37. ADRIAN
ADRIAN
I can feel the bass vibrating through the floor, through the furniture, up into my chest. I used to like the way Vanta carries sound. The way that the VIP catches the vibration without drowning in it, the insulation of being above everything while still feeling the same current.
I don't like it now.
"What do you mean Charlotte was driving the car?" I feel my blood go icy when William tell us what his sister confided to him this afternoon.
I stand up. Sit back down.
My stomach is wrong.
The leather of the VIP seating feels wrong under my hands.
I look around the section like it might be different than it was minutes ago.
Same low lighting. Same clean surfaces. The bottle of whisky between us, condensation starting to form on the glass from the ice.
Through the floor below I can hear the crowd, the music that has been playing since we arrived, and underneath it a burst of laughter, a woman, bright and free, a sound that belongs to a completely different night.
I want it to stop.
All of it. The laughing and the bass. The particular warmth of this room that I know too well, that I have spent a hundred evenings in and that now feels like it's pressing in on all sides at once. Below us, someone pops a bottle. Cheers. More laughter. The whole building going on like normal.
People down there are having the best night of their week while up here the air is claustrophobic. William is not moving, Carter has his eyes focused on a point ahead of him and I am trying to keep my thinking organized and failing at it.
I look for the logic and it's not there. I try again. Still not there. The part of my brain that builds cases is just blank.
I keep trying. Fact: Charlotte was driving. Fact: Sienna was not. Implication: every action we took was based on wrong information. And beyond that I just stop. The implication won't process. The consequences are too monumental for me to consider them.
I look at William.
He's sitting across the low table with his elbows on his knees and his head down, fingers locked behind his neck. He hasn't touched the whisky. Neither have I.
I've seen William in a lot of states. Angry, I've seen. Strategic-cold, I've seen.
I have never seen him like this.
The last time anything came close was when we were teenagers. He was 16, had just moved to the house next door, with his kid sister, his broken father, with scars still fresh on his back and his pride shattered.
We weren't friends yet. We became friends slowly, the way people do when they're both trying to survive the same environment without letting it show.
And then one night with cheap beer, on a fire escape, we made our pact.
We would get out of that shitty neighbourhood.
We would be someone important and powerful.
I buried myself in learning how to be a top lawyer. William started boxing, from there bouncing. Then followed where the money moved and built an empire alongside Carter.
Both of us did it the best we could with what life threw at us. Two men who made something from nothing.
I know how he thinks. I know what drives him. I know what triggers him. I thought I knew everything that mattered about him.
I have never seen him look defeated.
He looks defeated right now. Head down. Fingers locked. The weight of it on the back of his neck. And I realize that I don't know what to do with this version of William.
Carter is to my left, glass in his hand clutched so hard I think it might shatter. He is also processing what was just revealed.
One by one the consequences stack.
Charlotte was driving.
Not Sienna.
And I built a legal argument around Sienna's recklessness, documented her instability, and I took that documentation to a judge.
I had a clean narrative. Conrad Cross's daughter, her mother's patterns showing up in her, the near miss with William's sister as evidence of danger. To herself and to others.
I had it structured and I presented it as true because it had been given to me as true. Because William believed it. Because Charlotte stood at the scene of an accident she caused, and said it was Sienna.
I was good at it. I was precise and thorough and I did the work correctly.
I pressured a judge to give a harsher ruling to someone who had done nothing wrong. Using the skills I spent my entire career building.
That's all it took. One person's lie. And we built the rest.
Finally William lifts his head.
Looks me in the eyes and says, “We fucked up.”
And there is nothing there. No emotion. Not in his voice. Not in his eyes. Like he is numb. Like he is resigned.
It makes me furious.
"No." I lean forward. The word comes out too loud and I don't care. "Your sister fucked up! She lied. We made decisions based on your sister's lies."
He goes still. Different still. Something coiling behind it.
"Watch it." Two words. Cold.
"I'm serious, William. She lied to you, while Sienna stood right there —"
He looks at me and I hold it. Neither of us moves. The bass goes on below us. I'm angry and he's in some state that is past anger. We both know that what I'm saying isn't wrong and that's the problem.
The silence between us is running long enough to turn into something else —
"We need to tell Sienna the truth." Carter says. Not loud. In a calm way. Like someone who finally processed the information and has come up to the only possible solution.
"All of it." He looks at me first. Then to William. "And accept whatever may come of it."
I start building the counterargument automatically. The exposure, the damage, what happens if she knows everything. I'm trying to find the angle Carter hasn't considered, and I —
Can't.
The bass thumps. Below us, a cheer.
I pour a glass of whisky. Leave it at the table.
Doesn’t he realize that by telling her the truth we might lose her? I don’t think I can do it.
I don’t want to risk it, so I say the one thing that I know with absolute certainty that is true.
“I love her.”
This is the first time I say it. Even to myself.
"I don't want to lose—" My words come low, like if I say it and complete the sentence I’m manifesting it.
William doesn't move. He's still looking at the table. Something passes across his face that I can't read. Not quite recognition, not quite grief, something between them.
Carter nods. Once. I know he understands me because I can see he feels the same way.
"What future do you think you can build based on lies?" He looks at William. "We've done enough damage to her life already. We can't keep making the same mistake."
"But we did it to help her." I hear myself start. "Okay, she wasn't driving. But still— she was having issues. The drinking, the acting out. Right?"
My voice loses conviction somewhere in the middle.
I try again. "She had a record. There was documented—”
I hear how it sounds. A lawyer running out of arguments, throwing precedents at a case that doesn't support them.
Each line collapses before I can finish it.
The instability narrative, the substance abuse history, the Conrad Cross angle.
I can feel each one thinning as I reach for it, the framework I built from other people's testimony breaking down.
I stop talking.
I recall the moment when William pulled us aside this afternoon saying he needed to talk to us urgently. He couldn’t say it there. It was better if we met later. And most importantly, not to let Sienna know that something was going on.
And I remember that when we told her that tonight we had a work thing and couldn’t be with her she immediately believed. No questions asked. She believed us. She trusted us.
I pick up the glass. And take a generous swallow. I’m going to need it.
"We tell her everything," I say.
Then I look at Carter. "You don't have to be part of it. You weren't involved from the start. There's no reason for this to fall on you."
William looks up. "Yeah. This is on us."
Carter shakes his head. Once.
"I knew everything. And I didn't tell her." A pause. "Not to mention I hired her under false pretenses." He looks at the table. "You know how important her work is to her." And then quieter, "We need to tell her"
Nobody argues.
"When?" William asks
Carter takes a sip. Sets the glass down.
"After the Vale Hotel opening. It’s in three days." He turns the glass once on the table. "We owe it to her. Let her have that. One moment of seeing her work open to the public."
Three days.
And then we're going to tell her.
We all nod in agreement.
And then we all look down.
Shame and dread is weighing our heads down