20. Chapter 20
Isla
Iam looking at a notification that my father called Martin Frey within four minutes of receiving the trust challenge filing when Matt puts his phone down and looks at me.
"You need to come back to the loft," he says. "Tonight."
"No. I'm fine here."
"Frey still has a key. And he told you he'd been trying to get you alone for a while, and it sounds like that was one of the least terrifying things he said." He looks at me. "I'm not leaving you here."
"You pulled the contract. You're not exactly on the clock anymore."
"Isla."
"I have a system. I know my exits. I'll keep the—"
"Pack a bag," he says. "Come back to the loft. Or I'm standing watch in your hallway until he's in custody, and I'll sleep when this is over. Your choice."
I look at him. He means it. He is looking at me with the flat, immovable patience of a man who has already decided this conversation has one outcome and is simply waiting for me to arrive at it.
"You're very annoying," I say, but I might be smiling a little.
"I know."
I go pack a bag.
We move everything up by forty-eight hours.
The false schedule goes into my digital calendar Thursday morning — a private walk-through of the Garner Gallery on Friday evening at seven, ostensibly to preview a charity auction installation I have been loosely attached to for months.
The location is Matt's: one primary entrance, two service exits, controlled sightlines, and enough open space inside for Drake's team to work without being visible.
Cole confirms within the hour that the calendar entry is visible in the family office shared system, which Frey can access through the same credentials he has been using for eleven years.
We tell no one else except Drake and Detective Ramirez, who confirms she has been waiting for exactly this.
"How long?" Matt asks her, on speaker.
"Since you gave me the communication thread," she says. "That was enough for a warrant. I've been waiting for something that would put him in a location we control."
"Friday at seven," Matt says.
"I'll have two plainclothes at the gallery by six," she says. "Don't be late."
She hangs up. Matt looks at me.
"Don't be late," I say.
"It's your event," he says.
"It is," I say. "I'm going to wear something fabulous."
While we wait for confirmation that Frey has seen the calendar entry, there is a quiet hour in my apartment that I was not expecting.
"How are you doing? With all this."
He asks it the way he does most things — directly, without preamble, in the tone of someone who actually wants the answer — and I look at him across my kitchen and I think about all the ways I could answer that and all the ways I would have answered it two weeks ago, which is mostly deflection and a joke, and all the ways I could answer it now.
"Better than I have a right to be," I say. "I've been thinking about why you did it. Not the logic of it — I understood the logic immediately. The other part. That you were scared. Not for yourself, for him. And that's — I don't have a version of that where I'm angry at you."
He looks at me. "You had every right to be angry."
"I was angry," I say. "Past tense. Then I thought about what it would feel like to have someone use the person you love most as a lever, and I stopped being angry and started being glad Elias was upstate."
He looks at me. "I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I should have told you what I was going to do instead of just doing it. I should have given you the chance to—" He stops. "You would have understood."
"I would have," I say. "I did."
"I know." He looks at the counter. "I'm used to making calls alone. I'm working on that."
I look at him. Matthew Beckett, who arrived at my door yesterday with four hours of annotated dossier and a folder he could have emailed, telling me he is working on something.
I file this alongside the tea that was already made and the right kind, alongside the coffee order he knew without asking, alongside eleven days of watching him note things without saying he was noticing them.
He reaches across the kitchen island and takes my hand. He holds it, just that, no commentary, no explanation. I look at our hands and I think about all the things that have happened in the last three weeks that I did not expect, and I let myself sit with it.
It is enough for right now.
Conrad calls Thursday afternoon. He asks if we can meet. He does not say why, which tells me everything.
I pick a coffee shop in Midtown that he would never choose himself — small, no reservations, nowhere to put an entourage. He arrives on time, which he always does, and he looks at the place with the expression of a man who has decided not to have opinions about the seating.
He sits across from me. He does not look around the way he usually does — assessing, cataloguing, noting what I have chosen and what it says about me.
He just sits, and he looks at me, and he drops the management entirely.
It is the first time I have seen him do this and I don't know what to do with it, so I wait.
"I knew about the personal dimension," he says.
"Approximately six months ago, Frey told me his interest in you had grown beyond the professional scope.
I assessed the situation and determined that Beckett's presence was sufficient protection and that disclosure would cause you to terminate the arrangement and remove yourself from coverage. "
"You've already said all this."
"I'm saying it again because there's a part I didn't say the first time.
" He looks at the window. The city outside is as indifferent as always.
"I was afraid of what you would think of me.
I brought Frey into this house. I vetted him, I trusted him, I gave him keys and access and eleven years of proximity to you, and whatever he has done with that access is something I have to live with.
I didn't want to have that conversation with you because I didn't know how to be the person who had made that mistake and still be your father. "
I look at him. Conrad Wrenwood, who has been the most prepared person in every room I have ever shared with him, is sitting in my living room looking at my window and telling me he did not know how.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For all of it. The Harrow Group. The trust document. The way I have always—" He stops. The sentence does not get finished. I don't think he even knows how to finish it. "I know I have not been an easy father to have."
I hold that for a long moment. I think about the breakfast table and the quarterly reports and the way he has always loved the foundation even when he was using it as a lever.
I think about the key Frey had and where it came from and what it means to be sorry for something you cannot take back.
I do not know what to do with Conrad's apology yet, and I am not going to pretend that I do.
Him saying sorry is not the same as things being different, and we both know that.
But he is here. Without a folder. Without an agenda. That is also not nothing.
"Go home," I say. "Let's finish what we started. Then we'll talk."
He nods. He stands. It is hope. Small and careful and not quite sure of itself.
"Okay," he says. At the door he pauses and looks back at me with an expression that is unfamiliar enough that it takes me a moment to place.
I stay at the table and watch him walk down the street through the window. I don't leave until he's disappeared around the corner.
Friday morning Matt and I are back at my apartment to run the final coverage logistics.
We go through the plan once, then twice, and when there is nothing left to check he makes coffee — using my machine correctly, which he has apparently figured out at some point and not mentioned — and we stand in my kitchen in the early light and we do not talk about tomorrow.
"Elias has a school project," Matt says. "Ecosystems. He needs a diorama."
"Fun."
"He wants to use a shoe box."
"For what ecosystem?"
"Wetland."
I consider this. "A shoe box can work for a wetland."
"That's what I said."
"You need to paint it though. At minimum."
"He'll paint it green."
"Green sounds right for a wetland."
"He'll paint the whole thing green. The water, the animals, everything."
"Honestly?" I say. "That's fine."
He looks at me. "You have very low standards for dioramas."
"He's seven. I have realistic ones."
I top up my coffee. He declines when I offer him the pot, which means his is still warm, which means he made it more recently than I thought.
"Are you moving your soup kitchen shift?" he asks.
"No."
"Isla—"
"Frey will be in custody by the end of the day. I'm not reorganizing my life around him any more than I already have."
He looks at me for a moment. Then: "Okay."
I look at him. "Did you just agree with me without arguing?"
"I'm working on it."
I pick up my coffee. He picks up his. Another moment of quiet, the comfortable kind that has snuck up on us somewhere in the last few weeks without announcing itself.
"Mine is better," I say.
"I know," he says.
"You're not going to argue that either?"
"Some arguments aren't worth having."
I think: this is what it would be like. Just this. The ecosystem diorama and the coffee debate and the early light in my kitchen and someone who shows up with an annotated folder instead of sending it through an assistant.
He kisses me once, unhurried, against the counter. Then he steps back.
"I guess I should get my stuff for tonight so we can get back to the loft." I say.
"Or we could stay." Matt says. He holds up a set of new keys. "I had Drake change the locks."
"Now why didn't we think of that sooner?" I can't fight the smile on my face.
"Well, I still don't love the sightlines, but we'll keep the blinds closed. It's just one day." Matt shrugs. "And you tossed and turned all night. We both need a good nap if we're going to be at our best later."
"Honestly? That sounds amazing," I say.
I don't remember falling asleep, but I know I drift within minutes.