21. Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
~DARCY~
I am completely, catastrophically screwed.
It's approximately thirty-six hours until the Meridian Gala, and I'm standing in the lobby of the Hotel Brickell Soleil in Miami watching my life fold in on itself from every direction simultaneously.
Outside the wall-to-wall lobby windows, Biscayne Bay glows copper and orange in the dying light.
The hotel is exactly what a billionaire hospitality venture's gala hotel should be—oceanfront and moody, all dark wood and warm lighting and swanky furniture.
The air smells like salt water and money and whatever expensive candles they burn in the lobby.
It’s stunning.
And I absolutely hate it.
I hate it because Miami is my father's city.
Because this hotel is thirty-seven minutes from the house I grew up in.
Because I've been in this city for four hours and I've already spotted two people I recognize from my previous life—a real estate attorney who worked with my father for a decade, and a woman named Diana Reyes who used to attend my father's dinner parties.
Neither of them recognized me.
Small mercies.
"Darcy."
I turn, and my best friend in the world, Jessica Shaw, is standing five feet away, looking exactly the way she always looks—effortlessly polished and sharp-eyed.
Honey-blonde and tan, the woman who was my mentor, my savior, and my biggest support system in college is the kind of beautiful that makes you feel slightly underdressed even when you’re in formal wear.
And she knows.
She has to know.
I can see it in the way she's looking at me—her big-book-publicist brain never quite turns off, working at full speed behind her amber eyes.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi." She crosses to me and, before I can say anything, pulls me into a tight hug that makes my heart feel at home. "You look terrible."
"Thanks. You look great."
"I always look great." She pulls back, grinning, still holding my arms, studying my face. "What's going on with you?"
"Nothing. Gala prep. Exhaustion. The usual."
"You're a terrible liar."
"I've heard that."
"You've been avoiding my calls for three weeks."
"I've been busy—"
"Darcy." Her voice drops. "I've known you for four years. Something is wrong. What is it?"
Behind her, Quinn appears with two glasses of champagne. Like the wise man he's become since tying himself to my best friend, he spots the expression on both our faces and immediately makes a sharp left toward the bar.
"I'll tell you everything," I say quietly. "After the gala. I promise. Everything."
"Everything everything?"
"Everything everything."
She watches me a long moment.
"Including why my brother-in-law can't seem to stop looking at you from across the lobby?"
My face goes hot. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"He's done it four times since you walked in."
"Jessica—"
"After the gala," she says. It's not a question but a condition. "We're having drinks. You and me. That’s it."
"Yes."
"Good." She releases me. "Now smile. Wyeth's assistant is coming over and she's going to want to talk about the floral arrangements."
The Shaw Group's new investor is a quietly terrifying man named Henrik Solvang.
Norwegian and fifty-five, the man reeks of the obscene kind of money that doesn’t need announcing. He shakes my hand in the lobby with a grip that’s calculating and assessing all at once.
"The vendor coordination for tonight was flawless," he says. "The details matter. You understand that."
"I do," I say.
"Good." He moves on.
Wyeth appears at my elbow. "He liked you. That's rare."
"I'm very likable."
"You're competent. With him, that's better than likable." He checks his phone. "There's a pre-meeting in Quinn's suite in twenty minutes. Shaw brothers plus Henrik. You're off duty until tomorrow morning."
"Understood."
Turning, I spot Declan across the lobby, talking to Henrik, looking devastating in dark trousers and a white shirt with the collar open, his silver hair slightly disheveled from the flight.
He glances at me and instantly I recognize the look in his eyes.
The one that says I know exactly what you look like with nothing on.
And I’m thinking about it right now.
I look away first.
And remind myself that I have approximately eighteen hours to figure out how to tell this man—the one I accidentally married—that I’m pregnant with his child, and my father is the man who has been trying to destroy his family for twenty-four years.
Totally manageable.
Officially dismissed from my work duties by Wyeth, I make my way up to my hotel room a few minutes later—a gorgeous suite on the fourteenth floor that makes my Astoria apartment look like a storage unit.
The room is extraordinary.
Dark floors that gleam under recessed lighting. A king bed dressed in white linen. Glass windows spanning the entire ocean-facing wall, framing the black Atlantic like a living painting.
Tonight, the water glitters under a quarter moon, the Miami skyline bleeding neon and gold along the horizon.
And the bathroom alone could fit my entire kitchen.
A freestanding soaking tub sits beside a second set of windows overlooking the bay. Marble everything. A rainfall shower.
Tiny bottles of something called Acqua di Parma line the vanity like expensive little soldiers.
The whole room smells like gardenia and ocean salt and I breathe it in, dropping my bag on the bed and kicking off my heels to curl my bare toes against the cool teak floor.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, I take a deep breath before picking up my cell phone.
I dial Bria’s number, and she picks up before it even fully rings.
"You're in Miami," she says.
"I'm in Miami."
"How fancy is the hotel?"
"The bathtub has a view of the ocean."
"The bathtub—" A gasp. "I'm never speaking to you again. I'm sitting in my apartment eating leftover pad thai and you're in a bathtub with an ocean view."
"I'm not in the bathtub. I'm sitting on the edge of a bed that probably costs more than my car."
"You don’t have a car."
"That's not the point."
"What's the point?"
"The point is that I'm in Miami and I'm having a complete breakdown and I need you to focus."
"Right. Yes. Focusing." I hear her set something down—the takeout container, probably. "How are you feeling? Physically. Did you take your prenatal vitamin today?"
"Yes."
"With food?"
“Yes, Mom, I had a granola bar on the plane."
"Darcy—"
"And half a sandwich at the airport."
"The prenatal has to be taken with a full meal or it makes the nausea worse. I told you this."
"You did tell me this."
"And you ignored me."
"I was anxious and forgot."
"You're going to eat a proper dinner tonight if I have to DoorDash it to your hotel room from New York."
"I don't think that's logistically—"
"Don't test me. I have a credit card and a vendetta." A pause. "Also, how are you feeling emotionally?"
"Like I'm about to throw up again, but that could be the vitamin or the anxiety or the baby or the fact that I'm in my father's city twenty-four hours before Declan's biggest professional moment."
"All of the above," Bria diagnoses. "You've always been an overachiever."
I snort, letting my shoulders finally relax.
Because that’s what Bria does—what she’s always done since we were twenty and sharing a terrible apartment in Little Havana with one working burner and a mouse we'd named Mickey. She finds the absurdity in catastrophe. She makes you laugh at the exact moment you want to cry.
It's her superpower—a superpower that has morphed our friendship into the sisterhood an only child like me never had.
"I found out more," I mention absently. "About my father and Thomas Shaw."
"Tell me."
I stand and drift toward the windows.
Outside, Biscayne Bay shimmers. A boat moves across the dark water, its lights trailing white and green. Somewhere below, I can hear the hotel's outdoor bar—the sounds of laughter and music. The melodic clink of glass against glass.
Miami at night.
My father's city.
The place I ran from.
"They were best friends," I say. "Not just colleagues. Real friends. Best men at each other's weddings. Went into business together and spent fifteen years building something from nothing."
"Oh, Darcy."
"They were close the way Declan and Quinn and Wyeth are close.
Thick as thieves. The kind of friendship that doesn't come around twice.
" I press my forehead to the cool glass.
"And then my father spent years quietly draining it.
Siphoning capital into a shadow company.
Building a parallel operation on the side. Waiting."
"Like a parasite," Bria says softly.
"Like a parasite with an Ivy League degree and excellent table manners." I close my eyes. "He waited for the perfect moment—when the Shaw Group was overextended, when debt was at its worst, when Thomas was already sick. Then he executed."
Bria is quiet.
"The federal investigation nearly destroyed what was left," I continue. "Thomas's health deteriorated over a decade. Slowly. The way stress and grief and financial ruin destroy a person slowly." My voice sounds strange to my own ears. "And then the heart attack."
"And Declan spent twenty-four years fighting your father's settlements."
"Refusing every resolution. Every buyout. Every offer." I think of how Declan talks about his father—grief braided with drive and something like fury. "Twenty-four years, Bria. That's what he's been doing. That's what Tulum is. That's what the gala tomorrow night is."
"He's been fighting your father your whole life."
“I’m not even sure he knew I existed."
"And now he's in love with you."
The words land like a stone.
We both let a different kind of silence fall.
"Oh honey," Bria says.
"I know."
"Did you tell him—"
"No. I couldn't. Lately, he’s been looking at me like—" I press my hand to my chest, where it still aches. "He was looking at me like I was something worth keeping. And I just—I’m not sure I can be the thing that destroys that look."
"You're going to have to."
"I know."
"Soon."
"I know." I pull back from the window and sit on the bed. "I called you for support, woman, not a schedule."