Chapter 44 Liam
Liam
Mayfair felt empty by the time I got back. The car slid into the underground garage, sensors chiming as I eased it into place. A few other expensive cars shared the space with me, but apart from that, no one else was around.
The lift doors closed, and I rose in silence, jiggling the keys in my hand before I slipped them into my pocket. Then the doors opened again, and I was in my apartment. I keyed off the alarm, and the lights came on in sequence. Hall, living area, kitchen.
It felt so empty without her.
Andrea was wrong; it was that simple. I’d handled Novexia correctly because there wasn’t an alternative. Anyone competent would have reached the same conclusion.
With the changes I was making, there was no fat on the bone—and that meant cutting headcount.
It was arithmetic, not malice.
You decided the collateral damage was acceptable.
No. She’d taken three separate things and braided them together until they looked like they were the same. The redundancies, the fake relationship, and this issue with the painting. But they weren’t related in any way.
One of them wasn’t even valid. But that was what people did when they were hurt. They looked for a shape and forced things into it.
I didn’t need you to make it safe. I needed the answer.
What the fuck had happened there? Why would the company have purchased her artwork without my knowledge, and if we had, who authorized it?
It must have been some kind of mistake.
Her words weren’t though. How long had she been assessing me?
Seventeen thousand was fantastic—at least there was that. It was serious artist money. Maybe this was a turning point for her? Fuck, she was definitely not in the right role at Novexia, even if she was good at it.
The air-conditioning had been on all day, and the leather couch was cold to the touch.
I couldn’t face the idea of sitting on it in a Snuggie without her, though.
I turned and walked into my bedroom. A moth floated in the glass on my bedside table, wings sticking to the surface. I tipped the glass slightly, but it was already dead.
You decide. For everyone.
That wasn’t fair. Context matters. Intent matters.
I’d even told her my reasons for buying Novexia, and she’d said she understood.
But maybe she didn’t—how could she? Unless you’d held someone in your arms while they were bleeding—
No. Nothing was more important than that. This was the right thing to do.
I sat on the bed and pulled off my shirt, then my shoes and socks.
She hadn’t even let me stay and sort it out.
I’d had no idea she was harboring so much resentment about the cuts, no idea this was coming.
Why the fuck hadn’t she told me? If we didn’t talk about things that mattered, how could we ever expect to go the distance?
Would she message me? Say she was sorry, ask to talk? I checked my phone, but there weren’t any texts from her, not one.
Should I just drive back over there, right now? Force her to talk to me, explain it to her again? That this was important, what I was doing with Novexia. Perhaps if I just—
No.
No point, until I knew what had really happened with the painting. That was what had triggered all this, and somehow upended everything that I’d stupidly thought was so perfect between us.
Bonnie would know the deal with the Roth Holdings payment. I scrolled to her name. She’d explain it in five words and make the whole thing slot back into order.
But I didn’t want to talk to Bonnie.
I locked the screen and walked across the room, the stone cold under my feet.
Out on the terrace, the city stretched below me, lights scattered across the dark, traffic threading through it. This was how effective systems worked. Not flawlessly, but predictably.
Whatever helps you live with yourself.
I rested my hands on the balcony and watched it. Eventually, I went back inside and turned the lights off one by one. Then I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the right move to present itself.
It didn’t.
There wasn’t a lever for this.
*
“Here it is. Seventeen K.” Bonnie’s finger underlined the number on the screen. “It’s on the Ashfern Art Advisory invoice. Everything goes through on one monthly statement.”
“This is Andrea’s piece?”
“Yes,” she said. “Alexandrea L. Jones. Lot thirty-eight. Logged as a Montclair acquisition. Buyer of record is Roth Holdings. Delivery to Dennis Parker.”
“Dex?”
“It’s recorded as a corporate gift.”
“A seventeen-thousand-pound gift? For Dex?”
“You asked me to secure it for him after the auction,” she said. “Whatever piece he wanted. He identified lot thirty-eight. Early-career artist.”
Dex had chosen Andrea’s piece? Did he even know? I’d talk to him about it when he got back from his latest trip to the States in a couple of weeks.
“But seventeen thousand?”
“You didn’t give me a specific cap, Liam. I kept it within advisory authority.”
“Fucking hell.”
Bonnie scrolled. “Expensive month. Three other artwork purchases, two client gifts, and a gallery deposit. Nothing that would have triggered a separate sign-off. Entirely above board.”
So Andrea was right.
I couldn’t fix this.
Unless I could sort this out, she’d never agree to see me. And what did that mean—was that it? I’d never see her again because of a mix-up over a seventeen-thousand-pound painting? The most important thing that had ever happened to me just … broke … because something on an invoice didn’t stack?
I wasn’t going to entertain that.
“Bonnie, just because we paid seventeen, doesn’t mean we led with that bid.”
“Of course not. Ashfern always gets us the best price. There were several active bidders.”
“How many?”
“It went to the wire. We won by a narrow margin.”
“How narrow?”
“They don’t disclose that.”
“See if you can find out anyway.”
Andrea wasn’t going to reply to my texts, that was obvious, but if I could just explain it to her, show her I had nothing to do with this, then she’d have to talk to me—wouldn’t she?
The Novexia issue wasn’t something I could deal with so easily—the redundancies had already been announced, and there was no room for negotiation now—but if we could just sit down together and discuss it, surely we could work through it.
We’d dealt with worse between us, hadn’t we?