“Vivian.” He stepped closer, palms open, as though approaching a frightened animal. “My father’s firm is in freefall. Partners are panicking. Clients are calling. This deal—he has built everything around this deal.”
Everything.
The word echoed inside me.
Everything around a deal. Nothing around decency.
I stood and moved to the windows, more for my own sake than his. Forty-seven floors below, traffic streamed through the avenues, reduced by distance to neat mechanical purpose. It is easier to think when people become patterns.
“Do you know,” I said, “what I wanted when I met you?”
Behind me, he was quiet.
“I wanted one ordinary thing. One honest thing. A man who saw me before he saw what people say I represent. I wanted to be known outside headlines and valuation models and lists of powerful women who wear dark suits and never smile in photographs. I thought maybe, with you, I could be.”
“You were,” he said quickly. “You are.”
I turned.
“No, Derek. I was tolerated until my lack of pedigree became inconvenient.”
His face hardened at that, some remnant of family instinct rising in defense. “That’s not true.”
“Then what is true?”