13. Cali
CALI
The kids are asleep by nine. I check on them twice, just because I want to see their chests going up and down. After the day I've had, you can hardly blame me for turning into a paranoid helicopter mom for a minute.
Then, when all my anxieties have been eased by the sounds of my little elves happily slumbering, I go downstairs.
To where the real battle is about to begin.
Ronan is at the kitchen table. There's a folder in front of him, but I can tell by the distant glaze in his eyes that he's not reading it.
It's more like he's pinning it in place with the sheer power of his stare, hoping that he can use Superman laser beams or whatever to incinerate it into smoke and make it not our problem anymore.
I've tried that myself on more than one occasion—including trying to turn Ronan himself into smoke. It hasn't worked for me, so I figure it's probably kind of me to spare him the effort.
"It won't work, you know," I advise him as I sit in the other seat.
"What won't?"
"Sticking your head in the sand and praying all our problems go away."
He laughs mirthlessly. "That's not exactly my M.O., Cali."
"Yeah," I retort, "I know. Your M.O. is more along the lines of 'shoot all your problems until they go away.'"
"Still mad about that, are we?"
"Can you blame me?" I cry out with a snort. "This world of yours is not for the faint of heart, Ronan. And I'm no softie, but, like… c'mon. A girl has her limits."
He turns his eyes up to me. They're grayer than they are blue today, but no less piercing.
As always, I feel like he can see right through me.
Not just my clothes—which are hiding some very perky and incriminating details if he did in fact have that Superman power—but also to the heart of me, the unsettling feelings I can't quite shake.
We're gonna get there eventually anyway, so I decide to beat him to the punch.
"I keep thinking about her offer."
He waits patiently for me to continue.
"It just sounded so simple," I sigh. "I go in, we have a nice little conversation over coffee, and then I get her guarantee that my kids are safe. As their mother, isn't that what I should be prioritizing?"
"That depends. Do you believe her?"
"I don't know. That's the problem." I fold my arms on the table. "Everything about her felt true. But everything about you felt true, too, and look how that turned out."
He could get angry at that, but he doesn't. He just nods, like it's fair, because it is.
"If I take the deal," I go on, "I'm safe. Legally, I mean. The kids are safe from being tangled up in it. But she wants me to give you up to get it. That's what she's actually offering."
"I'm aware of the costs."
"And if I don't take it, I'm here. With you.
Behind a fricking vault door, with armed boogeymen in dark coats prowling around my neighborhood while we all pretend life is normal as we wait for Lev to send somebody else up my stairs.
" I shake my head. "Neither one of these is a good option, Ronan.
As far as I can tell, there is no good option.
There's just less bad and more bad, and I can't tell which is which anymore. "
Ronan is contemplative. His eyes float over me, to the darkness outside the window.
And then, strangely, they lower to the papers pinned beneath his fingertips. Something about the way he looks at them triggers my attention. There's a cover sheet on top, so I can't tell what they are. But they've got Ronan's full focus.
"What's that?" I ask.
No answer.
"Hey. Ronan. Yoohoo. What's in the folder?"
He heaves a tortured exhale. Then he slides the packet across the table.
I lift the cover sheet and see, stamped in big, bold letters across the top…
brADSHAW DIVORCE: FINALIZED
It's my divorce.
The final one, signed and sealed with a judge's signature that means my union to Todd Abraham Bradshaw is officially null and void.
I keep reading, like I'm hunting for a punchline that'll be buried somewhere halfway down the page.
The legalese is dense—hereby dissolved, whereas the parties, in consideration of, blah-bedy-blah—but I get the gist. It's over.
One illegible chicken scratch signature, and that chapter of my life is done.
"Huh," I say. "So that's that."
But wait.
Something else catches my attention.
A date.
I have to read it three times over and do some very embarrassing math before I realize what it implies.
"This is from last week."
Ronan nods. "Yes."
I look up at him. "You've had this for a week?"
"Yes."
I close the folder, knuckle the crust of my eyes, and then I open it again, like the date might change.
Obviously, it doesn't. "I'm divorced. It's done.
Todd's gone, the marriage is over, it's legally, officially, actually over, and you've been sitting on the piece of paper that says so for a whole entire week? "
"Calista—"
"Do you know how long I've been waiting for this?" I jump out of my seat. "Do you have any idea? Months! This is the thing! This is the whole thing I've been fighting for since a scale in Phoenix told me my life was a lie. And you had it in your possession, and you didn't even tell me?"
"I know."
"Stop saying you know!"
"But I do know." He's the same calm Ronan as ever. "You're right. I should have given it to you the day it came through."
"Then why didn't you?"
When he doesn't answer fast enough for my liking, I slap the table with both hands.
"Ronan! Why didn't you inform me about my own divorce?"
He drags his eyes up to mine once more, but this time, they're swimming with deep ocean blue. "Because the moment I hand it to you, you're free. Legally. There's no reason for you to be tied to me at all anymore. And the moment you're free, you might use it to be free of me."
I sit back. "So you kept it to tether me at your side. Like your little pet."
"No."
"That's exactly what you just described, is it not?"
"That's part of it, yes. But it's not the whole of it." He scrapes a hand over his jaw. "There's a reason I'm giving it to you now. Tonight."
"Which is? Aside from the generosity of your magnanimous soul, of course."
"Because I need something from you. And I can't ask for it while you're still legally married to another man."
I stare at him. "You need something from me.
You. Need something. From me." I laugh hysterically, not caring that I sound like the evil witch from Hocus Pocus.
"That's rich. That's so rich, Ronan. After everything.
After the company and the trackers and the mirrors and the spy babysitter you planted in my house, you sat on my divorce for a week because you need something from me?
Well, tell the class, please! What could you possibly need from me that's worth hiding the one thing that started all this shit? "
He looks at me for a long moment. There've been a lot of long moments of prolonged eye contact like this since Ronan Akov first strode into my life, but this one somehow feels like the most eternal.
I live and die a billion times over in the seconds that tick past. As those ocean-blue eyes of his burn and seethe and churn and deepen. When he speaks, I realize why.
"I need you to marry me."
I short-circuit. That's the only word for it. The whole world glitches out, buffers, and resets. I have to dig a finger into my eardrums to clear them out and make sure I didn't get that very badly wrong.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I think I'm having a stroke. Say that again."
"I need you to marry me, kotyonok."
"You—" I plant both hands flat on the table now, because my spine can no longer be trusted to keep me erect.
"At the risk of sounding like a broken record, because the Lord knows I tell you this quite a lot, this is proof that you are in fact insane.
Congratulations, you've finally lost it.
I've been waiting for it and here it is.
You want me to marry you. The man who stole my company.
Twenty minutes after handing me the divorce from the last man who stole my company. "
Unmoved, he nods. "Yes."
"Give me one reason. One good reason that isn't you being out of your mind, specifically."
"Spousal privilege."
I stop.
"There are two parts to it," he explains.
"One says the government can't force a spouse to testify against the other.
The other says confidential communications between spouses can't be used against them.
Mercer can subpoena me until she's blue in the face.
She can subpoena you, too. But she can't make a wife testify against her husband, and she can't touch anything you and I said to each other after the wedding. "
My legs join my spine in protesting against gravity. Both force me to sink back into the chair at the kitchen table.
Ronan keeps talking, gesturing like the good lawyer he is.
"You are, in her mind, the single most dangerous witness she could ever get.
You know how all this shit works now. You know what to look for.
You could sit in that interrogation room chair and walk her through every dollar, the same way you walked a room full of bankers through Todd's infidelity.
" He bends forward to thrust his face into mine.
"But the one thing she cannot do, no matter how many threats she hurls our way, is make my wife do that. "
"You want to marry me to make me useless to her. Gee, and here I thought you weren't a romantic at heart."
He shakes his head. "The privilege protects you, too, Calista.
Right now, you're a loose end for both sides.
Lev wants you. Mercer wants you. The marriage doesn't fix everything, but it takes one bad outcome off the table.
It's the strongest wall I can build between you and a courtroom witness stand or a cell in a dark, concrete warehouse with a drain in the floor to drink up all your blood. "