4. Knox #2
“I’m seeing someone, and I’m taking it seriously.” It’s the truth, at least to an extent. “No gifts, no grand gestures, none of the throwing money around that usually does my talking for me. I haven’t even taken her to bed. By my own dismal standards, I’m practically a saint.”
“You know that isn’t my point, Knox.” A tiredness moves under the words. “I want you to have permanence. A real relationship, someone to stand by you. I want you to finally grow into the man I know you can be.” She studies me. “Is she that? Is it real?”
And there it is, the question I can’t answer, because I’m still figuring it out myself.
Not that I tell her any of it. There’s a thing I’ve been waiting on for weeks now, a quiet confirmation about the woman she’s asking me to build a forever with, and some animal part of me already knows what it’s going to say.
So I keep my face easy and my hands loose, and let her read the silence as me being difficult.
“I’m trying,” I say, and it comes quieter than I mean it to, the closest thing to honesty I can manage.
She lets me leave it there. Then she reaches up and lightly taps my cheek twice. The gesture she’s used my whole life to mean both good boy and don’t push your luck, gathering herself to stand.
“I’d like to meet her soon. Whoever she turns out to be.
” There’s a knowing in it, the sense that she isn’t betting on the current one lasting any more than I am.
“The girl on your arm today or the one after her, I don’t much care.
I only want to see you across a table from a woman who matters to you before I’m too old to make it to the table. ”
I sigh, the fight gone out of me where she’s concerned. “I’ll see what I can do about it.”
“That’s all I’ve ever asked.” She pauses, looking at me the way she did when I was a child. “I’m not trying to cage you, Knox. One day, I hope you understand.”
“Goodbye, Mother. Drive your tank home safely.”
“Behave.” But there’s warmth under the scolding as she goes, and I watch her cross the lobby, the warmth she leaves goes with her.
My smile follows after.
I feel it drain off my face by the time I reach my office, the easy thing I wear for everyone else. Especially the rooms full of people who find me charming and harmless, exactly as shallow as I let them believe.
The door clicks shut behind me, and I’m alone. I unbutton the collar of my shirt, letting myself finally breathe.
Because my mother, bringing up our deal, reminded me of the one thing I’d nearly let a good morning paper over.
Blythe.
I picked her for simple reasons. Beautiful, polished, average background, easy to present and easier to forget. Appropriate, by every measure that’s supposed to matter.
She was supposed to be simple.
She wasn’t.
The file I asked for three weeks ago, the one I’ve been circling since a set of my own numbers turned up somewhere they had no business being, almost certainly landed on my desk this morning while I was out playing with cars.
And I already know, in the place behind my playful mask, what it’s going to confirm.
There’s exactly one thing in this world I don’t forgive.
Not inadequacy, or greed, or ambition.
Betrayal.
That, I make people regret.
I cross to the desk and pick up the file, and I pour myself a glass of the red I keep for closings while I read.
It’s all here. Where the leak started and where it traveled, hand to hand, until it landed exactly where I suspected. In Langford’s lap, his people suddenly bidding against me with numbers that looked a great deal like my own.
My work would have cratered if I hadn’t suspected weeks back. I built the trap myself and let her walk into it without ever knowing it had teeth.
Her. Because every line in this file, every date and every handoff, runs back to the same source, the one person I let close enough to reach what she reached. There’s no reading around it.
It seems my darling girlfriend has been a busy little thief.
My jaw tightens around the rim of the glass.
I knew. Of course I knew, some part of me has known since the first number went missing, but knowing a thing and reading it confirmed in plain ink are two different animals, and the second one has a way of turning the blood cold.
“So much for serious relationships,” I mutter into the wine, and the dark humor of it doesn’t quite land, even on me.
I toss the file back onto the desk, where it lands with a slap that’s more satisfying than it has any right to be, and drop into my chair, letting it rock back under me.
The polish is gone now. Here, alone, where no one’s buying the charming version. What’s left is the part of me that’s already deciding what she’s going to lose for this.
Digging my phone out of my pocket, I prop my feet on the desk, ankles crossed.
It’s been turned off since this morning.
No calls, no noise, nothing to drag me out of the business deal.
I thumb it on, half-expecting the usual flood, ready to start making the calls that will turn this file into something Blythe Delaney feels.
Then a notification sits at the top of the screen. A number I don’t have saved.
My thumb stops over it.
Unknown Number: Mr. Beaufort. You once offered to do business with me. Unknown Number: I find myself with something I think you’ll want very much.
My forehead creases. I read it twice and come up with nothing, because I’ve offered to do business with half this city and meant it with almost none of them, scattering the line at parties and dinners.
So I do the simple thing and type back.
: Who’s this?
It takes a couple of minutes. I sip the wine and let it, half my mind already back on the file, on Blythe, on the calls I’ll make tomorrow. Then the phone pings again in my hand, and the answer is two words.
Unknown Number: Adriana Rosewood.
I pause, one eyebrow climbs on its own.
Oh, I remember now.
There was a family function, years ago. The perfect Rosewood daughter, kept folded in the corner the way you keep good silver. What I remember most isn’t the number I pressed into her phone.
It’s her eyes.
She was watching, taking the measure of every man in the room and keeping the verdict to herself. I’ve crossed paths with her a handful of times since, and it’s always there, the way she carries herself with the volume turned down on purpose.
All that intelligence, deliberately held back.
That night, she’d looked at me as though I were a touch presumptuous. She had simply taken her phone back and never contacted me.
Until now.
Interesting, huh.
The boredom I’ve carried around all day lifts a clean inch off my chest. A woman like Adriana Rosewood doesn’t send a message on a whim. We’ve moved in the same circles for years and never once had a reason to speak, two people built about as differently as two people can be.
And there’s also the timing. Langford’s wife, reaching out the same day I tie him to my girlfriend.
Surely, that can’t be a coincidence.
The dark thing in my chest, the one already three moves into ruining people who cross me, lifts its head and turns toward her instead. I chuckle, low, and feel the smirk pull at my mouth before I’ve decided to let it.
Adriana Jade Rosewood, having what I want?
Well. I’ll see about that.