Chapter 21
CADE
My cell rings late in the afternoon. Richard Vauclair does not bother with hello.
“My granddaughter was humiliated in that room.”
“Your granddaughter assaulted my wife.”
Richard goes quiet.
I don’t.
“If you called me expecting help cleaning up what Ashley did, you have badly misunderstood the situation.”
“She was provoked.”
I laugh.
It comes out once, sharp and completely without humor.
“She hit Sienna in the face in front of hundreds of witnesses and enough phones to make denying it an insult to both of us.”
“You will have the charges dropped.”
“No.”
“Cade.”
“No.”
The old version of me would already be calculating. Board votes. Exposure. Contracts. Which concession costs less than the fight.
I feel none of it.
“You will speak to your wife,” Richard says. “You will make her understand what this does to Ashley, and there will be a public statement making clear that emotions were running high and both women regret what happened.”
For a second I honestly think I misheard him. Then I lean back in my chair.
“You want me to tell my wife to apologize to the woman who assaulted her.”
“I want you to behave like a man who understands how much business exists between our families.”
Something hot and vicious settles into place.
“You want me to control my wife so your granddaughter doesn’t have to live with the consequences of hitting her.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said.”
His voice cools. “Think very carefully before you answer me again.”
“I already have.”
I get to my feet.
“The answer is absolutely fucking not.”
Silence.
I have known Richard most of my adult life. I have negotiated across tables from men who could bankrupt cities and watched them blink first.
I have never spoken to him like this. I should probably care. I don’t.
“The only apology owed in this situation is from Ashley to my wife.”
“Then I can arrange a meeting?—”
“No.”
That stops him.
“I said she owes Sienna one. I did not say I want that woman anywhere near my wife to deliver it.”
“Watch how you speak about my granddaughter.”
“Then stop calling me on her behalf.”
His breath changes.
“You seem to have forgotten how much of your business touches mine.”
“No, Richard. You seem to have forgotten whose business became bigger.”
The silence on the line stretches. I look through the glass at the city below me.
“You want to cancel contracts? Cancel them. Pull out of deals? Do it. I will replace every dollar.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I earned the right to be.”
“You would risk years of relationships over this?”
“Over my wife being assaulted?”
“Over refusing to contain a family matter.”
My laugh this time is quieter.
“Family matter.”
“Cade—”
“No. We’re done pretending Ashley’s behavior becomes acceptable when enough Vauclairs stand around it.”
His voice hardens. “You may find your position less secure than you imagine.”
“Have you looked at Martin Solheym lately?”
That lands exactly where I intend it to.
“Careful.”
“I am being careful. Your family stayed tied to him long after the numbers said you shouldn’t.”
“Do not bring Martin into this.”
“Why not? Ashley married him.”
I walk around the desk.
“Richard, the difference between us is that you still think losing your business would hurt mine more than losing mine would hurt yours.”
“You arrogant son of a bitch.”
“Probably.”
I don’t even feel insulted.
“But here’s the part you’re missing, Richard. I stopped needing the Vauclairs years ago. I was simply too loyal to what your family once did for me to make a point of it.”
Nothing comes back.
“Martin’s empire is a shadow of what it was. Yours isn’t what it was either. Mine is larger than it has ever been, and if you force me to choose between preserving a relationship with your family and protecting my wife, you are not giving me a difficult decision.”
“You think money makes you untouchable.”
“No.”
I look down at the divorce papers on my desk.
“I think money makes it possible for me to make sure my wife never has to pay for my fear again.”
That one comes out quieter.
Richard says nothing.
“When I hang up, my attorneys will review every agreement between our companies. Every board connection. Every shared event. Every point of access your family has through mine.”
“You are threatening me.”
“I am informing you.”
“Cade.”
“And I will use every dollar, every lawyer, every vote and every relationship I have to make sure Ashley is never put in the same room as my wife because of me again.”
“You cannot dictate where my granddaughter goes.”
“No. But I can dictate where I go. Who I do business with. Who gets invited into my buildings. Who sits at my tables. Who gets access through my name.”
I think of Sienna in the car.
Ashley will always be in my life if you are.
Not anymore.
“Whatever it costs,” I say, “send me the number.”
Then I end the call.
The building has been quiet for hours. My laptop went dark sometime after ten and I never woke it back up.
There is a contract open behind the black screen that people have been waiting on since this afternoon, and there was a time I would have stayed until it was finished.
Tonight I cannot remember what the contract is for.
My phone is beside me with Sienna’s messages open. The last one is mine.
Holding you last night meant more to me than I know how to say. Thank you for letting me.
Delivered. Nothing beneath it.
I knew when I sent it that she might not answer. I told myself that was fine because I meant what I said, and she didn’t owe me anything for finally managing to hold her while she cried. That has not stopped me from checking the phone all day.
I scroll upward now, past the jacket, the lawyers, the papers, the flowers she refused, until I find the message I have been looking for.
At Ashley’s. Don’t wait up.
I stare at it for a long time.
Last night Sienna told me where she was when those words reached her.
In the back of a cab, her grandfather’s plaque beside her, after standing outside in the cold because I had taken our car.
She told me about the man who had known her since she was eight, the man whose pity she could not bear long enough to accept a ride home.
And then my message arrived. I had thought I was being considerate.
I know better now. I turn the phone facedown.
The second drawer on the right side of my desk is closed again. I put the papers back after Richard’s call, the same way I have put them back nearly every night since they arrived.
Tomorrow.
There has always been another tomorrow, another night I can tell myself I’m not ready, another morning I can pretend delaying them is not a decision of its own.
Tonight I find myself wondering how many more tomorrows I am entitled to take from her.
Sitting becomes impossible. I get up and walk to the windows, although the city does nothing for me. I have spent years standing here when something went wrong because distance usually helps. It does not help now.
I used to think I understood heartbreak.
That’s almost funny now. Ashley chose Martin, and I carried what she did to me for years.
I remember the humiliation. I remember wanting her to regret it.
I remember deciding that I would never again let another person have enough of me to make me feel that powerless.
For years I called that love because losing her had hurt.
I have tried to reach for that pain lately, to put it beside this one and make some sense of the scale. I can barely find it. I remember the facts of it more clearly than the feeling.
This is different.
Food sits in front of me until somebody takes it away. Sleep comes in pieces when exhaustion finally wins. I wake with Sienna already in my head and go to bed with her still there, and more than once I have sat through a meeting only to realize afterward that I retained almost nothing anyone said.
I ran this company through a hostile raid once and slept fine. I can’t get through a Tuesday now.
Last night was the first time I slept properly since she left because my wife was asleep on my chest with her hand curled into my shirt. For a few hours, with Sienna pressed against me, my body apparently decided it could stop fighting.
Then she woke up and moved away.
There is a physical ache behind my sternum when I think about that. I know what stress can do to the body. I know I am not dying.
Knowing does nothing to make it hurt less.
I don’t know how I am supposed to keep doing this for another week, another month, a year. The thought comes before I can stop it, and then Sienna’s face rises in my mind.
My God.
Sienna did it for our entire marriage.
I turn away from the window.
She loved me.
I loved you.
That fucking past tense.
Even now it has enough force to make me close my eyes. I can still see her in the cottage telling me what I should have known while we were married, while she was doing it right in front of me every day.
She loved me and lived beside me believing I did not love her back. Worse, she watched me give another woman the attention she had been waiting for from me. Ashley called and I answered. When she was upset, I listened. When she needed something, I went.
Sienna stayed.
I don’t need to imagine what that did to her because I was there the night it finally became too much.
The house was quiet when I came home. Sienna was still awake, wearing gray pants with a worn knee and an old sweatshirt, and I walked through the door with Ashley still taking up most of the space in my head.
Sienna asked how she was.
I answered.
I stood in our house after two in the morning and explained to my wife how carefully I had taken care of another woman.
Sienna listened. Then she asked whether I had eaten.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the desk.
That is the memory that undoes me now. After the study, after the gala, after I carried Ashley out and left Sienna behind, after don’t wait up, after sitting alone with everything she had heard and everything I had done, Sienna still looked at me and asked whether I had eaten because she always asked.