Chapter 15: Victor Kane’s First Move

Lila called on a Wednesday at half past two. I was in the east wing with my father’s archive documents spread across the desk, working through the folders I had pulled from the forty-second floor the previous week. The ones that were not Lucien’s. I had not yet gone back for his. I was still deciding when. “I need to tell you something,” Lila said, without preamble, which with Lila meant one of two things: either she had spotted a sale on something she thought I needed, or something had happened that she thought I needed to know before I heard it from somewhere else. Her tone told me immediately which one it was. “Victor Kane had lunch today,” she said. “Private room at Clarence’s. Three board members. My friend Dora works the bookings there and she recognises names.” I put my pen down. “Which three?” She gave me the names. I wrote them down, not because I would forget them but because writing things makes them more real and I needed this to be very real right now. Two of the three I had already identified as uncertain. The third was one I had considered, cautiously, to be neutral. Apparently I had been wrong about the third one. “What did Dora hear?” I said. “Not much. Private room means private. But she heard the word manufactured at one point and laughed at the wrong moment because she thought it was a different conversation.” Lila paused. “And she heard your name.” I was quiet for a moment. Manufactured. My name. Victor Kane. Three board members in a private room. I knew exactly what that lunch had been. Not because I had any proof yet, but because I had been reading Victor Kane for weeks now and he moved in a particular way, the way of a man who preferred to work through suggestion rather than confrontation, who planted ideas in rooms and then left and let the ideas do the work for him. He had not attacked me publicly. He was too smart for that. He had gone sideways, gone quiet, gone to three board members over very good wine and a private room and told them something that was designed to make them doubt me without him having to say anything provable out loud. Manufactured documents. Amara is a fraud. Lucien is grieving and being manipulated. I could not prove a word of it yet. But I knew. And knowing without proof, I had come to understand, was one of the most uncomfortable positions a strategic person could occupy. “Okay,” I said. “Okay?” Lila’s voice went up. “That’s your response? Okay?” “What would you prefer?” “Something with more syllables. Outrage. Indignation. A brief but satisfying swear word.” “I’m not outraged,” I said. “I’m thinking.” “You’re terrifying is what you are,” she said, not unkindly. “Call me when you’ve finished thinking.” I sat at the desk with the names I had written and turned the problem over carefully, looking for the edges of it, the places where it was weak. The problem was not Victor Kane’s lunch. The problem was that I did not yet have everything I needed to counter it. My documentation was strong, my legal case was solid, but strong and solid were not the same as airtight. The sealed addendum was still in Reed’s vault. The archive still only partially reviewed. And somewhere on the forty-second floor, a folder with Lucien’s name still sat unopened. I spent the rest of the afternoon working. I did not tell Lucien about Lila’s call. I wanted to think through my own response before that conversation. I was not going to walk into it underprepared. The tea I made at five went cold before I touched it. Lila would call that a personality trait. I would call it focus. We have agreed to disagree about this for the better part of a decade. I found out later, from Zane, how the rest of the afternoon went on Lucien’s end. One of the three board members, a man named Hargreaves, called Lucien’s assistant at four thirty. Not Lucien directly. His assistant. The choice of a man who wanted to plant a seed without owning it. He said he had concerns he felt, in good conscience, he should raise. About the documents. About the speed of the marriage. About whether Lucien, given everything with Marcus, was in the right state of mind. Lucien’s assistant wrote it all down and slid it across Lucien’s desk without a word. She had worked for him six years. She knew better than to editorialize. He read it. Set it down. Asked her to cancel his afternoon. Got in the car. And called me. Which was why, when my phone rang at six forty-seven and I saw his name on the screen, I picked it up with the particular composure of someone who has been thinking about a problem all afternoon and has just not quite finished. “Amara.” His voice was even. Controlled. But there was something underneath it, very quiet, very compressed, the sound of a man who had spent his day receiving information he didn’t like and had made very deliberate choices about what to do next. “I heard,” I said. A pause. Short. “How?” “Does it matter?” Another pause. Longer. Then, “No. I suppose it doesn’t.” I heard the low sound of a car in the background, which meant he was in transit, which meant he had called me the moment he could and not a second later. “We need to go over the document strategy tonight.” No preamble. No softening. Just straight to it, which was how he operated when something was actually urgent rather than just important. But here was the thing that surprised me. Not the call itself, I had been expecting some version of this conversation. What surprised me was the we. Not I need to brief you on the strategy. Not I’ve spoken to the lawyers and here is the plan. We need to go over it. Together. Side by side at the kitchen island with both our sets of notes. He had not done that before. Not like this. “I’ll be ready,” I said. He said he’d be home by eight. He hung up. I sat with the phone in my hand for a moment and then put it down and went to make coffee, because it was going to be a long night and I had the particular feeling, the useful kind, that something was about to shift in this situation in a direction I had been waiting for since the beginning. Victor Kane had made his first move. And Lucien Cross had responded by calling me first. I made the coffee. I pulled out my files. I set up the island the way I set up for every important meeting, systematic and thorough, with space left on the right hand side. For his notes. Because apparently we were doing this together now. And I was, despite everything, surprised to find that I was glad.