by Amelia Wilde
“The club on Fifth.”
He nods, and pulls away from the curb without another word.
It’s the same club I took O’Connor too, and it’s the only place I can think of in this godforsaken moment where I can be with other people and not be bothered.
My mind is still reeling when I step out of the Town Car into the evening glow. This is the kind of light that normally makes New York City look romantic, but right now it makes my stomach turn. The dark interior of the club is where I need to be right now.
The woman behind the desk in the small lobby smiles at me, understated, not the overdone attitude of hostesses at the public restaurants. They’re paid to be this way, paid to know the patrons but never reveal them to others unless specifically asked. “Good evening, Mr. Wilder. Would you like a private room, or will you be going to the lounge?”
Her question is a simple one, with a simple answer, and it’s like a cold drink in the desert. “The lounge.”
She dips her chin. “May I take your jacket?”
“No, that’s fine.”
Simple questions. Simple answers. The muscles in my back release some of the tension. Coming here is probably the first good idea I’ve had all day.
I follow the woman—Sarah, her name tag says, but I’m not convinced that any of the staff here use their real names to add another layer of secrecy, of exclusivity—into the lounge at the back of the building.
It could be any lounge, anywhere, and that’s what I’m looking for right now—a place that could be anywhere, a place where I haven’t had a fight with the only woman to captivate me like this in my life and walked out on her.
I sit in one of the low chairs near a window, order a whiskey, and lean back, letting the hum of the conversation in the room wash over me.
There are maybe six other people in here. We’re all in uniform, all in finely tailored suits, all obsessed with our money—you have to be, in order to be able to buy a membership here—and I laugh a little at that. Obsessed with our businesses, our money, and for what?
An image of my father flashes into my mind. So you don’t end up like him, that’s why.
The whiskey comes to the table and I drink more of it in one gulp than I should, then order a second. The burn settles me. The burn centers me. And finally, finally, my thoughts start to settle in.
I went too far with Vivienne, that much is clear, but I’m not sure if I went too far in being with her, or in the way I conducted myself at her apartment. Probably both. But the more I drink, the more I look out the window and force myself to think about this like an adult instead of a paranoid child in a rage, the more I think I’ve done what I had to do to save Wilder Enterprises.
Not that she was putting my business in imminent danger of collapse—no. But somewhere along the line, this would have happened; somewhere along the line, it would have become untenable to keep letting her intoxicate me, letting her drown me in what we were becoming.
I can’t even entertain the thought that what we were becoming was something incredible. I can’t, and then I do, and it’s like someone is punching me in the gut, reaching in through my rib cage and squeezing my heart with rough hands, squeezing it until it’s about ready to burst.
I order another whiskey.
And then, because I can’t think of any other thing to do, I pull out my phone and make a call.
Chris’s voice is startled to say the least. “Dominic?”
“I’m calling you this time, old friend.”
He hesitates. “Did you—what’s going on, man?”
“Remember that exclusive club that you hated?”
“Yes…”
“I’m here right now, and I look pathetic.” I spit out the last two words a little too loudly, drawing the attention of some of the other people in the room. “Come drink with me.” I signal to the waitress, who’s already making a beeline to my table. When she’s next to me, I cover the phone with my hand, like it makes any difference. “I changed my mind, sweetheart. I’m going to need a private room.”
“Right this way, sir.” Her eyes don’t give away the fact that I’m making an absolute fool of myself. Part of me wonders if anyone in here recognizes me on sight, whether I’m acting out a self-fulfilling prophecy, ruining my reputation all by myself and dragging down Wilder Enterprises with me. “You must be hungry,” she continues in her cool tone while I follow her unsteadily out of the lounge, down a hallway, down another hall to the right, and into a smaller private room, where she pours me a glass of ice water from a crystal pitcher. “Let me order you some appetizers.”
“That sounds wonderful.” The drinks are going to my head, to my heart, and it’s not too late to pull out of this, but I can’t do it by myself. “Chris, buddy—” I don’t know who I am anymore. “Come to that club and ask for me in the lobby. It’s time for a night out.”
“Did something happen, Dominic?”
“You know what? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you as soon as you get here. Don’t let me down!”
“I won’t,” he says, uncertainty ringing in his voice, and then the line goes dead.
39
Vivienne
Margo takes one look at my red eyes, which I’d convinced myself were well-covered with some artful and natural-looking makeup, and purses her lips. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Liar stings, even though she’s saying I’m a bad one, and I can’t help flinching. “I’m a great liar.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Are we walking?”
“Not happening. You can try to change the subject all you want, but I’m not buying it.” Margo cocks her head to the side, and her blonde hair, piled on top of her head in a bun that’s somehow chic and messy at the same time, follows a moment later. “Did you get a boyfriend without telling me?”
I give her my best impression of being offended. “What? Why would you think I did that?”
“Because you’re hiding crying eyes behind makeup, which means you’ve spent the last half an hour putting on fresh foundation, which you never do at this time of night.”
Margo and I roomed together the first couple of years that I lived in New York City—right up until my work at the FBI demanded a solo space for when I was on undercover jobs. She knows me too well.
“It’s not night, first of all. It’s still light out. This could charitably be called evening.” I sigh. “But yes, I did…sort of get a boyfriend without telling you.”
“Start walking,” she says. “We’ll talk at the same time, so you don’t have to look at me.”
“You’re a good friend.”
She rolls her eyes. “You could take a page from my book.” Then she smiles at me, everything already forgiven. “So, who’s the guy?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Margo cuts me a sideways glance. “Is this some forbidden FBI thing where you’re not supposed to date your co-workers?”
“He’s not technically a co-worker.” Margo knows that I work for the FBI, but she doesn’t know the details of the jobs I’ve been going on. My stomach turns over—neither does Dominic, which is why he’s storming off across the city right now. “But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, he was—I was really into him, and now it’s over.”
“You didn’t cry this hard last time you broke up with a guy.”
“I’m not crying now. I’m walking to dinner.”
“You didn’t need fresh makeup, is all I’m saying.” Margo takes a right, and I know which sushi place she’s chosen—one of my favorites, without having to ask.
“Well—there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Nothing? You don’t think it’s worth a shot?”
The lie is on the tip of my tongue, but for some reason I can’t bear to say it. “I don’t know.”
She takes a breath, frowning a little. “You don’t need a plan to get him back right now. Give it an hour.”
“There’s not going to be any plan. I
can’t think of a plan.” I can’t handle the thought that I could try with him, and he might walk out again…and I’m supposed to be stronger than that.
“Give it a bottle of wine,” she says, grinning, and that I can get on board with.
I’m thoroughly regretting the three bottles of plum wine we split between us while I ride the subway to Wilder Enterprises the next morning. That stuff is deadly—and it tastes so sweet that it’s like you’re hardly drinking alcohol at all, until you’re very clearly drinking alcohol and you’ve had too much and your best friend walks with her arm looped through yours all the way back to your apartment so you don’t take a tumble into the gutter.
I raise a hand to my eyes. What a shining moment.
My stomach lurches. I forced down an English muffin and some greasy scrambled eggs in an attempt to set myself straight before I had to leave for work. So far, it’s failing miserably.
We never got around to plotting how I would win Dominic back, and it’s a good thing, because it would have been frustrating for both of us to listen to me get cagey with the details. As Margo has said to me a hundred times, the details make the plan. She’s usually referring to the outfits we’re going to wear to a club or an art gallery opening. In this case, she’s right—but I can’t tell her what they are.
Not yet.
Not for a few years, and by the time I tell her, it will be far too late.
Another bolt of pain shoots right through my chest. Maybe I should go home, sleep this off, and—
No.
Dominic isn’t going to take the day off, either. He’d never want anyone to think he had a weakness, that the weakness might be anything other than a deadly illness. He’ll be in his office today, living and breathing above my head, and I’ll live with the pain. It’s the only option I have.
My phone rings as I’m stepping out of the subway exit into the golden morning sun, and I stifle the urge to heave on the sidewalk while I fumble for my phone.
The name on the Caller ID doesn’t make me feel better.
“Good morning, Milton.”
“We’ve got a problem.” His terse tone sends a shock of cold into my gut.
“What is it?”
“You’re out of time, Viv. I don’t think you’ve got much longer before your cover is blown.”
“I—what?” My mind reels. There’s no way Dominic got in contact with anyone at the FBI about me—is there? Is that what’s happening?
“One of the guys on the team—Chris O’Connor—says he met up with someone from Wilder Enterprises last night, and the guy has some pretty deep suspicions about you. From what O’Connor said, he doesn’t have any solid proof, but my guess is that he’ll be on the lookout for any reason to either fire you or expose you as an undercover agent.”
We both know that can’t be allowed to happen. “How much time?”
“Three days.” Milton doesn’t hesitate. “Three days, or we’re pulling you, and we’ll use an outside team to put this one to bed.”
My heart sinks. I have most of the pieces I need to find this guy. It would have helped to have more than three days, but…
“It’s not going to be a problem,” I tell Milton, my thoughts racing ahead to the emails, to the plans I was going to put into motion over the next week. It’ll all need to be expedited.
“If it is, we pull the plug. Fair warning.”
Then Milton ends the call, and I’m on my own.
40
Dominic
It’s been a long time since I got so out of control, and everything in my body rebels against it.
But not until it’s way too late—not until I’ve been at Pendant for God knows how long, putting back drink after drink with Chris O’Connor, in the middle of the week.
When I wake up the next morning, my mouth is so dry I can barely swallow, and all my memories from last night are swimming in a thick haze of alcohol. Snippets from a conversation we had keep surfacing, but it seems so absurd that I can’t believe I actually said any of those things, that Chris even answered.
“It’s her, man.” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, and drunk as I am I can still register, barely, how slurred the words are. “There’s nobody else.”
Chris splits into copies of himself in front of me, the both of them pushing a glass of water toward me across the table. “Have a drink, Dominic. No!” He laughs as I reach for a glass of champagne. Whose idea was it to order champagne? That’s a drink for celebrations, not whatever the hell this is. “Water.” He gets up, melding back into one person, and comes around the table to put the glass of ice water in my hand.
I sip at it. It’s bitterly cold against the heat of my throat. “Tastes good. This is good water.”
Chris sits down in a seat next to me. “You’re not like this, buddy.” His voice is soft, coaxing. “Let me take you home?”
“To what?” I slam the glass down on the surface of the table, too hard, and water sloshes over the rim. “There’s nothing to go there for. My apartment is empty, damn it.”
“Look.” He seems like he’s swaying, but I can’t tell if it’s me or him who’s doing it. “You’ve got a shot with her. You can fix things. Tonight she was having a bad night. She’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, right. Yeah, right!” I shout the last word at the top of my lungs, and a strained smile plays over Chris’s face. “People like Vivienne Davis don’t get over anything. They never let anything go. That’s what kind of woman she is. That’s what kind, Chris.”
His eyes have gone wide, but I have no idea why. “Vivienne Davis, huh?”
“You know her?” I reach for a drink and miss. “You know her, man?”
He presses his lips together like he’s thinking hard. “It’s not a name I’ve heard before.”
“If you knew her—” I lean toward him and almost fall forward off my chair. Chris puts out a hand and steadies me. “If you knew her, you wouldn’t forget her, and now I’ll live the rest of my life trying to forget her.”
God.
I roll over and press my face back into my pillow. The room rocks around me, and it takes every bit of effort to reach over and silence the alarm that’s like a jackhammer in my brain.
Get up and go to work.
My body ignores the command, slipping back into a still-drunk, half-hungover sleep.
It’s not any better when I wake up the second time, but I have no choice except to get out of bed, because I’m not going to hurl on my sheets. I’m only willing to sink to a certain level.
After I empty my stomach, I stagger back to the bedroom and sit on the edge of my bed.
What a disaster.
My phone alerts me to the fact that it’s nearing two o’clock in the afternoon, and that’s the only thing that makes me stand up, trying to get my feet under me, trying to feel like I’m not still drunk. I’m not—there’s no way I could be—but the world seems to sway gently around me.
A shower.
I need a hot shower.
Back in the bathroom, I turn on the water full blast and stand leaning against the wall, letting it run down over the back of my neck, for a long time. Then I reach for a bottle of shampoo.
Getting dressed and ready to go takes most of an hour. By the end of it, I’m feeling slightly less like I’m on the verge of death, but the thought of food is an abomination. Still, I go into the kitchen and force myself to drink half a bottle of water and choke down some buttered toast. I’ll call someone in to cook tonight. I shouldn’t go the entire day without eating, but standing at the counter makes me bone-tired.
When was the last time I did anything this stupid? It’s been years, and the memory of it—especially in light of what I had to drink last night—isn’t clear. Something in college, probably, because it wasn’t long after that that Wilder Enterprises hit rock bottom and I dug it out with my bare hands.
Craig is waiting for me by the curb when I get downstairs. The eight steps from the door of the building to the car in the dam
p heat are torture, but I put one foot in front of the other until I’m situated in the back of the car, the air conditioning blasting down on the back of my neck.
When I look up, we still haven’t moved, and Craig is staring at me in the rearview mirror.
“You sure you want to go to the office?” The question is as neutral as it can be. There’s not the slightest hint of judgment in his tone. There’s concern, nothing else, and it reminds me why I hired him in the first place.
“Yes. I’m getting a late start.” The laugh that bubbles up from my throat is a horrible parody, and Craig looks at me for another long moment before he nods his head, going back to focusing on the traffic in the side mirrors.
What is happening to me?
As soon as the car begins to move, I’m overcome by a wave of what feels like the nastiest vertigo ever to have existed in a human body. I put my hand out against the front seat and brace myself against the door to try to make it stop.
It doesn’t work.
I’m falling apart, and it’s because I gave up on Vivienne.
It’s so crystal clear that the realization is blinding. I can’t look at it head-on—not right now. I can’t decide if it’s true or another hangover delusion. What I do know is that I can’t go to work today.
“No,” I rasp. “I can’t—I need to go back inside.”
We’re barely three spots down from where we started, and Craig pulls smoothly back to the curb, then gets out and comes around to the passenger side door.
“Yeah, that’s a good call. I’m going to take you back upstairs, okay?”
The only thing I have strength to do is to nod in agreement.
41
Vivienne
It takes several deep breaths before I can get my racing heart under control.
It’s a gorgeous July morning, and at this hour of the day, the heat feels like a gentle warmth on my shoulders rather than an oppressive wet blanket. I’m wearing a sleeveless sheath dress, with a cardigan tucked into my purse in case I get chilled by the air conditioning at Wilder Enterprises, and I’m frozen on the sidewalk.