.
The third page is Lena. Diagnosis date. Treatment center. A note in the margin, not typed, handwritten, three words. Stable income required.
The fourth page is the house. An assessed value. A line noting it carries no mortgage. Beneath that, another handwritten note. Will not sell. Confirmed twice.
I read that last line three times.
I have told exactly two people in my life that I considered selling the house and didn’t. Lena. And once, very late one night in this kitchen, Zane.
This was written before that conversation ever happened.
I am still holding the folder when I hear the office door open behind me.
I don’t turn around right away. I look at the page in my hand, at will not sell, confirmed twice, at four pages that took someone months to compile about a life I thought, until eleven minutes ago, had only ever belonged to me.
“Celine.”
I turn.
He’s in the doorway, his jacket still on, and whatever he sees on my face stops him from coming any closer. His eyes drop to the folder. I watch the exact moment he understands which one it is.
“How long ago was this?” I ask furiously.
“Eight months before you applied.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“You knew the exact balance on Lena’s account,” I say. “You knew about the house before I ever told you. You knew I’d considered selling it. Twice.”
“Yes.”
“Say something else. Say anything else.”
“I can explain it.”
“I don’t want an explanation. I want to know how long you’ve been deciding who I am before I get to decide it myself.”
He takes one step into the room. I take one step back, the folder pressed against my chest now like it might protect me from something, though I couldn’t say from what exactly, the truth is already in my hands.
“It wasn’t like that,” he says.
“Then what was it like, Zane? Tell me, because from where I’m standing, you built a file on a stranger, decided she’d be useful, and engineered her entire life until she walked exactly where you wanted her to walk.”
“That’s not the whole truth.”
“It’s enough of it.”
I move toward the door. He moves faster.
His hand closes around my wrist, not hard, but solid enough to stop me, and I feel my own pulse hammering against his palm. His other hand finds the lock on the door I just tried to walk through, and the sound of it turning lands heavier than it should in the quiet between us.
“Let go of me.”
“Not yet.”
“You don’t get to lock me in a room, Zane.”
“I’m not locking you in. I’m asking you to stay long enough to hear one true thing, and then if you still want to leave, I will open this door myself.
” His voice has dropped into something I haven’t heard from him before, stripped down past every careful register he usually keeps.
“You can hate me after. You can walk out after. But you are going to hear this first.”