Chapter 3 #2
"My name is Nico Voss," he said. "And I would rather you did not stand in the street asking that question."
"That was not an answer."
His mouth moved slightly. Maybe it was the beginning of a smile. "You will get along with my brother."
"Did he send you?"
"He asked me to make sure no one followed you."
"I did not ask him to."
"I know."
"You are following me."
"That is different."
"How?"
"I am not going to explain operational security to you in traffic."
I bent toward the open window. "I am not a task on your list, Nico. Tell your brother that if he wants me to sign anything, he can stop treating me like I have already signed it."
Nico's expression sobered. "I will tell him."
"Good."
I turned away.
"Elena," he said.
I looked back.
"Your father has a meeting at noon. Do not let him go alone."
The cold seemed to sharpen.
"With who?"
"That is what we are trying to find out."
I called my father four times before he answered. He was at his office, he said. He had nothing planned. He sounded insulted that I would ask.
By the time I reached Montrose Avenue, his office door was open, the lights were on, and the desk chair was empty.
A single espresso cup sat beside his ledger books. It was still warm.
On top of the nearest file was a white envelope with my name written across it.
ELENA.
Inside was a folded sheet of paper.
Your father has until tonight to remember what he did with it.
There was no signature.
There did not need to be.
By the time I reached Voss Tower, I had called three lawyers and trusted none of them.
The first had been recommended by one of Sebastian's father's associates. He spoke in a smooth, expensive voice about reputational management and asked whether there were journalists involved before he asked whether my father was safe. I ended the call.
The second was a woman from a nonprofit legal clinic who told me, gently, that eight million dollars and a family like the Vosses were beyond her office's reach.
She gave me the number of a litigation firm and wished me luck as though luck was something a person could carry into a building like Voss Tower.
The third was a former client’s divorce attorney named Sarah Fenwick. She was blunt, overbooked, and entirely unimpressed by my panic.
"Do not sign anything without independent counsel," she said. "Do not meet anyone alone. Do not let them tell you a family problem cannot be reviewed by an outside lawyer. And if you are being pressured into a marriage contract, you need a criminal lawyer as well as a family lawyer."
"It is not exactly pressure," I said.
She was silent for a beat.
"Miss Marchetti, if a man has leverage over your father's life, your reputation, and your physical safety, you do not need to call it pressure for it to be pressure."
The sentence sat in my ear long after I ended the call.
Nico drove me to Voss Tower without speaking much. His car smelled faintly of leather and peppermint. I kept glancing at the reflection of the black SUV behind us, trying to decide whether it belonged to Damian or D'Angelo.
"How long have you worked for your brother?" I asked.
Nico's eyes stayed on the road. "All my life, depending on your definition of work."
"That is not an answer."
"You are going to say that every time someone disappoints you, aren't you?"
"Probably."
He looked at me in the rearview mirror. "I am his brother. I work with him. I do not work for him."
"Is that important?"
"Very. Damian forgets the difference sometimes."
The honesty made me study him. Nico had the same dark hair as Damian, but where Damian carried silence like a weapon, Nico wore his more easily. There was humor in him. It did not make him less dangerous. It made him harder to read.
"Does he always get what he wants?" I asked.
Nico's hands tightened once on the wheel.
"No," he said. "That is why he is so bad at wanting things."
We stopped at a red light. A pedestrian crossed in front of us carrying a bouquet wrapped in brown paper. For a moment, I thought of the wedding I had planned the night before. Cassandra's face when she walked down the aisle. The certainty I had offered her because I believed certainty was a gift.
"Does he hurt people?" I asked.
Nico looked at me again. This time he did not answer immediately.
"He has," he said. "Not casually. Not without reason. But do not ask me to tell you he is harmless. He is not."
The car began moving.
"Will he hurt me?"
Nico's expression changed. The humor disappeared.
"No," he said. "Not if he understands what hurting you means."
It was not comfort. It was perhaps the closest thing to truth I had been offered all day.
At Voss Tower, I stood in the lobby beneath a chandelier made of hanging glass rods. The receptionist greeted me by name before I had introduced myself. That should have frightened me. Instead it made me tired.
A woman in a gray suit approached with a tablet in her hands.
"Mrs. Fenwick called," she said. "Mr. Voss authorized a private room for you to speak with her by video, if you would like."
I looked at her. "He authorized it?"
"He was informed that you requested independent counsel."
Of course he was informed. Nothing happened in this building without crossing his desk.
"Did he listen to the call?"
The woman looked appalled. "No."
"How do I know that?"
"You do not," she said. "But the room has no recording devices. You may inspect it yourself."
The answer was better than I expected. I hated that I noticed.
The private room held a small table, two chairs, a screen, and a tray of water I did not touch. Sarah Fenwick appeared on the screen ten minutes later. She had steel-gray hair and a bookshelf behind her that looked as though it had been used rather than styled.
"All right," she said. "Tell me exactly what you were offered."
I did.
When I finished, she rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"The agreement itself could be made legally defensible if the terms are fair, you have counsel, and you are not signing under explicit threat. But I am more concerned about the surrounding facts. Your father is missing?"
"He was taken. They found him."
"By the Voss family."
"Yes."
"And now they are asking you to marry the heir."
"Yes."
She looked at me for a long moment through the screen.
"What do you want?"
No one had asked me that all day. Not really. Everyone had asked what I would do, what I could afford, what I was willing to risk. Want was a different question.
"I want my father alive," I said. "I want the people threatening us to stop. I want my business not to become a joke. I want my life back."
"You cannot have the last one exactly as it was," she said. "Not once a situation like this has started. But you can insist on choices. If you decide to sign, the agreement should be yours as much as his."
I looked through the glass wall toward the city. Damian's office occupied the top floors of the building. Somewhere above me, he was deciding how to find my father. Somewhere below, people were going about ordinary jobs while I sat in a room trying to turn a marriage into a legal boundary.
"Can you stay on the call while I negotiate?" I asked.
Sarah nodded. "I can."
When the assistant brought me to the underground security room, I did not feel brave. I felt angry enough that fear had stopped being useful.
Damian stood near the wall of monitors. He turned when I entered. His face did not change when he saw the tablet in my hand, but I knew he understood what it meant.
"My attorney is listening," I said.
"Good."
"You do not get to tell me good as though you approved it."
His gaze held mine. "You are right."
I stared at him.
Nico made a sound from somewhere near the door that could have been a cough or a laugh.
"I am not signing anything until my father is found," I said.
"Understood."
"And if I decide to sign after that, I choose the terms."
"Understood."
"And I will not be grateful to you for agreeing."
Something in his expression shifted. Not annoyance. Something closer to acceptance.
"Understood," he said again.
I nodded, though my hands were trembling around the tablet.
Then his phone rang.
The warehouse sat on the south side of the river, behind a line of vacant freight sheds that had been scheduled for demolition twice and survived both attempts. Nico drove with the windows up and the doors locked. I sat in the backseat between Marcus and a medical bag I did not want to examine.
No one had asked whether I wanted to come. That was not the same as no one telling me to stay behind. Damian had tried. I had ignored him. The difference mattered to me, even if it would not have mattered to anyone else in the car.
“Your father may not be there,” Marcus said after we had been silent too long.
“I know.”
“He may be there, but he may not be able to leave immediately.”
“I know.”
His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. Marcus was broad-shouldered, calm, and perhaps forty. He had the steady manner of a man who had learned that panic spread faster than blood. There was a faint scar at his hairline and a wedding ring on his left hand.
“You do not have to prove anything tonight,” he said.
I looked out at the dark industrial blocks sliding past. “I am not trying to prove anything.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
The question sat in the car with us.
I could have said I wanted to save my father.
That was true, but it was not enough. I wanted to see where the decisions were being made.
I wanted to know whether Damian Voss’s promises had weight when there was no audience.
I wanted, in some humiliating way, to avoid sitting in my apartment while men decided which risks were acceptable for me.
“I am trying not to disappear,” I said.
Marcus looked away first.
When we reached the warehouse district, Damian’s SUV was already parked behind a loading bay.
He stood beneath a broken security light in a dark coat, speaking into an earpiece.
Even from the car, I saw the moment he noticed me.
His shoulders went rigid. The voice in his ear kept talking. He did not answer it.