Page 28 of So Close

“No.”

His obstinancy goads me to ask, “Are you punishing her or yourself?”

“Damn it. She was running when I found her! I won’t force myself on her. If she wants me, she knows where I am.”

My breath catches sharply. Mr Black has never mentioned her reaction when she saw him, either to her doctors or me – until now.

Taken aback and worried, I stare at him. I’m aware that anger is one of the stages of grief and that sometimes the anger is directed at the deceased for leaving their loved ones in such pain. But distorting the manner of her disappearance into a personal rejection is unhealthy. “You mustn’t blame her.”

“Why not?”His eyes are cold and distant.

“It would be unfair.”

“Fair? Was it fair for her to shape me into a man capable of building this life for us, then leave me to live it alone? If you don’t think I’m being fair to her, that I should absolve her from responsibility for her choices, well … I can’t.”

He so rarely speaks of his wife. There is so much I don’t know. About her and the young man my employer once was when he was with her.

“I met her at the beach house in Greenwich,” he says, unprovoked, his tone strangely casual, as if he’s divorced himself from the sentiment of the memory. “She was throwing a party and invited me because she was dating Ryan. Did I ever tell you that? That she was his before she was mine?”

I nod. “Yes, you mentioned it.”

“I didn’t want to travel that far, but since I was a business major with a concentration in consulting, Ryan convinced me it was a good opportunity to meet people who might come in handy in the future. I’ll never forget hopping out of the rideshare I’d taken from the train station and seeing half a dozen valets scrambling to park millions of dollars’ worth of luxury cars. I never thought I’d meet anyone who lived like that, who had friends who could afford cars like that. It was like something out of a movie.”

There can be no secrets if I’m to perform my job effectively, no skeletons. I cannot manage the household if there is any member of it who surprises me. Thus far, everything about Lily Black has been a revelation, the most shocking of which is that she is the source of Mr Black’s fortune.

He stands again, restless, and resumes his place in front of the window. “The weather was turning. I still remember the sky. Black as pitch. I found her dancing on the beach, her long hair whipping in the wind. She looked like a pagan goddess summoning the storm. Before I even saw her face, I knew I had to have her.”

I lost her where I found her.

“She was so far out of my league, Witte, and she was Ryan’s girlfriend. I knew the right thing to do was stay away from her, but she singled me out. Within minutes of meeting her, we were walking arm and arm down the windy beach, and she was filling my head with wild thoughts. It was like a fever dream. The sexiest, most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen somehow knew everything about me – my family situation, that my father had left and destroyed Baharan. With just a few words, she flipped my world on its head. By the time she finished, she had me thinking of Baharan as my birthright. I left her house that day possessed by an entirely new ambition. I wanted that beach house and those luxury cars. I wanted Baharan. Most of all, I wantedher. More than I’d ever wanted anything.”

Mr Black shoves a hand in his pocket and takes another slow sip. He rolls the alcohol in his mouth, then swallows hard. “In the days that followed, she called me. Met with me. She not only had the vision, but she also had the plan. She was my Svengali, my Pygmalion. A sorceress who waved her hand and transformed my entire existence.”

“She recognized your potential,” I say, although that’s such a practical word for my employer’s incendiary magnetism. I had initially met with him out of politeness to reject his offer of employment in person because his request had been so earnest, but I left him having accepted the position. He has a gift for getting what he wants and making others feel gratified to give in to him.

“She’s a muse, Witte, a kingmaker – although the uninspired would call her an angel investor. Whatever you choose to call it, she has an uncanny ability to peer into strangers and find the ones she can sculpt into titans. I selfishly wanted to be the only one, but there were others. It’s simply who she is and what she does.”

He falls silent, but the sensation of turbulence and destruction in the room rises to a fevered pitch. The tower creaks at just that moment, and it seems as if the forces it fights against come from within, not without.

“You doubt she loves you?” I ask quietly.

“Love?” He glances over his shoulder at me, then turns to face me with a shrug. “We’re talking about fairness, Witte, not love.”

“I don’t see how you’ll attain what you want without speaking to her.”

“Shedoesn’t have an explanation or answers!” he bites out. “I don’t know how to treat her, how even toapproachher. She’s not herself, let alone the woman I married.”

“And you aren’t the man she married,” I argue. “You’ll have to rediscover each other, perhaps fall in love all over again as different people. With love, the trust will follow, and through trust, you’ll get the answers.”

His eyes are wild. “You assume she wants me and not Baharan or the money.”

The suggestion startles me. There seems to be no logic to his torment.

“I told you, her knowledge of Baharan was bizarre. And it went deep. She knew things I didn’t. She knew my mother held the rights to chemical patents and even the damned logo. Trust me, Witte. Baharan was in Lily’s sights from the beginning.”

“What would she want with a pharmaceutical company, especially one with an unfortunate history?”

“That’s the least pressing question I have. Our wedding was a total surprise to me. I came home as usual, and she had a justice of the peace, neighbours as witnesses and a tuxedo waiting. She hid the papers adding me to her LLC and bank accounts among the marriage documents, so I signed them unknowingly. Then she sailed into a forecast storm days later. Think about all of that, Witte. Think about what that suggests. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for six years.”

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