Chapter 7

Aya’s POV

“You fainted in my arms,” said Ezra. “I thought you should know.”

“I remember.”

“Do you?”

“Some of it.” I pushed myself up against the pillows. The room was warm and quiet, with a gold afternoon lying across the bed. Someone had taken off my shoes. Someone had pulled a soft gray blanket over my knees. “I remember the bank. I remember Ilana. I remember you coming through the door like a man in a film.”

“I’m not proud of that.”

“It was a very good entrance.”

He almost smiled.

He stood at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets and his sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked wrecked. His hair was ruffled. His jaw was dark with stubble, and his gray eyes had the flat, sleepless shine of a man who’d been staring at a screen too long.

He kept looking at my stomach.

He didn’t mean to. I saw him catch himself, every time. His gaze would dip, and jerk back up, and his hand would move in his pocket, as if he were holding on to a coin.

Did he know?

I pressed my palm flat against my middle and told myself he couldn’t.

“Where’s Liron?”

“Gone to your friend’s flat. To pack your things. My driver’s with her.” He came around the bed and set a tray on the table. Soup. Toast. A glass of orange juice. “The doctor says you’re to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know. Eat anyway.”

I looked at the tray. At the neat triangle of toast, the way he’d cut off the crusts.

“You cut the crusts.”

“You looked like a person who’d want that.”

I laughed, and it cracked, and I put my hand over my mouth. For a moment I couldn’t do anything at all.

He waited. He didn’t touch me. He just stood there while I cried, quietly, into my own fingers, with a patience I’d never seen in a man before.

When I was done, he handed me a napkin.

“I want to ask you a favor,” I said.

“Ask.”

“Not yet. Let me eat first.”

I ate. The soup was chicken and ginger. It tasted like every good thing anyone had ever done for me. He sat in a chair by the window and read on his phone, or pretended to, and I ate every drop.

When I’d finished, I set the spoon down.

“The Sterlings are going to come after me,” I said.

“Yes.”

“They’ll come after the tape. And the notebook. And the perfume.” I swallowed. “And they know about the, they know I’m not alone in this.”

His hand went still.

“Ilana threatened me. In the bank. I think she meant it.” I made myself look at him. “I can’t fight them. Not alone. I have eleven hundred dollars and a friend with a fish van. They have money and lawyers and a police chief who plays golf with Elliot.”

“You don’t have to fight them alone.”

“I know. That’s why I’m going to ask you a stupid thing.”

“Nothing you say is stupid.”

“Ezra.” I took a breath. “Marry me.”

The room went absolutely still.

Not a muscle moved in his face. He looked at me for a long time. The clock on the wall ticked. Outside, a gull cried over the lake.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not for real. For business.” The words came out in a rush. “A contract. Six months, maybe a year. I need a name they can’t touch. If I’m your wife, they can’t have me arrested, or evicted, or thrown out of the city. They can’t say I’m a nobody. And you’re buying Sterling, and your board must be nervous, a bachelor with a hostile takeover, and I can help. I know that company better than anyone alive. I know every formula. I’ll be your nose. Your consultant. Your, your ally.”

“Aya.”

“I’m not asking for money. I’ll sign anything. I only need a year.” My voice broke. “I need somewhere to be safe.”

He said nothing.

I couldn’t stop talking. “You were the only person who saw that video and didn’t ask me for anything. Not a favor. Not a reward. You said, Take the drive. Use it however you like. Nobody’s ever said that to me. So I thought, if I’m going to ask a stranger, if I’m going to be stupid, I’d rather it was someone who...”

“Yes.”

I stopped.

“Yes,” said Ezra.

“You haven’t heard the terms.”

“I don’t need to.”

“That’s very reckless.”

“I’m rarely reckless.” He stood. “I’ll have conditions.”

“Of course.”

“One. You live here. Under my roof, with my security, until this is finished. Two. You go nowhere alone. Not to the bank, not to the corner shop, not to the pharmacy. Three.” He looked at me. “No more secrets. Between us. Anything either of us knows, the other knows.”

My heart gave a heavy thump.

“That’s a lot of conditions.”

“I’m a businessman.”

“And if I have one secret I can’t tell yet?”

“Then you tell me you have one.” His voice was very soft. “And when you’re ready, you tell me what it is.”

I stared at him.

I’ve thought since that he must have known. He must have stood there, in the gold light, and looked at me with all the patience in the world, and let me lie.

“Deal,” I said.

He held out his hand. I took it. His palm was warm and dry and the grip was gentle. A small, sharp current ran up my arm, just as it had in a rainy bar five weeks before.

“I’ll have Idan draw up the contract tonight,” he said.

“So fast.”

“I’ve been told I’m efficient.” He let go of my hand, and turned to the door, and stopped. “I’ll go and find you a pen.”

“There’s one in my bag.”

“Then use it.”

He went out.

I sat back against the pillows. I was shaking. I had asked a billionaire to marry me. I had lied to him by omission. I was three floors above a lake with a life growing inside me and nothing to my name but a stack of old paper and a bottle of poisoned perfume.

I reached for my bag.

I meant to find the pen. But the bag slid, and the notebook fell out, and with it a small stiff rectangle that skittered across the floor.

The photograph.

I bent to pick it up. Danny and me, the day we finished it. D.B.

I was still holding it when I heard the door.

Ezra came in with a folded piece of paper and a fountain pen. And a worn brown leather wallet fell out of his jacket as he crossed the room, its edges gone soft with age. It hit the floor and split, and a small folded paper slid out.

He dived for it.

I was faster. I don’t know why. I put out a foot and covered it.

“Aya.”

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“You went white.”

“Give me that.”

I bent. I picked it up. It was an old photograph, creased in four places and soft as cloth. I unfolded it.

A man and a woman in white lab coats stood at a crowded workbench, both laughing, both with their sleeves rolled up. The woman had a red scarf in her hair. The man had a wide grin and a pair of goggles pushed up on his forehead.

I looked at the picture in my left hand.

I looked at the picture in my right.

They were the same photograph.

Two prints of the same day. The same bench. The same two people, laughing, with their sleeves rolled.

“That’s my mother,” I whispered.

Ezra shut his eyes.

“Who is that man?”

He didn’t answer.

“Ezra.”

“My father,” he said. “Daniel Blackwell.”

The floor tipped under my feet.

D.B. Danny. My mother’s friend. The man who built Neroli Dusk beside her. The man Elliot paid with a check that bounced.

“You knew,” I said.

“Aya.”

“You knew who I was. In the bar. At five a.m. You didn’t leave because of my badge. You left because you looked at my name and knew who my mother was.”

“Yes.”

“And you never said.”

“I was going to.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

My eyes burned. “Five weeks ago you sat there and listened to me talk about my mother. About her death. About how nobody would answer my questions. And you knew.” My voice cracked. “You knew, and you let me.”

“I didn’t know who you were until the badge.”

“That’s not...”

“I swear to you...”

“Don’t you dare swear.” I stuffed both photographs into my bag and hauled it onto my shoulder. My hands were trembling so hard I dropped the pen. “I’m leaving.”

“Aya. You can’t.”

“Watch me.”

“You’re not safe.”

“I’ve been unsafe my whole life.”

“You’re not leaving,” said Ezra, “not while you’re carrying my child.”

I stopped.

Everything in me went still. The air. The room. My heart.

He stood in the middle of the floor, gray-faced, with the wallet in his hand. He didn’t move. He didn’t look away.

“Five weeks,” he said quietly. “I counted.”