Chapter 5: Five Emails

Grant's POV

By Monday morning, I had emailed Ledger five times.

Ledger had answered once, on Friday night. Five words. Ledger is no longer available.

I treated it as a negotiation. Everyone has a number. On Saturday I offered double. On Sunday night I attached the full Brooks contract and wrote: Review this immediately. Name any price.

Nothing came back.

At eleven o'clock I sat at the head of the boardroom table on the fifty-first floor. Twelve board members waited for me to announce that the Brooks Building belonged to Ellison Group.

My mother had taken the chair at the far end. Margaret Ellison, sixty, in the pearls my father had bought her. Thirty years on this board, and she watched me with the same cold boredom she always had.

"Well, Grant?"

"The Brooks family signs today. Our lawyers are finishing the closing papers."

As far as I knew, that was true. For years Ledger had told me which parts of a contract were dangerous and which were safe. I had stopped reading the details myself.

The Brooks Building was forty floors of prime Midtown, priced at three hundred million. For two months I had promised the board it would be our biggest win of the year.

Lease renewals took twenty minutes. Spending approvals took twenty more. I checked my phone every five minutes. By the door, Owen held his tablet and looked as if he hadn't slept.

At ten past twelve, the tablet chimed. Owen read it, and his shoulders went stiff.

"Sir, it's the Brooks family's lawyer. She says it's urgent."

"Put her on speaker."

I wanted the board to hear it. I wanted my mother to hear it.

The lawyer's voice filled the room, crisp and polite. "Mr. Ellison, the Brooks family has accepted another offer."

Nobody spoke.

"That's impossible. We have a signed agreement."

"You had an agreement that depended on your deposit arriving by noon today. Your wire reached our account at seven minutes past twelve. That released the family from the contract, and a buyer from Chicago had his money ready at eleven."

"There was no noon deadline."

"Page nine, Mr. Ellison. Good day."

The line clicked off.

Twelve pairs of eyes turned to my end of the table. A silver pen slipped from someone's fingers and rattled across the wood.

I swiped to page nine on my tablet.

Three lines of small print sat between the building maintenance rules and the window-cleaning insurance. The buyer's deposit must be received by 12:00 p.m. on Monday, or this agreement ends immediately.

Ledger would have caught it. Before every big closing, an email arrived at three in the morning with the dangerous page marked in red. I had counted on those emails like sunrise.

Then I noticed the board wasn't looking at me anymore. They were looking at my mother.

She sat with her back straight. Her hand had gone to her pearls, and it was shaking. I had never seen my mother's hand shake. She stared out at the rain with the face of a woman who had been warned yesterday and had laughed.

"Your father," she said softly, "never lost a building."

She picked up her handbag and walked out. Three board members got up and followed her.

My father spent my whole childhood calling Sloane his heir and me "the spare." He called it a joke. Only Sloane laughed.

I stayed in my chair until the room was empty.

By seven that evening, the city below was dark except for office windows.

I sat in my office on the fifty-second floor and didn't turn on the lamps. On the windowsill stood the white orchid Juno had given me on our anniversary. It was dead. Yellow leaves hung over the side of the pot.

She used to water it every time she came in. She hadn't been to the office in almost a year.

I touched the dry soil with one finger.

Owen knocked twice and came in with a paper takeout bag. "You haven't eaten all day, sir."

"Put it on the desk."

He set it down. His eyes stayed on the dead plant a moment too long.

"Something else, Owen?"

"No, sir." He backed to the door. "Good night."

I didn't touch the food.

At eight-thirty, the door swung open again. Sloane never knocked.

My sister was thirty-one, two years younger than my thirty-three, and she ran the company's money. Black skirt suit, dark bob sharp against her jaw, red lipstick bright under the ceiling lights. She walked in smiling. Sloane always smiled when somebody else was bleeding.

"I heard about Brooks." She perched on the corner of my desk. "Mother's already on the phone with her club." She laughed.

"I can imagine."

"A buyer from Chicago. How messy." She tilted her head. "Where was your brilliant adviser?"

"Ledger is handling other matters."

"Ledger walked away, Grant. It's all over your face." She unzipped her leather bag. "Speaking of people who walked away."

She slid a thick brown envelope across the desk.

"What is this?"

"Open it."

Six glossy photographs, shot from across a wet street early that morning. An old brick warehouse with tall steel windows and a black door. A brass sign: SAYER CAPITAL.

In every frame, the same woman stood outside the door. Plain dark gray suit. Brown hair pinned up. A black leather bag on her shoulder.

Juno.

"I hired a private investigator the minute you handed her the papers," Sloane said, pleased with herself. "Angry ex-wives are so easy to predict."

I laid the photos side by side. In the last one, the door was open and Juno was stepping inside.

"Ronan Sayer." My voice came out flat.

"The man who'd happily burn this company to the ground." Her smile widened. "Three days after you let her go, your quiet little wife walks into his building. My man's watched that door all day. It's half past eight and she still hasn't come out."

"Juno knows nothing about real estate."

"Then why did his whole staff walk out two minutes after she walked in?" Sloane asked. "My man counted twenty. They stood at a coffee cart in the cold for twenty minutes while your wife stayed inside alone with Ronan Sayer. Nobody empties an office for a woman who knows nothing about real estate."

She stood and smoothed her skirt. At the door, she stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back. It was the happiest smile I had seen on her in years.

"She's working for him, Grant. Or she's sleeping with him." She opened the door. "Honestly, I hope it's both."