Her thumb hovered over the end call button.
She pressed record instead.
“I know that surprised you,” Richard said.
“I respect that you didn’t hang up.”
“What do you want?” Lily kept a straight face.
“Just a conversation.” He chuckled .
His voice was warm.
“We are practically family, Ms.
Chen.
Or we were.”
“We were never family.” Lily said, quietly but coldly.
“You built a career on my Foundation’s name.
You lived in my son’s apartment for four years.” He paused, precise and deliberate.
“You are carrying my grandchild.”
Her jaw tightened.
Her free hand pressed flat against her thigh.
The phone stayed level against her ear.
“What do you want, Richard.”
“I want you to stop what you are doing before it gets complicated for people you care about.
That is all.” He said it in a friendly and helpful tone.
“A friendly warning.”
“Noted.”
“Ms.
Chen.” Another pause, she could hear him settling into it, comfortable, completely unhurried.
“I say this with genuine warmth.
I always admired your tenacity.
But tenacity without strategy is just noise.
Think carefully.”
The line went quiet.
He was waiting.
She understood exactly what he was waiting for, the small sound, the intake of breath, the fractional shift in her voice that would tell him she was scared.
She stood in the empty car park and said nothing and gave him none of it.
“Goodnight, Mr.
Sinclair.”
She ended the call.
The recording stopped.
She stood there for a moment, looking at her phone, at the saved file.
Then she got in her car and drove.
Hmmm…Friendly warning.
She merged onto the street and her hands were steady on the wheel as she thought.
This man must be crazy.
She thought.
She drove home.
Marcus was on the couch reading.
Theo was asleep.
She changed her clothes and got into bed and lay in the dark and listened to Marcus’s breathing even out, and she did not tell him about the call.
In the morning she waited until Marcus was in the shower and Theo was distracted by his cereal before she called Nathan.
“Ethan called your personal number twice last night,” Nathan said.
“After eleven.
He didn’t leave a message either time.”
“He has Richard’s number.
Let him call his father.” She sighed.
“Lily.” Nathan’s voice dropped into the register he used when he was going to say something she did not want to hear and was going to say it anyway.
“He is not calling you about his father.
He was suspended from his own company yesterday.
He lost everything in one board meeting.
He has nobody to…,”
“Nathan.”
“Yes.”
“Send me everything you have on Richard’s share transactions.
Every nominee name he used.
I want the complete list.”
He paused.
“I’ll have it to you by noon.”
She ended the call.
Marcus came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his hair still damp, and his eyes went straight to her face the way they always did, that quiet, calibrating look of a man who paid attention.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes.” She turned to the stove.
“Do you want eggs?”
He looked at her for a second longer than the question needed.
His eyes stayed on the back of her head for a moment and she felt it, the weight of him deciding whether to push.
Then he went to get dressed.
She cracked two eggs into the pan and thought about Richard’s voice and the warmth in it and the recording saved on her phone, and she said nothing.
******
ZARA
She left the office an hour before.
The restaurant two blocks from LChen Events was exactly loud enough.
That was why Zara had come in, not for the food, just for the noise of other people existing, the particular comfort of being surrounded by conversations that had nothing to do with prosecution files and cancelled contracts.
“Huhh”.
She sighed.
She sat at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic and when it came she wrapped both hands around the glass and drank half of it without putting it down.
The bartender set a new one in front of her, she hadn’t ordered it, but the bar was busy and she assumed she had missed the exchange.
She drank it without thinking.
It tasted slightly different, sweeter than the first.
Why does this taste different from the first drink?
She thought.
“Hello”.
She called the bartender.
But he was too busy attending to customers.
A man ran inside and whispered to the bartender.
Did you do it?
The bartender nodded and pointed at Zara.
The man widened his eyes in shock.
“That’s the wrong lady!” He yelled at the bartender.
“Sorry sir, I must have made a mistake.
Please calm down”.
“Rubbish”.
The man said, and angrily left.
Zara felt dizzy.
She slightly heard their conversation but she was too dizzy to ask questions.
She slid off the barstool to find the bathroom and the room tilted slightly more than the two drinks should have produced.
She put one hand on the bar and steadied herself.
Her vision was fine.
Her thinking was not quite fine.
There was a quality to it she could not name, a looseness, a lag between what she saw and what her brain did with it.
What’s happening to me?
She found the bathroom at the back of the restaurant.
She pushed through the door and ran cold water over her wrists and looked at herself in the mirror and thought: something is wrong.
Something in that second drink.
The bathroom door opened behind her.
She saw his shoes first in the mirror.
Then his suit, dark, expensive, the kind of suit that belonged in boardrooms and newspaper photographs.
But something was off.
His cock was outside and he was stroking it.
He had clearly gotten out from the bathroom.
Oh my gosh!
Hold on!
I just walked into the males’ bathroom.
She thought in terror.
Then her eyes went up.She turned around.
Her mouth opened.
She gasped.
It was Richard!