The Negotiation

Damien did not go back to his hotel immediately.

He sat in his car outside Aria's house for twenty minutes, staring at the door, trying to decide whether he was the kind of man who left when a woman asked him to leave.

He started the car. He drove away.

He was trying. That was the only currency he had left with her, and he was not going to spend it on small rebellions.

Back at the Claridge's, he sat at the desk in his suite at 11 p.m. and emailed Marcus Greer back.

"Give me a number."

The reply came thirty seconds later. Marcus had been waiting for the email.

"Two million. Cash. Untraceable. Forty-eight hours."

Damien closed his eyes.

Two million was not about money. Marcus knew Damien could write a two-million-dollar check in his sleep. Two million was the amount of money a desperate man asks for when he wants to say, " You owe me this for ruining my life. The amount itself was an insult as much as a price tag.

Damien thought for a long time.

Then he did something he had not done in three years of marriage and three years of divorce combined.

He called his mother.

Elena picked up on the second ring.

"Damien. It is four in the morning here."

"I know. I am sorry. I need help."

Elena did not ask any questions. She just said, "Tell me."

He told her. Marcus. The photograph. The demand. Aria's face when he had shown her the image.

Elena was silent for a long moment.

"Damien. Listen to me carefully. You are going to pay him."

"But he will come back."

"He will not come back. Because I am going to handle that part. You pay him, you get the photograph and every copy he claims to have, and then I am going to make sure Marcus Greer never speaks another word against this family for the rest of his life."

"Mother. What are you going to do."

"Do not ask me that."

"Elena."

"Damien. I have lived in New York for sixty three years. My father bought our building when this city was still half cornfields. I know things about Marcus Greer that Marcus Greer does not know I know. Do you understand what I am saying?"

"I understand."

"Then pay him. And wire transfer the money from an account that will not tie back to Aria. And get every single digital copy of that photograph scrubbed from his devices tonight. I will take care of the rest by Friday."

"Mother."

"Yes."

"Thank you."

"You are my son. You are finally acting like a man. It is the least I can do."

She hung up.

Damien sat at the desk and stared at the wall for a long time.

Then he wrote back to Marcus.

"You will have the two million in forty-eight hours. In exchange, I want every copy of the photograph. Every file. Every device. Every backup. My team will verify. If anything surfaces after this transaction, the agreement is void, and I will personally make sure you are prosecuted for extortion in a country where you will not enjoy the jails. Reply yes or no."

Marcus replied yes in under a minute.

Damien sent the signed agreement. Sent the banking instructions. Closed the laptop.

Then he picked up his phone and sent Aria one text.

"It is handled. You do not have to think about it again. My mother is going to finish what I started."

Three minutes later, Aria wrote back.

"Come back tomorrow for breakfast. Luna asked about you."

He read the message three times.

Then he put the phone face down on the desk and let himself smile, for the first time in a week, at a ceiling in an empty hotel room in a country where his wife was finally letting him inside her front door.

He did not sleep that night either.

He lay on top of the duvet in a suit he had not bothered to take off, and he stared at the ceiling, and he thought about Luna climbing onto his lap at the playground. The weight of her small body. The way her hair had smelled. The absolute trust with which she had handed him a piece of dirty playground rock and asked him to keep it safe in his pocket, and the way he had accepted the responsibility as if it were the most important thing anyone had ever given him, which, in that moment, it had been.

The rock was still in his pocket.

He took it out. Set it on the bedside table.

Tomorrow he would have breakfast with his daughter. He did not know what was going to happen after that. But he knew he was going to show up. And he knew that showing up, day after day, was the only thing he had left that meant anything.

He closed his eyes.

He did not sleep.

But he rested.