chapter 10

Heir to Skyfall

Chapter 10 — Ex Marks the Spot

Alexander was moved out of the ICU on the third day.

A private room on the sixth floor — flowers from the board, flowers from people Lydia didn't know yet, flowers from Victor that were beautiful and meant nothing. Alexander sat up against the pillows looking diminished but sharp-eyed, and the first thing he said when she walked in was: "I watched the interview. You were better than I would have been."

"You trained me," she said. "Indirectly. Through decades of not being around."

He smiled, tired and real. "Sit down. Tell me about the board vote."

She told him. He listened without interrupting, which she was coming to recognize as his particular form of respect. When she finished he looked at the ceiling for a moment and then said, "Margaret has been protecting this company from Victor for six years. Pay attention to her."

"I am," she said. "I already called her this morning."

Something in his face settled — not surprise exactly, more like confirmation. He reached out and covered her hand with his. His grip was weaker than a week ago and they both pretended not to notice.

"Go rest," he said. "You've been here three days."

"So has Salvador."

"I know. I already told him the same thing. He ignored me too." A pause. "You're alike in that way."

Salvador's penthouse felt different in daylight — warmer, more lived-in. The river caught the afternoon sun through the floor-to-ceiling glass and threw long bright ribbons across the floor. Lydia had changed into borrowed clothes — a soft gray t-shirt of his that fell to her thighs, a pair of sweatpants rolled at the waist. She'd slept four hours and woken feeling almost human.

She was at the kitchen island eating toast when she heard the elevator.

Salvador came in carrying coffee and his phone to his ear, looking the way he always looked — calm, contained, moving with purpose. He set the coffee down, handed her a cup, said something short and final into the phone, and ended the call. He looked at her across the island with eyes that had gotten thoroughly used to seeing her in his kitchen, and she felt the warmth of that without saying anything about it.

His phone buzzed on the counter.

He glanced at it and his expression shifted — not much, but enough. He turned it face down. Picked up his coffee.

Lydia looked at the phone. Then at him. "Her again?"

He nodded, matter-of-fact. "She's been calling since the interview ran. Before that it was texts." He set his cup down. "I haven't responded."

"What does she want?"

"She wants what she thinks the situation might now be worth." He said it without heat. "That's how it worked with her. Everything was a calculation. Including me."

Lydia turned her cup in her hands. "What was her name?"

"Serena."

"Was she—" She stopped. Recalibrated. "How long were you together?"

"Eight months. Long enough to know what it was. Not long enough to make it complicated." He met her eyes. "I ended it because it was already over. You didn't break anything up. I want that to be clear."

"I know," she said.

"Do you?"

A beat. "I was worried for about forty-eight hours," she admitted. "When she was texting and I didn't know what you were going to do. I didn't like how much I cared."

"And now?"

"Now I care more. Which is worse and also somehow fine."

He looked at her for a moment with that particular expression — the one that was quiet and certain and made her feel like the most considered thing in the room. He pushed off the counter and came around the island.

The elevator dinged.

They both looked.

A woman stepped out — mid-thirties, striking, the kind of put-together that required daily maintenance. She was carrying a manila envelope and wearing the expression of someone who had rehearsed this entrance. Her eyes moved from Salvador to Lydia — taking in the borrowed t-shirt, the bare legs, the coffee cup, all of it — and she didn't flinch. She was too well-practiced for that.

"You changed the code," the woman said to Salvador. Not accusatory. Just noting a fact.

"Yes," he said. His voice was entirely level. "Serena, you need to leave."

"I just want five minutes." She held up the envelope. "I have photographs — us, from Barcelona, from the Christmas before last. I thought you might want them before I—"

"Leave them on the table or take them with you," he said. "Either way, you need to go now."

Serena's eyes moved back to Lydia. Something moved through them — calculation, mostly, with a thin wire of genuine feeling underneath it that she was working to keep from showing. "She's Alexander Voss's daughter," she said. "Do you understand what that means for you? For how this looks?"

"Serena."

"I'm just saying — I know you. I know how you think. And I know you don't do anything that doesn't serve—"

"That's enough." His voice dropped. Not louder — quieter, which was more effective. "Leave the envelope or don't. Close the elevator door behind you."

A long pause. Serena set the envelope on the table near the elevator with the careful precision of someone making sure the gesture was noticed. She looked at Salvador one more time, something complicated happening in her face that she kept mostly contained. Then she stepped back into the elevator.

The doors closed.

Lydia looked at the envelope on the table. She looked at Salvador. She was very aware of a hot, tight feeling in her chest that had been building since the elevator opened, and she knew what it was and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm annoyed," she said honestly. "Which is stupid, because she's gone, and you handled it, and I have no reason to be annoyed."

"You're allowed to be annoyed."

"I know I am. I'm annoyed that I'm annoyed." She set her coffee cup down with slightly more force than necessary. "I don't like the way she looked at you."

He crossed the kitchen in two steps and backed her gently against the island, hands settling at her hips, his body warm and solid and entirely focused on her. His eyes held hers — no deflection, no amusement at her expense, just present.

"Look at me," he said, though she already was. "There is nothing there. There hasn't been since the night I met you. Not a question, not a hesitation, nothing." His thumbs made slow circles against her hip bones through the fabric of his t-shirt. "You're the only person I want in this space."

She felt the annoyance drain out of her and something better replace it.

She reached up and pulled him down by his collar and kissed him — and he kissed her back, thorough and unhurried, his hands tightening at her hips, pulling her flush against the counter edge until she gasped against his mouth. His hand slid beneath the hem of the t-shirt, palm against her bare thigh, moving up with devastating patience while his mouth worked her throat—

Her legs stopped working in any useful sense.

When it was over she was breathing against his shoulder, fingers still twisted in his shirt, his forehead dropped against hers, both of them unsteady in the afternoon light.

"Okay," she managed. "I'm not annoyed anymore."

He exhaled against her hair — almost a laugh, not quite. "Good."

Her phone rang at seven that evening. An unknown number. She answered out of habit.

A woman's voice. Crisp, formal, the voice of someone accustomed to delivering unpleasant information without inflection.

"Ms. Voss. My name is Carolyn Deeds. I represent Elena Santa. My client has asked me to inform you that she will be filing a claim against the Skyfall estate on the grounds of a contractual promise made to her in the original Santa-Voss marriage agreement — a promise she believes entitles her to a significant portion of company assets and succession rights." A pause. "Ms. Santa intends to file by end of week. I thought you should have advance notice."

The line went quiet, waiting.

Lydia looked at the river through the glass — dark now, city lights smearing across it in long gold lines.

"Thank you for the notice," she said evenly. "My lawyers will be in touch."

She ended the call and turned to find Salvador already watching her from across the room.

"Elena," she said. "She's filing a claim. Something about the original marriage contract."

His eyes were steady but dark. "I know that contract," he said. "I've read every document in Alexander's files. Whatever she's claiming, she's reaching." A pause. "But reaching can still cost time and money and attention we don't have."

"Then we deal with it." She set her phone face down. "Tomorrow. Tonight I'd like to eat something and pretend the world is slightly smaller than it is."

He looked at her. "I cook," he said. "If you want."

She blinked. "Seriously?"

"Pasta. Nothing elaborate." He was already moving toward the kitchen. "Sit down."

She sat at the island and watched him cook and felt the tight coil of the last four days begin, very slightly, to loosen.

Elena Santa's lawyers could wait until morning.