Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Tatum arrived at the Society early and stood outside the building for a moment before she went in, looking up at it the way she hadn't allowed herself to look at it since she'd come back.
The facade was the same as it had always been, solid, discreet, and entirely unremarkable to anyone who didn't know what it was.
She had stood outside this building on a hundred different occasions over the years, and it had never felt the way it felt now, weighted with everything that had happened inside it and everything that hadn't happened since.
She went in.
Armand was already in the small sitting room off the main corridor, as she'd known he would be. He rose when she entered, that old-world courtesy that was entirely natural to him and never felt performative.
"You slept?" he asked.
"A little," she said, which was more or less true.
She sat beside him and kept her voice low. Around them, the building was beginning to fill, staff moving with the purposeful quiet of people who understood that today was significant.
"I've been thinking," she said.
Armand waited.
"Your offer," she said. "I want to take you up on it. Florence first, I think. And then Ireland." She paused. "How soon can it happen?"
Armand's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes did, a warmth that he didn't try to conceal.
"Today," he said. "Right after this meeting.
I have everything arranged. It was arranged some time ago, in fact.
" He said it without smugness, simply as a fact, the fact of a man who had always known she would get there eventually. "You say the word, and it happens."
"Today," she said.
"Oui."
She looked at her hands for a moment. "Okay," she said. "Today." She cocked her head. “What do I do about my parents? They will come looking for me.” She knew that Armand would have taken care of this already, but she was curious.
“Ah, it is a sad day. You will be killed in a hit-and-run. Your body will be so badly mangled in the accident that identifying you will be impossible. Your parents, that is, your father, will have to have a closed-casket funeral. We will all mourn your loss.”
“So, I get a new name and a new…everything?”
“Yes. You will go to Ireland first, though, oui? I will have everything you need waiting there for you. It is agreeable?”
Tatum let the idea of a brand-new life starting today run through her mind for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, that will work.”
“Wait, you said my father will have the funeral. What about Bunny?”
“Your mother will be arrested for two homicides. Archer found a hair at North’s apartment, and he had it analyzed.
He also had his people pull video from all the businesses around the Obsidian Club, and it shows your mother arriving and then leaving.
She is still carrying the mask on the sidewalk.
The video shows her tucking it in her pocket. ”
Tatum’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “But that’s all circumstantial.”
“Oui, but there are other things that add to it, files that the police obtained from an anonymous source that outline many of Bunny’s illegal dealings.”
“And my father?” Tatum asked, hardly able to draw a breath.
“It is unfortunate, but your father has managed to keep a distance between himself and Bunny’s misdeeds.”
“So the Curator gets away once again.”
“Perhaps for now. But I think the stain from your mother will spread to him. He will not remain unscathed. Eli Fisher, however, is a different story. There is nothing to link him whatsoever.”
“But you will keep trying?” Tatum asked. “These people should be punished.”
“We will keep trying.”
“Good. Then I am happy to go today.”
Armand nodded once, with the finality of something settled, and said nothing further, which was exactly right.
The door to the boardroom opened, and people began filing in. Tatum stood and smoothed her jacket, and was about to follow when someone touched her arm.
She turned.
Jason Sakstra was standing behind her. He looked different from the last time she'd seen him, less hollowed out, less like a man carrying something that was slowly crushing him.
There was color in his face that hadn't been there in months, and his eyes, though cautious, had something in them that she recognized as relief.
"Tatum," he said. "I need to say something to you."
She blinked. "Jason."
"My account," he said. "This morning. There was a deposit. A significant one." He paused and looked at her steadily. "I know it was you."
"Jason, I don't know what—"
He said quietly, "You and Archer were the only ones who knew. The only ones who cared enough to actually do something about it." He stopped. His jaw worked for a moment. "And Archer is gone."
The last three words landed in the space between them with a finality that stole her breath.
Grief moved through her, the kind of sharp, stabbing pain that arrived without warning in the middle of ordinary moments and took the air out of the room. She pressed her lips together and tried to control her emotions.
"I'm glad it helped," she said. Her voice came out steady. She was still proud of that.
"It's not just me," Jason said. "Is it? There are others."
"I really don't know what you're talking about," Tatum said, with a faint smile that she thought he understood.
He looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded. "Thank you," he said simply, and meant it in the way that made simple words carry everything.
She nodded back and turned toward the boardroom before she lost the steadiness she was working so hard to maintain.
The room was the same as it always was. Long table, heavy chairs, the particular quality of light that came through the windows at this hour and fell across the polished surface in long flat bands.
She had sat in this room a hundred times.
She had sat in it when Archer was at the head of it, when his presence had organized everything around it the way a gravitational field organized space, and the absence of that now was something she felt in her body rather than just her mind.
Knees suddenly weak, she sat down.
The others arranged themselves around the table.
Remy Tanger at the head, which was right where she should be for this.
Remy was the last of the founding families, the granddaughter of Remington Tanger, and she carried that with the particular grace of someone who had always understood what it meant and had never once made a fuss about it.
She caught Tatum's eye across the table and gave her a brief nod that carried more in it than a nod usually did.
Eli Fisher was at the far end.
Tatum looked at him once and then looked away. He was impeccably dressed, as always, his expression arranged into a mask of gravity and readiness in equal measure. He had the look of a man who had been preparing for this room for a long time and had decided this morning was the morning it paid off.
She looked at the table instead.
Sharon Edgerstone was there, and Alan Forgerty, and the others, faces she knew from a hundred meetings that had started with Archer walking in and the room reorganizing itself around him without anyone acknowledging that was what was happening.
Remy called the meeting to order.
"We are here," she said, "to address the matter of succession.
The head of this Society died in the performance of his duties.
" Her statement was plain, devoid of embellishment, and Tatum appreciated that.
"The rules of succession require that we elect a new head from among the board. Nominations are open."
Fisher didn't wait.
"I'd like to speak," he said, and without waiting for Remy's acknowledgment, he rose from his chair with the smooth confidence of someone who had rehearsed this, who had been rehearsing this for longer than anyone in the room fully understood.
"Austin Davis," he said, "was a man of extraordinary capability and vision.
His death was a tragedy for this Society and for everyone who knew him.
" He paused, letting that sit, and Tatum kept her face entirely still.
"Austin had suggested I be the next head of the Society.
He made that clear in private conversations on multiple occasions.
He believed I had the knowledge, the temperament, and the commitment to lead this organization into its next chapter. "
He looked around the table.
"I want to be honest with you all about what I see when I look at the last year of this Society's leadership," he said.
"I see missed opportunities. I see an organization that was run with too much secrecy, too much centralized control, and too little accountability.
I see decisions made without consultation, resources deployed without transparency, and a culture of opacity that ultimately led to the death of a member on Society premises.
" He paused theatrically, dramatically emphasizing his words.
"I intend to change all of that. I intend to build something open.
Accountable. Something this Society can be proud of. "
He sat down.
The room was quiet for a moment.
Tatum looked at her hands on the table. She thought about the cameras in Maine and Venice and the unauthorized surveillance that Fisher had tried to weaponize, about the witnesses for Lisbon that Armand had identified, about the eighteen months of money moving through channels Armand had traced, about the international backing that had been pulling Fisher's strings since before any of them had understood what was happening.
She thought about Archer, who had known all of it and carried all of it and had not said a word about it in a room full of people because that was not how he operated.
She thought about accountability.
She said nothing.
Remy let the silence run for exactly as long as it needed to. Then she said, "Thank you, Eli." Her voice was perfectly pleasant and entirely unreadable. "Anyone else?”
No one spoke.