Chapter 4
“What are the chances?” Renee said, doing a little sidestep on the escalator and leaning forward as though to see the sign better. “That’s your name on that sign.”
I nodded through my confusion. “Yeah. What are the chances?”
Actually, what were the chances?
Distracted, we walked, bags in tow, through the small surge of travelers who’d just emerged from baggage claim and toward the rental counters.
But the man in the black suit did a double take when he spotted me and made it very obvious that he tracked our approach.
My stomach twisted with unease just before he moved directly into my path.
He wasn’t tall, but he had a certain kind of self-possession that made me think he was used to initiating conversations with strangers.
His face was unmemorable except for his teeth, white and even, and the way his eyebrows arched over sunglasses that looked too thick, like maybe they’d been medically prescribed.
“Alison Weston.” It wasn’t a question.
I almost lied, but something about the way he said my name made it clear he wouldn’t buy it. Not slowing my roll, I veered a little to the right to bypass him. “Uh, yes. But I’m not the Alison you’re looking for.”
He held something up, but instead of the cardboard with my name, he now presented a photo on his phone. It was a candid, unmistakably recent picture of me, taken at an L stop in Chicago. I recognized the outfit—same jacket, same hair, same exhaustion—from just two days ago.
But I grimaced when I saw it. I looked like the before photo in a pharmaceutical ad for pills that treated chronic disappointment in women aged thirty-five to fifty.
Renee, meanwhile, gasped. “Hey! That’s you.” Then she laughed. “You look so grumpy, like Oscar the Grouch’s cousin. Look, you even have his eyebrows.”
I stared at the photo, wondering how someone could have taken it without me knowing while also confirming that the timestamp in the corner was indeed from two days ago, about twenty minutes after I’d left my office for the day.
The man in the suit watched me, impassive, and then said, “Mr. Jordan has a car waiting for you. If you’ll please follow me, I can carry your bags.”
He reached for my carry-on. I instinctively tightened my grip. My heart was still beating, but not where it was supposed to be.
“What? Who—why—what do you mean Mr. Jordan has a car waiting for me? Why would he send a car? I don’t want his car.”
Renee, for her part, had already shoved her backpack into the man’s free hand. “Are there mints in the back seat?” She made it sound like we’d won a contest.
“Mr. Jordan is waiting for you at your destination. You can ask him when we get there.” The man’s cadence was mechanical. I wondered if he was reciting a memorized script.
“My destination?” I echoed.
“Yes.” The driver nodded once. “And he told me to give this to you when you arrived.”
He produced a white envelope from his jacket pocket, the sort of paper that looked expensive without being flashy, then held it out for me to take.
I accepted it, frowning as I turned away and opened the flap to reveal the folded paper within.
Withdrawing the single sheet, I unfurled the letter and inspected Alaric’s tidy, meticulous script, black ink on creamy stock.
It read,
As you might already be aware, your court filings for the Weston Company are currently in limbo.
The length of this limbo is completely up to you.
If you meet with me today and hear me out, I might be able to help depending on various factors.
I promise I won’t try to force you to do anything you don’t wish to (not that I could).
All I’m asking is for an hour of your time.
PS. As a show of good faith, you should know that I haven’t told Duke or anyone else about your plans.
Below the text, he’d added his signature, so precise and beautiful you’d think he’d been practicing it since grade school. Maybe he had.
I stared at the letter, trying to decide what I was feeling and whether any of these feelings were useful.
I’d already known Alaric had the power to sabotage me at will. But what genuinely surprised me was that he hadn’t told Duke—or anyone else—about my plans. Not yet, anyway.
Clearly, he felt confident I’d come running, that I’d meet him today and hear him out.
But I suspected this confidence had more to do with his faith in my determination to seek vengeance rather than a belief in his own allure or persuasive prowess.
He possessed something I wanted—the ability to unlimbo my plans—and now he was using this leverage to force a meeting.
Fine. I’d meet him. There was nothing he could say or do to change my mind or my plan. But I’d hear him out.
Refolding Alaric’s letter, I faced the unnamed driver who’d been walking around with my picture on his phone for two days.
I handed over my bag. “Thank you. Please take us to see Mr. Jordan.”
* * *
Brad—the driver—dropped Renee off at a luxury hotel on our way out to Alenbach.
It was not the hotel we’d booked, but rather the place Alaric had instructed Brad to take my assistant.
Apparently, Alaric had booked two rooms at the hotel.
One for me, one for Renee. I didn’t argue with Brad or with Renee when he dropped her off, but I would not be sleeping at a five-star hotel. Not tonight, not ever.
Everyone knows those places are a massive waste of money. One does not need tiny French soaps and twenty-four-hour Michelin-star room service. Those funds would be better put to use in investment accounts or a real-estate portfolio.
But I digress.
The drive out to Alenbach took less time than I remembered.
With Renee living it up at the swanky hotel, I rode alone in the backseat of Alaric’s armored SUV.
It was the kind of car that looked like it should have a foreign diplomat in it instead of a corporate saboteur in a Costco blazer and thrifted shoes.
Brad was perfectly silent, probably ex-military or ex-cop.
Or maybe just exasperated with his life choices.
I didn’t attempt small talk, and neither did he, which suited me.
I spent the ride checking my phone every seven minutes, hoping for a call or message from my lawyers.
I would’ve appreciated a text from Alaric with more details as to why, exactly, he’d sent a car to kidnap me from the airport, what he was expecting from our chat and what he wanted from me. But there was nothing.
As we exited the interstate, I started to recognize the landscape and immediately regretted not bringing sunglasses.
Even in December, even through the heavily tinted glass, the sun squatted above the hill country and pressed itself against my eyeballs no matter where I looked.
We crossed a bridge over a river I used to walk beside as a kid.
There was a playground visible to the left, and a handful of half-melted children shrieked up and down the plastic slides, ignoring the heat in favor of fun.
The driver made exactly one turn and suddenly I was outside Igor’s Pizza Place.
It felt . . . very strange, and I required a few moments to inspect the place and get my bearings before exiting the car.
The exterior had been repainted in the years since I last saw it, but the color—eye-watering yellow—was true to memory, as was the hand-lettered sign that looked like someone had copied it off a vodka bottle.
There was a cheerful line of cars parked at uneven angles out front, the same cracks in the curb, even the same poster for “Authentic New York Style Slices” in the window, faded to a sickly orange-pink.
As I sat in the back seat, ignoring the driver's attempts to get my attention in the rearview mirror, my hands felt cold and tight against my phone. I’d expected to be annoyed at being back in Alenbach, but instead I felt a weird, scraping sensation in my ribs.
With an inward curse at the unexpected nostalgia, I shouldered my bag and stepped out of the car. The wind played with my hair and I held it back from my eyes. It was still hot outside, but I could feel the coming cold front in the air.
Inside, I was hit with a new wave of nostalgia via a combination of smells I’d forgotten I could miss. Burnt cheese, beer, and yeasty pizza dough, the kind of aroma that stuck to your skin for days even after a single shift behind the counter. And the place was absolutely packed.
A table of screaming children celebrated a birthday by pelting each other with crusts.
Two men in paint-stained T-shirts hunched over slices the size of their heads, elbows at protective angles.
An elderly couple shared a single soda and a game of chess at a corner table.
Every surface was sticky with either sugar or memory.
I also noticed Mr. G’s Christmas ornaments, still mostly neon, with several that were either the same exact ones or identical replicas to the lights I’d been forced to put up year after year, including the Virgin Mary whose belly increased as the curved lights cycled through.
Strangely, I didn’t mind these decorations at all.
They reminded me of Christmas, but not in a bad way.
This realization had me hovering just inside the doorway, unsure what to do next.
I didn’t have to wonder long. Alaric stood near the back of the restaurant, taller than anyone else, waving at me as though he’d just spotted a friend he hadn’t seen in years and not the nemesis he’d set out to undermine.
He wore a button-down, dark green, and beige pants that .
. . well. Let’s just say they fit him very nicely.
I had a sudden, unhelpful vision of him as a teenager, all smiles, wearing a football jersey at least one size too small.
The current version of Alaric was much less eager to please and had replaced the boyishness with curated worldliness.
But he still had that ridiculous jaw and the good hair and those eyes.