CHAPTER 8: Reputation

Gerald opened his mouth and found nothing in it.

The courtyard held its breath again. Vincent waited with the patience of a man at a good restaurant, and when no answer came he went on in the same easy voice.

"You want me to pretend. Send her upstairs, tell the press it was nerves, forget the whole thing. Is that the shape of it?"

"We're trying to protect everyone,"

Celeste said.

"From what, exactly? Shame?"

He tilted his head.

"You came to my home with a camera crew and told the city I'd stolen a bride. You've been shouting for twenty minutes. And now you're concerned about shame."

"Think of your reputation,"

Gerald said, low and urgent. He stepped closer, and one trembling hand rose as if to grip Vincent's sleeve before it thought better of it.

"Think about what you've built. Your father left you a name and you turned it into an empire. Twenty years of work. Are you going to let one little girl drag it through the mud?"

"One little girl,"

Vincent said.

Vivian felt her spine straighten of its own accord.

"She's young, she's hysterical, she'll wake up tomorrow and be sorry,"

Gerald pushed on.

"You don't need this. A scandal like this, the papers, the commissioners, you know how fast they turn. You have a reputation to protect."

"Do I?"

"You do."

"Then let me ask you something, since you're so concerned about my reputation."

Vincent's tone didn't sharpen. It simply got quieter, and the reporters leaned forward to catch it.

"Are you worried about my name, Gerald, or are you worried about your balance sheet?"

Gerald's face twitched.

"Because I've read your quarterly filings. Eleven million in debt, and a creditor who isn't patient. A bride would have fixed that quite nicely. Wouldn't she?"

Vincent did not blink.

"Marsh Industrial has been on its knees for two years. Selling Vivian was supposed to put it back on its feet."

"You're one to talk about debts."

Celeste's composure cracked at last, and what was underneath it was thin and shrill.

"Everyone knows where your money comes from, Vincent. Everyone knows what moves through your warehouses at night. You sit there lecturing us about morality in a house with blood in the corridor."

"Celeste,"

Gerald warned.

"No, I will say it. Our son is a good boy who made a mistake, and you are a criminal. A criminal. And you think you can stand there and judge us?"

"I've never claimed to be anything else."

Vincent turned his head toward her with real, unhurried interest.

"That's the difference between us. I don't smile at people while I sell them. I tell them what I am, and they decide."

A reporter somewhere near the gate said, quietly,

"Did he just admit it?"

And a second voice answered,

"I don't think he cares."

Vivian looked at him. He was not performing, she realized. He was simply refusing to lie, in a courtyard full of people who had come to watch him do exactly that, and the honesty of it was more frightening to the Marshes than any threat.

Murmurs broke out across the courtyard like a flock taking off. Someone said "eleven million" very softly into a phone.

"That is not what we meant,"

Gerald said, too loud and too fast.

"Absolutely not. We care about our history. We care about the friendship. Vincent, we've known each other thirty years. Our families have been close for three generations."

"Have we?"

"Your father and mine. They built this city together. Don't you remember Lake Como? The summers? I held you on my shoulders when you were six years old."

His voice had begun to shake, and it was almost convincing, if one forgot everything he had done.

"We stood by each other in the old days. Is that nothing to you?"

For a moment Vincent looked past him, at nothing, at some long summer on a lake. Vivian felt his fingers tighten very slightly around hers. Then his eyes cleared.

"It's the only reason you're still breathing,"

He said.

The courtyard went absolutely still.

"Your father stood beside mine when it mattered, and my father repaid him for it. I'm a man who pays debts. That is the whole of what keeps you upright at this moment, Gerald."

His voice had dropped almost to a murmur.

"If it weren't for that, I would have ended you where you stand."

Celeste made a small sound. Gerald took one step back, and then another, and his heel missed the stair so that he had to catch the rail.

Vincent turned his back on them and faced the crowd.

"I hope you've all got what you came for."

Every lens swung to follow him.

"You wanted a story. You have one. This is private property, and I'm ordering every one of you to leave it. Effective immediately."

He paused.

"Anyone who's still on my land in two minutes will not get the chance to leave again."

Nobody moved.

Then a man in the second row, a short man with a press badge and a very pale face, said, to no one in particular,

"Have you all forgotten who he is?"

The silence changed.

"He kills without blinking,"

The man went on, and his voice rose.

"Everyone knows that. We just watched him say it. That's why we're here, isn't it? Marsh brought us here. It's a setup. He wants us in here so we can't..."

He shook his head, gripping his camera strap with both hands.

"I'm going. I'm not dying on a story."

That was all it took.

A producer shouted for the van. A cameraman dropped a tripod and left it on the gravel. A woman ran without her shoes. Engines coughed, headlights swung, and in under a minute the courtyard emptied in a spray of gravel and shouting, vans reversing into each other, doors slamming, a long skid on the drive.

The gates swung shut behind the last of them.

For a moment, the only sound was the fountain.

Dario came down the steps with two men at his shoulder. He said nothing to Vincent. He only looked, once, at the Marshes, and the look said that if any of them took a single step toward the house, no one would be there to film what followed.

"Any trouble at the gate?"

Vincent asked him.

"The last van tried to double back. We persuaded it."

"Good."

It was said so lightly that Vivian understood, with a small cold shift in her stomach, that the word persuaded had a longer history than she wanted to know. She filed it beside the stain in the east hall. She did not look away from it.

Vincent stood very still and let the noise die. Then he turned, and his free hand found Vivian's face, thumb brushing her cheekbone as if checking she was real.

"Are you all right?"

He asked, low.

"I'm shaking."

"You didn't look it."

"That's what's frightening."

Three figures were left on the gravel, and none of them was moving. Julian stood in front of his parents with his shoulders rigid, his suit still immaculate, and his eyes fixed on Vivian with an expression she had never seen on him. It was not anger. It was calculation, and it was ugly.

"Now that nobody's listening,"

Julian said,

"I want you to say it again."