11. Vince
VINCE
I sat in the dark.
The penthouse stretched around me, every surface clean, every corner empty of everything that mattered.
I'd turned off the lights an hour ago. Maybe two.
The glass of whiskey sat on the side table, ice melted, untouched.
The city glowed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, forty stories of other people's lives stacked beneath me, and I couldn't bring myself to stand up and walk to the bedroom.
The phone sat in my hand. Screen dark. Had been dark for twenty minutes, maybe longer.
I kept telling myself I'd call her. That I'd find the right words this time.
That she'd pick up and I'd say something that would make her understand, make her come home.
Something better than what I'd managed last night, standing in Rosa's doorway like an idiot while my wife looked through me like I was a stranger.
I hadn't pressed a single button.
My thumb hovered over the screen. I could see my own reflection in the black glass, distorted and pathetic.
I looked like hell. The tie I'd loosened hours ago hung around my neck, and my shirt was wrinkled from sitting in the same position too long.
I should get up. Should pour myself another drink.
Should do something other than sit here staring at a phone I wasn't going to use.
Josie's socks were still scattered across the bedroom floor.
I'd seen them when I'd walked through an hour ago.
Half a drawer's worth, spilled where she'd yanked the whole thing free because it had stuck.
She did that sometimes, pulled too hard when something wouldn't give.
Usually she'd laugh about it, call herself impatient, start picking things up.
Last night she'd just left them there and kept packing.
A scarf lay crumpled by the bed. Dark blue, the one she wore when it got cold.
The closet door stood open, and I could see the empty space where her jeans had been, hangers shoved to one side.
She'd pushed a chair out of the way to get to the top shelf, and it sat crooked against the wall.
I hadn't moved it. Hadn't touched any of it.
Hadn't even closed the closet door, because closing it felt like admitting she wasn't coming back.
The drawer by the bed was still open. The one where she kept the iron ring.
Kept. Past tense. It wasn't there anymore.
The diamond sat on the nightstand. Right next to that open drawer.
Right where I'd set it down last night, when I'd carried it home from the office and walked into this bedroom to find her gone, sitting there like an accusation I couldn't answer.
She'd left it behind and taken the one I'd made with my own hands when I had nothing.
The one I thought she'd forgotten about, the one I'd assumed didn't matter anymore because I'd replaced it with something worth insuring.
I'd been wrong about that. Wrong about a lot of things.
I looked down at my phone. The screen stayed dark.
The lock turned in the front door.
I looked up fast, my heart kicking hard against my ribs. Josie. She'd come back. She'd changed her mind, she was coming home, and I could fix this?—
The door swung open and light spilled in from the hallway. I smelled perfume before I saw who it was. Floral. Heavy. Too sweet.
Not Josie.
Harlow stepped inside and shut the door behind her.
She was wearing a pencil skirt that ended a few inches above her knees, the kind that was just professional enough to get away with in the office but looked like something else after hours.
Her blouse was silk, cream-colored, unbuttoned one button lower than it needed to be.
Her makeup was careful. Deliberate. Eyeliner sharp enough to cut, lipstick the color of wine.
She flipped the light switch, and I blinked against the sudden brightness.
"Vince?" She stared at me. "God, you're sitting in the dark."
I set the phone on the arm of the chair. My voice came out flat. "How did you get in?"
She held up a key, dangling it from two fingers. "I took your spare from the office. You looked like you'd been hit by a truck when you left today, and you didn't answer any of my calls, so I thought I'd check on you."
I didn't remember giving her access to my spare key. Didn't remember her knowing where I kept it. "I'm fine."
"You're sitting alone in the dark in a penthouse that looks like a museum.
" She clicked across the room in heels that were too high for a casual visit, and perched on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of me.
Close. Close enough that I could see where her foundation didn't quite match her skin tone.
"That's not fine, Vince. What happened?"
I looked past her. At the windows. At the city lights. At anything but her face. "Josie won't come home."
The words cracked something open in my chest. Made it real in a way it hadn't been when I was just sitting here alone, thinking it.
She wasn't coming back. She'd told me to leave.
Told me to go home. And I'd walked out of Rosa's and driven here and sat down in this chair, and she was still there and I was still here and nothing I did was going to change it.
"Oh, Vince." Harlow's voice dropped, went soft and sympathetic in a way that made my skin crawl. "Did she actually say that?"
"She told me to go home." I forced the words out. Each one hurt. "I went to see her last night. Asked her to come back. Told her I'd fix everything."
"Fix what?"
"The neighborhood. The corner she grew up on.
Everything she's been asking me to care about for nine years.
" My throat felt tight. I made myself keep talking.
"I told her I'd buy the whole block. Tear it down, rebuild it from the ground up, make it safe.
New buildings, new security, everything.
She'd never have to worry about standing on that street again, never have to worry about break-ins or her people getting hurt or any of it. "
Harlow's eyebrows lifted. Her knee brushed against mine. "That's one hell of an offer, Vince."
"She said no."
"She turned you down?" Harlow leaned forward, and her hand landed on my knee. Light at first. Almost tentative. "Vince, I'm so sorry. That must have been devastating."
I shifted back. Just an inch. Just enough to break the contact. She followed, closing the distance like she hadn't noticed I'd moved.
"Maybe it's for the best," she said quietly.
I stared at her. "What?"
"I mean—" Her fingers tightened on my knee.
"You've been killing yourself trying to make her happy for years, Vince.
Working yourself into the ground, building an empire, trying to create something big enough that she'd finally see what you were doing for her.
Maybe this is actually a chance for you to step back and figure out what you want instead of constantly chasing after someone who doesn't appreciate everything you're offering. "
I stood up fast.
She rose with me, smooth and immediate, and I had to step back to keep from running into her. My spine hit the doorframe to the bedroom. She moved forward, closing the space I'd just created, and I backed through the doorway into the room where my wife's things were still scattered on the floor.
"Harlow." I put my hand up between us. "Don't."
"Don't what?" She took another step forward, and her perfume hit me like a wave. Everywhere. Thick and cloying and wrong. "You're allowed to want something for yourself, Vince. You're allowed to be angry at her for walking away."
"I'm not angry." The lie tasted bitter. I was angry. Furious. Terrified. But not at Josie. Never at Josie.
"You should be." Harlow moved closer, and I backed up again. My calf hit the edge of the bed and I stumbled, catching myself with one hand on the mattress. She smiled. Small. Knowing. "She left you, Vince. She walked out and didn't look back."
"She didn't leave." My chest was tight. I couldn't get enough air. "She's at Rosa's. She's just—she needs time."
"She told you to go home and shut the door in your face." Harlow was right in front of me now, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her body. "That's leaving."
"It's not the same thing."
"It is." She lifted her hand, reaching for my face, and I jerked back.
The bed hit the backs of my knees and I sat down hard.
She climbed onto it after me, one knee pressing into the comforter, then the other, moving forward until she was straddling my legs.
"It's exactly the same thing, and you know it. "
I was trapped. The headboard behind me, Harlow in front of me, and nowhere left to go.
"Stop," I said. Louder this time. Hard.
She leaned in anyway. Her mouth was inches from mine, her breath warm on my face. "It's okay, Vince. You don't have to be alone tonight."
I shoved her back with both hands.
Not hard enough to hurt. Just enough to get her away from me, to break the contact.
She fell back onto the bed, eyes wide, her hair spilling across the pillow, and I lunged off the mattress and put the length of the room between us.
My stomach turned over. Revulsion, sharp and immediate, crawling up my throat.
She was offering me the one thing that would turn me into exactly what Josie feared I was.
The one thing I'd never been, never wanted to be.
And she was doing it here, in this room, with my wife's socks on the floor and her scarf by the bed and the diamond she'd left behind sitting on the nightstand three feet away.
"Get out," I said.
Harlow sat up slowly. Her face was flushed, her lipstick smeared at one corner. She looked hurt. Embarrassed. I didn't care.
"Vince, I didn't mean?—"
"Yes, you did." My voice came out rougher than I wanted.
I took a breath, made myself pull it back.
She was still a person. Still someone I had to work with.
Still someone who didn't deserve to be gutted just because she'd made a stupid choice.
"You took the key without asking. You came here knowing Josie was gone.
You knew exactly what you were doing, Harlow. "
Her hands twisted in her lap. "I thought you wanted—I thought maybe?—"
"You thought wrong." I crossed to the bedroom door and stood there, holding it open. "Leave. Now."
She slid off the bed. Smoothed her skirt down over her thighs. Straightened her blouse. She walked past me without looking up, and I followed her through the living room to the front door. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Turned back. Her eyes were wet.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
I didn't answer. Didn't trust myself to say anything that wouldn't make it worse. She waited another few seconds, then pulled the door open and stepped into the hallway. I shut it behind her the second she was clear. The lock clicked into place.
I stood there for a long moment, breathing hard. My hands were shaking. The perfume was still everywhere. In the air. On my clothes. Clinging to the furniture like smoke.
I walked back to the chair and sat down. My legs felt weak. I picked up my phone and stared at the dark screen. My reflection stared back at me, hollow-eyed and pale.
The penthouse was silent. Empty. Josie's socks were still scattered on the bedroom floor.
The scarf was still by the bed. The diamond was still on the nightstand, catching the city light, throwing tiny fractured rainbows across the wall.
And I was sitting here alone with another woman's perfume soaked into everything and my wife forty blocks away, sleeping in a bed that wasn't ours.
I looked at the phone. At Josie's name in my contacts. At the call button I still couldn't make myself press.
I set it down without calling.