“Zara!”
Lily called jerking her back to reality.
“Where were you?
I needed you this morning.”
Lily stood by the desk, her fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against the mahogany.
Zara hovered in the doorway, her bag clutched to her chest like a shield.
She looked frayed, hair slightly off, eyes darting toward the window rather than meeting Lily’s.
“I’m sorry,” Zara said, scratching her head and her voice dropping into a dull register.
“I had a rough night.
I didn’t sleep well.
I should have called.”
Lily paused.
She studied the way Zara’s jaw worked, a subtle weird behaviour that hadn’t been there yesterday.
It was a detail, and an unexpected part of their day, and Lily had noticed it.
She also narrowed her eyes, observing the tiny, involuntary tremor in Zara’s right hand and the way she kept shifting her weight.
She tucked it away behind the mental wall she’d built against distractions.
She didn’t have the luxury of pulling that thread apart right now.
“I have the Sinclair meeting in forty minutes,” Lily said, grabbing her portfolio.
“Hold everything until I’m back.
No exceptions ok?”
“Of course,” Zara murmured, stepping aside.
As Lily strode toward the door, she caught Zara’s reflection in the glass partition.
Zara was watching her.
“Huhhh, that was so close.” She heaved a big sigh of relief and her shoulders slumped, she breathed with a strange, shaky deliberation.
Lily didn’t look back.
She knew the feeling of needing to hide a wreck of a night; she just didn’t expect it from Zara.
She noticed, Zara thought, her chest tightening as she watched the office door swing shut.
She’s just filing it away.
She saw me flinch.
She knows something is off, and she’s just waiting for the right moment to gut me open.
Oh God, help me.
Lily reached the Sinclair Tower with six minutes to spare.
The conference room was a mausoleum of cold glass and expensive air.
She took her seat at the center, setting her notebook down with a decisive click.
When Ethan walked in, the room shifted.
He didn’t head for the chair at the head of the table, the throne he’d occupied for years.
He took a seat in the middle, a consultant’s chair.
He didn’t look at her, but she felt his presence immediately.
“Good morning,” Lily said, her voice steady.
“We have three vendor confirmations to finalize, and the lighting brief needs sign-off by end of day.
Let’s start there.”
The meeting was a carefully managed in a cold and emotionless way.
She kept the pace blistering, refusing to let the air settle.
When a vendor leaned forward, brow furrowed, and asked about the Foundation’s current leadership structure, a vacuum opened in the room.
The question was a jab, a reminder of the vacuum Ethan left behind.
Ethan didn’t hesitate.
“The transition is complete,” he said, his voice flat and professional.
“Lily has full oversight of the budget and vendor logistics.
Any structural queries should go through her office.”
He didn’t look at her.
He spoke as if he were discussing the weather.
Lily glanced at him, her pen pausing against the paper.
The sight of him, stripped of his crown, he was sitting there like someone who had no influence or decision making and that did something to her stomach.
She looked down at her notes, pressing her pen so hard the ink bled through the page.
He’s playing his part, she thought.
He’s playing it perfectly.
The meeting dissolved into the usual shuffle of papers and forced handshakes.
Lily was the first one up, walking toward the lobby with the purpose of a woman who had nowhere else to be.
She heard his footsteps before he reached her.
Ethan matched her stride, his shadow falling long across the floor.
He didn’t ask for permission.
“He called you,” Ethan said.
Lily kept going without pausing or showing any hesitation.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the revolving glass doors ahead.
“Nathan told you.”
“Nathan told me.” Ethan said immediately.
“And?” She said.
“And nothing.” He kept his pace, his shoulders tight.
“I’m not angry, Lily.
I’m tired of the noise.
Whatever you are building against him, I want to help.”
She reached the lobby doors and stopped.
The city outside was a blurred smear of yellow cabs and gray pavement.
She turned, looking at him for the first time in weeks.
The lines around his eyes were deeper, the arrogance replaced by a brittle exhaustion.
“I know,” she said.
The words were plain.
They weren’t a thank you, they weren’t a truce, and they certainly weren’t forgiveness.
They were just a fact.
She pushed through the doors and felt the hot and damp air around her.
Ethan stood by the glass, watching her enter her car with her driver in front.
I know, Lily thought, sliding into the backseat of a black Aston Martin car.
She stared out the window as the driver pulled into traffic.
He’s trying.
He’s been trying for weeks.
Every text, every consultant meeting, every move he made was a quiet pivot toward her.
But trying didn’t erase the wreckage.
It didn’t bring her parents back, and it didn’t undo the years he’d spent as Richard’s mirror image.
She watched the blur of the city, her hand resting flat against the window.
It was cool, grounding.
She didn’t let herself soften.
She couldn’t afford to.
Her phone buzzed, vibrating against her thigh.
She pulled it out, seeing Zara’s name on the screen.
She frowned, answering on the second ring.
“Zara?
What is it?
I told you to hold everything until…,”
“I found him,” Zara’s voice was thin, sharp with adrenaline.
“The mechanic who caused the accident.
Your parents’ accident.”
Lily froze.
The driver started rambling about a construction detour on 5th, his voice droning on, but the sound died in her ears.
“What?” Lily whispered, her grip tightening on the phone until her knuckles turned white.
“He’s alive, Lily,” Zara breathed.
“And he’s willing to talk.”
******
“Welcome to my home”.
Raymond said, clearing his throat.
The fluorescent lights of the Queens diner buzzed, a sickly hum that matched the tension knotting Lily’s stomach.
Across the cracked laminate table, Raymond sat slumped, his frame wasting away into his oversized jacket.
He smelled of stale tobacco and fear.
“You are Lily Chen,” he stated, his voice was raspy.
Lily didn’t blink.
“I am.”
“David Chen’s daughter.” He said again.
“Yes.”
Raymond took a shaky breath, his fingers tracing the rim of his coffee mug.
He didn’t look at her, his eyes was fixed on a cigarette burn in the tabletop.
“I did it.
I need to say that first.
I did it, and I have been living with the rot and guilt of it for two years.”
Lily’s pulse thrummed in her ears, but her expression remained hard and cold.
“Go on.
Tell me everything.”
“I was contacted through a third party and it was a cash job.
I was supposed to tamper on a brake line on a specific vehicle and specific date.
I was told it was a warning.
That nobody would be driving the car.
They said they just wanted to scare someone.”
“But people were driving it,” Lily said, the words cutting through the air like a knife.
Raymond’s head dipped lower.
“Yes.
Yes…I …When I saw the news, I tried to give the money back.
I called the number they used.
Someone picked up and told me… ” He paused and sighed.
“They said if I talked, my daughter’s school would be the first to know my name.
My daughter is twelve.”
Zara leaned forward, her brow furrowed like an angry bird.
“So Mr.
Raymond, Why are you talking now?”
“I have a pancreatic cancer,” Raymond whispered.
“I have a few months to live.
Six months, they said.
Maybe less.” He looked up, his eyes glassy and pleading.
“I am not a good man.
But I would like to die having told the truth to the person I owe it to.” He sniffed.
Lily kept her hands flat on the table, still and steady.
“I need a signed statement.
Everything you just told me, written down and signed.”
Raymond reached into his jacket and slid a yellowed envelope across the table.
“I brought one.
I wrote it last night.
I have been writing it for two years though.”
Lily took the envelope from him and glanced through it.
She nodded in satisfaction.
“Good…I’d contact you later “.
Lily said, standing up.
“Wait”.
Raymond called.
” What?” Lily turned.
“Don’t allow anybody to hear this, I’m so sorry about what happened but please I need to be safe for my daughter”.
Lily nodded slightly.
“No one would know, I have my ways”.
She said and left with Zara.
*****
The drive back to the city was suffocating.
Lily stared out the window, her palm pressed against the cold glass, trying to center herself.
Beside her, the silence was shattered by a sharp, electronic trill.
Zara’s phone sat on the seat between them, glowing.
An unknown number was constantly calling her.
“Pick your call”.
Lily said.