CHAPTER FOUR

THREE YEARS LATER

Part One

Three years later, the woman who used to stand outside Alexander Vale's door waiting for instructions had a door of her own.

It was glass, like his had been, and behind it Mia Carter stood at a wall of windows with her arms crossed, watching Manhattan wake. Carter & Co. took up an entire floor of a building she could once only afford to look at from the sidewalk. Behind her desk, in brushed brass, hung the company's monogram, a tall C she had chosen herself and paid for with the first real profit she ever made. Her dark-brown hair fell loose over a cream blouse. She no longer dressed to be overlooked.

"You're supposed to be in the conference room."

Ethan Reed stood in the doorway, a mug in one hand and an easy smile on his face. He was tall and sunburned from a weekend she hadn't taken, with the kind of calm that made investors relax the second he walked into a room.

"I'm early," she said.

"You're always early. I came to make sure you'd slept."

"I slept."

"Mia. You answered my email at three this morning."

She took the folder off her desk and walked past him. "The Meridian numbers needed another look."

"The Meridian numbers are perfect. They were perfect last week." He fell into step beside her. "You haven't taken a full weekend in eight months."

"I'll take one when the contract is signed."

"You said that about the last contract."

She didn't answer. She had never been able to explain, even to him, that the work was not really about the contract. Somewhere under all the spreadsheets was a voice that had been twenty-four years old and standing in a lounge full of men, and it still wanted proof. She just never seemed to have enough.

The investors stood when she entered the conference room. She took the seat at the head of the table and spoke for an hour, answering every question before it was finished, listening when someone disagreed, never raising her voice. She didn't need to. She knew her business the way she had once known one man's moods.

When it was over, the investors left satisfied. Ethan stayed behind, leaning against the table.

"You were good in there."

"I was supposed to be."

"You were more than good." He hesitated. "Three years ago you were working for Alexander Vale."

She closed the folder carefully. "Yes."

"You never talk about him."

"There isn't much to say."

"I believe you," Ethan said, in the tone of a man who didn't.

Her lunch with Thomas Bennett was at one. Bennett ran a firm three times her size and had spent two years trying to buy her out. He ordered for the table, then leaned back with a patient smile.

"The offer's improved, Ms. Carter. It's generous."

"It's very generous. We're not selling."

"You're twenty-seven." He said it kindly, which made it worse. "Nobody builds something like this alone. Sooner or later, you'll want someone to share the weight."

The word landed on her like a hand on an old bruise. Nobody. She kept her fork steady and her face pleasant.

"I'm not alone, Mr. Bennett. I have a very good team." She smiled. "But I'll build the rest myself."

He laughed, delighted, as though she'd made a joke. She paid the bill before he could.

,

Forty blocks away, at the top of Vale Tower, Alexander stood in front of his wall of glass with the city spread beneath him like a map he had drawn himself.

He wore a dark gray suit. The silver watch sat perfectly against his wrist. His face gave nothing away, which was exactly the way he liked it, and exactly the way everyone expected Alexander Vale to look.

"Mr. Vale." His assistant stood at the door. "Julian Pryce is here about the quarterly review."

Julian Pryce, his chief financial officer, came in with a leather folder held in front of him like a shield. He was sweating slightly. Alexander noticed this the way he noticed the weather.

"The numbers on the Singapore transfers," Pryce began. "There are a few items I'd like to go over before the board sees them. Just some irregularities,"

"Are they your irregularities?"

"No, sir, but,"

"Then bring them to me when you know what they are." Alexander didn't turn from the window. "I pay you to know."

"Yes, sir." Pryce lingered a second too long. Then he left, and the door closed softly behind him.

Alexander returned to his desk. He didn't think about the man's face again. Later he would remember it very clearly.

The door opened without a knock. Only one person in the world entered his office that way.

"You're standing in the light like a man in a portrait," Richard Vale said. "It was always your worst habit."

His father was seventy, silver-haired, in a coat that cost more than most cars, and he moved through the room as if he'd designed it. He lowered himself into the chair across from the desk. His eyes went to the photograph beside the lamp: Alexander and Victoria Sterling at a charity gala, her hand resting on his sleeve.

"The Sterling girl."

"Her name is Victoria."

"Good family. Better connections." Richard tapped the arm of the chair. "I trust the wedding is on schedule."

"It's on schedule."

"I always liked that about you. You do the sensible thing." His pale eyes lifted. "Whatever became of that girl who brought your coffee?"

Alexander's hand stilled on the desk. "She left."

"Good." His father smiled thinly. "People like that cling. You were wise to be rid of her."

He said it as though it had been entirely Alexander's decision, and the strange part was how true it sounded. Alexander said nothing. His thumb moved along the edge of his watch, and he made it stop.