Chapter 48: Four corners

I set the phone down and looked at Bruno.

He was already looking at me.

"You are not going alone," he said.

"Cole needs me to go alone," I said.

"Cole needs Richard to believe you are going alone," he said. "Those are different things."

He stepped closer, both hands coming up to hold my face and make me really look at him. His palms were warm against my skin, and his eyes didn’t waver.

It was the same way he’d looked at me from the start like I mattered, like I was worth seeing.

I’d spent years being a ghost in my own marriage, so being seen like that still threw me off guard every time.

"Listen to me," he said. "I am going to be two minutes behind you. Cole's people will be there before either of us. Richard will not get near you." He held my gaze. "But I need you to hear me say that I am not sitting in this apartment while you walk into a room with him. That is not something I am able to do."

I looked at him.

"Two minutes," he said.

I put my hands over his where they rested on my face and held them there and we stood like that in the kitchen.  He was touching my lips while rubbing my back.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yes."

"After tonight," I said. "I want a week where we do not talk about Richard or Monaco or Harlan or any of it. Not to each other, not to lawyers, not to anyone."

"Yes," he said.

"I want to go to Lisbon and find that studio and paint badly and eat well and sleep with the window open and not think about anything that has happened in the last month."

"Yes," he said.

"And I want to do all of it with you," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he leaned forward and kissed me slowly and thoroughly and with both hands still on my face and I kissed him back and the kitchen was warm and neither of us was in a hurry despite everything waiting outside the door because some moments deserve to be finished properly before you walk out into what comes next.

When he pulled back he rested his forehead against mine.

"After tonight," he said quietly, "I am taking you somewhere for dinner that has nothing on the menu I can pronounce and we are going to eat everything and talk about nothing important and I am going to watch you laugh at things that have nothing to do with any of this."

"That sounds like exactly the right thing," I said.

"It is," he said. "I have been planning it for a week."

I pulled back and looked at him. "You have been planning dinner while all of this was happening."

"I plan ahead," he said. "You know this about me."

I shook my head at him and he smiled and the kitchen felt like the warmest room in the city and I did not want to leave it and I was going to leave it anyway because Richard was outside somewhere in the dark waiting for me to be the woman I used to be and I was going to show him exactly how much had changed.

I picked up my jacket and my phone and Bruno picked up his and we went to the door and he opened it and I stepped out first and he came behind me and locked it and we went down the stairs together and out onto the street.

The night was cold and clear.

He walked me to the car and opened the door and I got in and he leaned on the frame and looked at me with the particular look he had saved for moments that mattered.

"Two minutes," he said.

"Two minutes," I said.

He closed the door.

I started the engine and pulled out onto the road and watched him in the mirror getting into his own car and my phone connected to the car speaker and Cole's voice came through steady and calm.

"We are in position," Cole said. "Eight people. You will not see them but they are there."

"Good," I said.

"Drive normally," she said. "Take your time. He is already at the location."

"How do you know?" I said.

"Because we put a tracker on his coat three days ago," Cole said. "The dark wool one. Double breasted."

I almost laughed because I had bought that coat.

I had stood in a shop for forty minutes choosing it and now it had led Cole's people directly to him and there was something in that which felt like the universe correcting an old imbalance.

I drove through the dark city with Cole in my ear and Bruno two minutes behind me and the address ahead on the screen and thought about the woman who had sat in this same city three weeks ago in a one bedroom apartment believing the worst of her problems was a stranger on her couch.

She would not recognize tonight.

The location came into view ahead of me. A hotel bar in the old part of the city, the same one where Richard had signed the divorce papers across a table from me and said I did love you at the beginning.

He had chosen it deliberately.

He always chose deliberately.

I parked and sat for a moment with the engine running.

"He is at the corner table," Cole said. "Inside. Alone."

"Are your people inside?" I said.

"Four of them," she said. "You will not know which ones."

I cut the engine.

"Ms. Lambert," Cole said. "You do not have to go in."

"Yes I do," I said.

I got out of the car and walked to the entrance and pushed the door open and the warmth of the bar came out to meet me and I walked in and the room was exactly as I remembered it, low lighting, well-spaced tables, the kind of place built for difficult conversations.

Richard was at the corner table.

He looked up when I came in.

And for the first time in twelve years I walked toward him without adjusting a single thing about myself.

Walking across a room.

I pulled out the chair and sat down across from him and looked at him and he looked at me and the bar hummed quietly around us.

"You came," he said.

"I came," I said.

He opened his mouth.

The door behind me opened.

Four people in plain clothes who moved to the four corners of the room without looking at each other.

And then Cole, walking in behind them, crossing directly to our table, her credentials already out.

Richard looked at her.

Then at me.

"You were never coming alone," he said.

"No," I said. "I was never coming alone again."

Cole put her hand on Richard's shoulder.

He did not move.