Chapter 8
The suite's main room had gone quiet again except for the heat ticking in the vents. He stood by the windows with his back to the skyline, and I sat on the edge of the couch where I'd been since we came back from the bedroom hallway. The whiskey glass was still on the low table between us, untouched since he'd poured it before I left for the call. The deadline my mom's voice had put on the night was still ringing in my ears. Eight a.m. The payment had to clear by eight a.m. or the hospital business office would move her to the county list.
He didn't look at me when he started talking.
"You think I asked that question because I wanted a dirty answer," he said.
I watched his reflection in the glass. "I didn't think about why you asked it. You asked it."
"I asked it because I needed to know if you lie when you're cornered," he said. He turned then. "You came up here for twenty-five thousand dollars. You said it was for a debt. A lot of people come up here with a story. I have people who check those stories. Your mother. Mercy General. The second mortgage. All true. But the rest - whether you'd tell the truth about yourself when it cost you something - that I had to hear from you."
The snow kept falling past the tower. The crystal decanters on the bar caught the light and threw it across the ceiling.
"So virginity was a test," I said.
"It was leverage," he said. "If you'd lied and said yes to make yourself more valuable, or lied and said no to make yourself less complicated, I would have known what kind of deal I was making. Honesty is expensive up here, Miss Merson. Most people can't afford it."
I picked up the whiskey glass. The amber moved. I didn't drink.
"Not after tonight," I said, repeating my own line back to him. My voice sounded smaller than it had in the boardroom. "You heard that like I was handing something over. Like you won something before you even touched me."
"You were," he said.
"No," I said. I set the glass down harder than I meant to and whiskey jumped against the side. "I wasn't surrendering. I was deciding. There's a difference and you don't get to rewrite it. I said not after tonight because I decided tonight was when I stopped letting other people decide what my life is worth. Not because you asked. I would have said it if you'd asked me what time it was."
He stared at me for a second, then a short breath came out of him that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Agency," he said.
"Yes."
"You think that word protects you."
"I think it's the only thing in this room that's actually mine," I said. "You have the tower and the guards and the money I need. I have the choice to be here. If you take that and call it surrender, then we don't have a deal."
He walked to the couch and sat down, not close enough to touch me, but close enough that I could smell his cologne and the wool of his jacket. He reached for the whiskey glass, lifted it, and then set it back down without drinking, his thumb on the cut crystal.
"You want me to say the question was about control," he said quietly. "It was. I wanted to see if you'd let me name you."
"And did I?"
"No," he said. "You named yourself."
The room felt warmer. The traffic sixteen floors down was a low hum through the glass.
For a long moment neither of us spoke. The deadline sat between us like a third person. I thought about the business office opening at seven, about my mom waking up in that bed with the plastic rail, about the check I still didn't have.
Then I asked him.
"Are you married?"
His hand stopped on the glass. His eyes came up to mine and stayed there. I hadn't planned the question, but once it was out I realized it was the same shape as his - invasive, personal, a test of whether he'd lie when it cost him.
He didn't answer right away. I heard him breathe in through his nose.
"No," he said finally. "Not anymore. Divorced. Two years."
"Do you have kids?" I asked.
"No."
"Did you love her?"
That one landed. His jaw tightened the way it had in the boardroom when his smile faded. He looked away toward the windows, then back.
"Yes," he said. "That was the problem."
I nodded. I didn't feel sorry for him, not exactly, but the balance had shifted. He'd asked me if I was still a virgin in front of two men who worked for him. I'd asked him if he'd loved his wife and made him answer alone in a room where no one could protect him.
We were even for about thirty seconds.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "Is there anything else you want to ask before we decide what happens next?"
I looked at the whiskey glass again, at the two decanters behind it, at the snow-blurred skyline that hadn't changed since I'd walked in hours ago. My hands were steady now.
May you like
"Yes," I said. "What happens if I say no tonight and still need the money in the morning?"
He held my gaze and didn't look away. That was his answer before he spoke.
