6. Nolan
SIX
NOLAN
"The Vanguard respects what you've built, gentlemen. We're here to preserve it."
Declan's voice filled the conference room. His jacket was buttoned. His hands were folded on the table. The seven men across from us leaned toward him, as people did when Declan spoke.
Julian sat to his right, laptop open, his pen tapping his notebook in an irregular rhythm. His eyes moved between the screen and the faces across the table.
I glanced at the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) — mid 50s, ruddy-faced — his phone turned face down. He kept checking it, thumb drifting toward it, then pulling back, like a man touching a bruise to check if it still hurts.
The chairman, Prescott, adjusted his left cufflink. Then his right. Then his left again. His silver hair was perfect. His Cartier caught the light. A bead of sweat sat at his temple.
"We appreciate the Vanguard's interest, Mr. Hale," Prescott said. He straightened his tie. "But the terms you've proposed would effectively remove our entire leadership team, and frankly, we find that — "
"Mr. Prescott." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't need to. Every head turned. "Your consulting expenses for the last fiscal year totaled $14,200,000. 61% went to Hargreave & Associates." I let the name sit. "Owned by your brother-in-law."
Prescott's hand froze on his cufflink.
"The Gramercy renovation," I continued. "Billed at $23,000,000.
The contractor's actual invoice was 14.8.
The difference was routed through a subsidiary with no employees, no office, and a P.O.
box in Delaware." I opened the folder in front of me and set the page on the table.
"The subsidiary is controlled by two members of this board. "
I didn't name them. The thin man in the gray suit and glasses at the far end pushed his chair back 3 in. from the table. The one beside him developed a sudden interest in his pen.
"The Vanguard is offering a restructuring package that preserves the brand, retains key operational staff, and injects the capital your properties need." I closed the folder. "The alternative is that these documents reach the Wall Street Journal by Friday."
Prescott glanced at the folder, then Declan, then me. His jaw worked. His cufflinks went still.
"We'll need an hour to confer with our counsel," he said.
Declan smiled. "Take your time."
They took eleven minutes.
The elevator doors closed behind us. Julian exhaled. "Eleven minutes. That's a record."
Declan was already on his phone, scrolling through texts. A grin pulled at his mouth — something Thea sent. He typed back with one thumb. "I've got to pick up Lena. The nanny has an appointment, and Thea's at the nonprofit." He pocketed the phone and loosened his tie. "Daddy duty."
Julian shrugged his jacket on. "I have a thing."
Declan raised an eyebrow. "When will you ever be straightforward, Cross?"
Julian winked, raised two fingers in a salute, and split toward the east exit. Declan clapped my shoulder once, checked his phone again, and headed for the parking garage.
I stood on the sidewalk. The cold air pressed against my face. Two men walking away from me — one toward a family, one toward pleasure. I turned toward my car. The walk was four blocks. The street was busy and unremarkable.
I saw her at the end of the second block.
Across the street, a woman with short natural hair in a muted olive coat buttoned to her chin cradled a brown paper grocery bag — green leafy tops poking out. She walked head down, steps measured, stride steady from a routine she'd built alone, day by day.
My feet stopped. The city kept moving around me with taxis, pedestrians, and a delivery truck backing into an alley. I stood on the sidewalk with my hands at my sides and my chest caving in.
Adira.
She looked healthy. That was the first thing.
Healthy in a way I hadn't seen in years — her face fuller, her posture straighter, her skin clear.
She'd cut her hair shorter than I remembered.
It suited her. She looked like a woman who had built a small, deliberate, ordinary life of grocery bags, leafy greens, and Tuesday afternoon sidewalks.
A life that didn't include me.
She looked up. Our eyes met across the street. Two lanes of traffic, a painted median, and two years of silence between us. Recognition hit her face — I saw it land and saw her body go rigid for half a second. She knew me instantly.
She adjusted the grocery bag, shifting it higher in her arms before looking away.
She kept walking.
My right foot moved forward. The instinct was so deep it bypassed thought — cross the street, call her name, and close the distance. I could reach her in ten seconds. Eight if I ran. My hand was already rising, my mouth already forming the first syllable of her name.
"Nolan?"
A hand on my shoulder. I turned.
Soleil. Right there on the sidewalk, a foot from me, her curls loose around her face. A canvas tote over her shoulder, a smear of alizarin crimson on her index finger. She smiled wide and bright, her whole face open. She was happy to see me. She had no idea what she'd just walked into.
"I was on my way to the supply store," she said, squeezing my arm. "What are the chances?"
I looked past her down the street. Adira was at the corner, her olive coat slipping between two pedestrians. She didn't turn, just rounded the building and vanished.
Gone.
"Hey." Soleil's hand was still on my arm. Her smile had faded. Her head tilted, her eyes narrowing as she studied my face. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
She didn't believe me. It was there in her furrowed brows, in the tightening of her fingers on my sleeve.
She looked in the direction I'd been staring.
The corner was empty now. A taxi rolled through the intersection.
A man walked a dog past the spot where my sister had been standing five seconds ago.
"Come on." Soleil took my hand and pulled. "There's a café on the next block. You look like you need to sit down."
I didn't want to sit down. I wanted to cross the street and chase a sibling who didn't want to be chased. But Soleil's hand was warm around mine, and she was already walking. My feet followed.
The café was small, bright, with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu.
Soleil ushered me to a table beside the window, the very one facing the direction where Adira had disappeared.
She noticed me looking. She didn't comment.
She went to the counter and came back with two cups. Black for me. She'd remembered.
She settled across from me, her gaze steady but not prying. No questions about what had happened, no gentle prods to spill it all. Instead, she cradled her steaming cup in both hands and began to speak.
"So this artist submitted her portfolio yesterday. Ceramics, but not the pretty kind. They look like buildings mid-collapse. Like someone froze the exact moment a structure fails." She took a sip. "Margaux thinks they're depressing. I think they're honest."
My eyes still fixed on the window, tracing the exact spot where Adira’s coat had fluttered one last time.
"The glazing technique is stunning," Soleil went on. "She builds up layers just like Rafael applies his pigments — the first color shows through the final surface. One standout is a slender pot with a crack along its side, repaired using gold. Reminds me of kintsugi. Ever heard of it?"
"Japanese repair method," I said. My voice sounded far away. "Gold in the broken places."
"Right." She smiled. "So the crack becomes the most beautiful part." She was leaning forward, her elbows on the table, her eyes bright. "I'm thinking of offering her a show. Maybe spring. What do you think?"
"Sounds good."
She tilted her head. The smile dimmed. She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. Her fingers were warm from the coffee cup. Her thumb pressed against my knuckle.
I glanced at her palm, then her face. In that instant, the two women overlapped — the one who'd strode off on a Brooklyn avenue and the one across the café table, who'd scanned my features and wouldn't abandon me to my inner shadows.
The sister who sent back my money every month, and the woman who tracked me down at my office because I didn't call for three days.
I pulled my hand back.
Soleil's fingers curled on the empty table. Her lips pressed together. She didn't flinch, but something in her eyes clicked — a question forming, the beginning of hurt.
I stood up. "I have to go."
Her mouth opened. I was already reaching for my jacket on the back of the chair.
"Nolan — "
"I'll call you."
I walked out. The door swung shut behind me. Through the glass, I could see her sitting at the table with two cups and an empty chair, her hand still on the surface where mine had been. She was watching me leave. Her expression wasn't angry. It was worse than angry. It was patient.
The dark, quiet apartment swallowed me as always, fridge humming softly. I couldn't cook — I kept seeing my sister's grocery bag, the greens spilling over the top, cradled against her hip like a child. Proof of normal life that I tried buying back with monthly transfers she always returned.
I stood in the hallway outside my bedroom. The door at the end of the hall was closed. Behind it, a room I didn't use for sleeping. I entered the code into the keypad and pushed the door open.
The room was dark except for the glow of three monitors.
I sat down, and the screens came alive. Lattimore Holdings.
The architecture I'd been building for fifteen years — every subsidiary mapped, every board member profiled, every shell company traced and documented.
Hugh Lattimore's name at the center, connected to everything by lines I'd drawn myself, one thread at a time.
I stared at it. The system I'd built because a twenty-two-year-old kid held his sister in a hospital room while she bled out a future the Lattimore family decided she didn't deserve.
The vow I made that night — standing in the corridor with her blood on my shirt, watching the door close on the only person who'd ever believed he was more than what he could provide.
She walked past me today. She looked at me and chose to keep walking. I, the one she needed, had merged with the weapon I made, and that weapon could never hold her like I could.
The grief hardened. It always hardened. That was what grief did when you fed it purpose instead of letting it breathe. It calcified. It became structured. It became the room I was sitting in.
I picked up my phone. The screen lit up. Soleil's contact — the sun emoji was still there, still bright, and still absurd.
Tomorrow I'd call her. I'd be warm again, present again, and be the version of myself she was falling for. I'd apologize for walking out of the café. She'd forgive me because that was who she was — open, trusting, a woman who gave second chances to people who hadn't earned them.
Tomorrow, the plan continued.
Tomorrow, the Lattimores.