CHAPTER 189: The Second Person

POV: Avalon Pierce

The photograph was grainy.

Taken from a distance, Philip Cross clearly tried not to be seen while he took it, the theatre lights catching the subject’s face at an angle that made identification difficult but not impossible.

 Not impossible because Avalon had looked at this face across a boardroom table for four years.

“Daniel Reyes,” he said.

“Yes,” Selene said.

“He was at the theatre,” Avalon said. “After, I removed him from the board.”

“Three days after,” Selene said.

“He wasn’t there for the ceremony,” Avalon said. “He knew about Sandra Cole and he sent her.”

Selene looked at him.

“He initiated the Vantara approach,” she said slowly. “He gave them the timing around Elena’s birth and when that failed he found another angle.”

“Sandra Cole,” Avalon said. “The medical records, blackmail.”

“He’s been running two strategies simultaneously,” Selene said. “Vantara for the company. Sandra for the foundation.”

“And when Vantara failed publicly and Sandra withdrew,” Avalon said. “He came to the theatre to see if there was anything salvageable and to see what Rachel had.”

“He’s not done,” Selene said.

“No,” Avalon said. “He’s not.”

He called Margaret from the study with the door closed.

Not because he was keeping it from Selene but because Elena had just settled and the study was the furthest room from the bassinet and he needed to think clearly without monitoring the baby monitor simultaneously.

“Daniel Reyes was at the Herbst Theatre the night of the ceremony,” he said when Margaret answered. “Philip Cross has a photograph. I need to know every connection between Daniel and Sandra Cole. The bank records if you can get them and communication logs. Anything and everything.”

“How did you get Philip Cross’s photographs?” Margaret said.

“Patricia Ruiz,” he said.

There was a pause .

“Patricia hired him to protect you,” Margaret said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And Cross found Daniel at the theatre,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Avalon, if  Daniel coordinated the Sandra Cole blackmail attempt, that's a criminal conspiracy. That’s not a board removal situation, it’s simply federal charges.”

“I know,” he said.

“You’d need to go to Kim’s office,” she said. “David Kim needs to make it official.”

“I know,” he said again.

“Do you want to do that?” she said. “Because once we go to Kim it becomes something neither of us controls anymore.”

He looked at the study wall, at his father’s photograph, Nene young with Robert Laine’s hand at her back and at the small framed print.

Robert. Elena. Lorraine.

“My daughter is six weeks old,” he said. “Someone used her dead sister’s medical records to try to extort her mother. Yes, I want to go to Kim.”

Margaret was quiet for a moment.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll have everything ready.”

He came back to the kitchen.

Selene was at the counter feeding Elena, looking at him with the expression she wore when she’d already worked through most of the implications of a situation and was waiting for him to catch up.

“David Kim,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “What time?”

“9 AM,” he said. “Margaret will have everything ready.”

She nodded and looked at Elena.

“He used her,” Selene said. 

“Yes,” he said.

“Both of them,” she said. “Elena and our daughter. He used both of them.”

“Yes,” he said.

She was quiet for a moment.

“I want to be in that meeting with Kim,” she said. 

“Of course,” he said.

“Not as your wife but as the person he tried to use,” she said. 

“I know the difference,” he said.

She looked at him.

“I know you do,” she said.

Maya called at seven.

He answered because Selene was settling Elena and he was closest to the phone.

“I need to tell you something,” Maya said. “And I need you to not immediately tell Selene in that way you have where you decide she needs to know everything in the next thirty seconds.”

“What way?” he said.

“The way,” Maya said. “You know the way.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Kofi had lunch with Daniel Reyes two weeks ago,” Maya said. “Before any of this. Daniel reached out to him about a potential architecture project for an investor group.” She paused. “Kofi turned it down. Immediately. He thought it was just a business approach. He told me tonight after I showed him the photograph.”

Avalon was quiet.

“Kofi didn’t know,” Maya said quickly. “He genuinely didn’t know who Daniel was to you by then. He’d heard the name but not connected it.”

“I know Kofi didn’t know,” Avalon said.

“He feels terrible,” Maya said.

“He shouldn’t,” Avalon said.

“Tell him that,” Maya said. “He respects you, your opinion matters to him.”

“Put him on,” Avalon said.

A pause.

Then Kofi’s voice.

“Avalon,” Kofi said. “I should have—”

“You didn’t know,” Avalon said. “You turned it down immediately and that’s the end of it.”

“It’s not—”

“Kofi,” Avalon said. “You turned it down, that’s  who you are. That’s always who you’ve been.” He paused. “Daniel Reyes approached you because he was looking for leverage and you gave him nothing. That’s the whole story.”

Silence.

“Okay,” Kofi said quietly.

“Okay,” Avalon agreed.

He hung up and stood in the kitchen for a moment before Selene appeared in the doorway.

“Maya,” she said. 

“And Kofi,” he said.

“Tell me,” she said.

He told her.

When he finished she said: “Daniel approached Kofi.”

“And Kofi turned him down immediately,” Avalon said.

“Of course he did,” Selene said.

She came and stood beside him at the counter.

“He’s been building this for months,” she said. “Since before the board removal and maybe before Vantara. This wasn’t impulsive.”

“No,” Avalon said.

“He’s been patient,” she said. “Methodical.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Which means there are things we still don’t know,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Kim’s office tomorrow,” she said.

“Avalon,” she said.

“Yes.”

“After Kim’s office,” she said. “After all of it. I want one evening that’s just us. No foundation, Nexus, Daniel Reyes or anything at all.”

He looked at her.

“Elena counts as something,” he said.

“Elena is not something,” she said. “Elena is everything. She’s the baseline.”

He smiled.

“Okay, one evening,” he said. “After Kim.”

“Promise me,” she said.

“I promise,” he said.

She looked at him for a moment.

Then: “She’s asleep. Right now. Actually asleep.”

He looked at her.

“Margaret needs—” he started.

“Margaret can wait,” she said.

He looked at her.

At this woman who had fourteen pages at five in the morning and a green Lagos dress and the real laugh he’d once said he couldn’t remember and would never stop being undone by.

“Margaret can wait,” he agreed.