Chapter 17
Miley
I didn’t mean to pack him lunch. I just made extra.
That’s what I told myself while I arranged braised chicken and roasted vegetables into a leather lunch bag at noon.
I told myself the same thing while I added a side of rice pilaf because the chicken needed a base.
I told myself again while I wrote a sticky note with two smiley faces and tucked it inside, and by the time I zipped the bag shut and set it on the counter, I had told myself I didn’t mean to pack him lunch approximately seven times, which is about six times too many for someone who genuinely didn’t mean to.
Trisha had called the night before. She said the optics of the CEO’s wife visiting the office were excellent. She said it casually, like she was suggesting lunch plans and not orchestrating a public relations move.
So here I was. Walking toward Vale Industries in a dress Christopher had bought me the last time we went shopping, a green wrap dress that fit like it was cut specifically for my body and made me feel like someone who belonged in tall buildings with glass doors and security desks.
The heels were new. They were also trying to kill me.
Every step on the lobby’s polished floor felt like negotiating a peace treaty with gravity.
The building was sleek and sharp, radiating corporate energy that made me feel like I’d accidentally wandered onto the set of a drama I hadn’t been cast in.
People crossed the lobby with purpose, eyes forward, talking into headsets, all of them running on caffeine and the fear of God—the same fuel as any Friday dinner rush, except no one was sweating and nothing in the air smelled like food.
I badged through security with the visitor pass Trisha had arranged and smiled at the receptionist, who clearly recognized me from the internet and was trying very hard to act normal about it.
I headed for the private elevators as instructed and caught my reflection in the polished doors while I waited. The dress Christopher had bought me. The heels that were actively plotting my death. The leather lunch bag that had braised chicken and roasted vegetables.
The elevator arrived. I stepped in and pressed the button for the executive floor. The doors started to close.
A hand caught them.
Manicured nails. Gold bracelet. The doors reopened and a woman stepped inside.
Esmeralda Vale.
Our eyes met. Hers narrowed. Mine, I’m sure, went wide, because my poker face was and always had been nonexistent, and the sight of Christopher’s stepmother in a confined metal box thirty floors above the ground was not something I’d emotionally prepared for this morning.
She looked at me the way she’d looked at me in the courthouse. Like I was an obstacle she was measuring for removal.
“Mrs. Vale.” She said it the way you’d say a word in a language you didn’t respect. “How lovely. Visiting your husband at work?”
“I am.”
“How domestic.” She pressed the button for her floor.
The doors closed. We were alone in a metal box rising through a building that bore her dead husband’s name, and I could feel the confrontation coming the way you feel a storm in the air before the first drop falls.
“Tell me, does he have you on a schedule? Public appearances on Tuesdays, office visits on Thursdays? I imagine the whole arrangement runs like clockwork.”
I looked at her. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” She turned to face me fully.
Her eyes were dark and sharp with resentment.
“This marriage is a performance. Christopher has never loved anyone in his life except one woman, and he loved her like a fool, and she proved what everyone already knew, that Christopher Vale is not the kind of man people stay for.”
I didn’t know who she was talking about. The curiosity sure did scratch my heart, but I kept my face neutral because Esmeralda was watching me the way a predator watches something it has already decided to eat.
“You seem to have a lot of opinions about a marriage you’re not part of,” I said.
“I have opinions about a fraud being committed under the Vale name. A name my husband built. A name that means something to people who actually cared about him.”
“A name Christopher also carries. Whether you like it or not.”
Her eyes narrowed. “He carries it like a costume. He puts it on when it suits him and takes it off when something better comes along. That’s what actors do, dear. They pretend.”
“And what do stepmothers do? The ones who lock children out of their own family and call it parenting?”
The air in the elevator went cold. I’d gone further than I intended. But something about this woman, the way she talked about Christopher like he was a stain she’d spent years trying to scrub off the family name, lit a fire in me that I didn’t know was there until it was already burning.
“No? Stop creating your own narratives.” She recovered fast, straightening her shoulders. “But your fake performance has evidential proof. I’ve seen the photos. Very well staged. I was married to a man who staged his entire life, and I know what performance looks like.”
The elevator hummed between floors. My pulse was loud in my ears. I thought about walking away, being the bigger person, all the things reasonable people do.
But I was not feeling reasonable.
“I respect my elders,” I said. “I was raised to. Even the ones who didn’t deserve it.” I met her eyes and held them. “But I will not stand here and listen to you slander my husband.”
“Your husband destroyed—”
“My husband is doing his best to lead a company that was dropped on him by a family that never gave him anything except reasons to leave. He didn’t ask for this.
He didn’t want it. He took it because his grandmother asked and because the alternative was letting people like you tear it apart.
” I was gripping the lunch bag so hard the leather was creasing under my fingers.
“So you can question his methods. You can question his image. But you do not get to question his character in front of me.”
Esmeralda stared at me. For the first time since I’d met her, her composure looked less than perfect. Dented.
The elevator doors opened on her floor.
She stepped out and turned, looking at me one more time with an expression I couldn’t read and didn’t want to.
“You’re either very brave or very stupid,” she said.
“I’ve been both,” I said. “The brave parts worked out better.”
The doors closed between us. I exhaled so hard my lungs burned.
My hands were shaking. So was the rest of me. I stood in the elevator and replayed what I’d just said to Christopher Vale’s stepmother and thought, very clearly, Torres, what did you just do?
The doors opened on the executive floor and Trisha was standing there like she’d been waiting for a delivery.
“You look pale,” she said. “What happened?”
“I ran into Esmeralda in the elevator.”
Trisha’s eyes went wide. “And?”
“And I may have told her she doesn’t get to question Christopher’s character in front of me.”
Trisha stared at me for two full seconds. Then her face split into a grin so wide it changed the shape of her entire head.
“You said that to her? I love you,” she said. “I actually love you. You’re my favorite person in this building and know that I also have myself included in that ranking.”
She was wearing her blazer-over-graphic-tee uniform. Today’s tee read “I SURVIVED ANOTHER MEETING THAT COULD’VE BEEN AN EMAIL.” I wonder where she gets them.
She walked me through the executive floor with the running commentary of a tour guide who’d been waiting years for an audience. She pointed out Paul Hargrove’s office, where he had a photo of himself shaking hands with three different presidents and none of his children.
She pointed out the break room, where the coffee machine had been broken for two weeks because everyone was afraid to submit a maintenance request.
“In a billion-dollar company,” she said. “Adults. Afraid of a form.”
Christopher’s office sat at the end of the floor, a large, minimal space with glass walls and city views, designed rather than lived in. He was on the phone when we arrived, jacket off, sleeves rolled to his forearms, standing behind his desk with one hand in his pocket.
He saw me through the glass. His eyes found mine and he ended the call. Trisha set the lunch bag on his desk, said “Your wife brought food, you’re welcome, I’m leaving,” and walked out without looking back.
We were alone.
I stood in his office, suddenly awkward, like I’d stepped into a version of him I hadn’t been invited to see.
The CEO version. The one who ran meetings, signed contracts, and made decisions that affected thousands of people.
He looked different here, sharper and more in control, more like the man the world saw and less like the one who slept on a closet floor.
He gestured to the chair across from his desk. I sat. He opened the lunch bag and paused as he saw the sticky note with the smiley faces. The corner of his mouth pulled in that almost-smile he always gave me.
We ate together in his office, with the city spread out below the windows and the muted ring of phones a few doors down. It was strange and quiet and oddly intimate, sharing a meal in the middle of his workday like this was something we did, like we were people who ate lunch together on purpose.
“This is good,” he said, like he was making a professional assessment. “The glaze. What’s in it?”
“Honey, soy, ginger, and a little bit of heat.”
“What kind of heat?”
“Gochujang. Korean chili paste.”
“I know what gochujang is.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“I lived in Seoul for three months shooting a film. I know my way around a Korean kitchen.”
“You know your way around a Korean kitchen.”
“I know my way around several kitchens. I just can’t cook in any of them.”
I laughed, because he looked pleased with himself.