Chapter 24 Date
We had dragged a sheet of plywood in from the hallway and balanced it on two stack of unopened primer cans to create a makeshift table. On top of it, the white takeout cartons looked ridiculous, greasy little pagodas sitting in the middle of a construction zone.
The room smelled of contradictory things. There was the sharp, chemical tang of fresh latex paint from the walls we had finished yesterday, and beneath that, the acrid, wet-dog smell of the charred wood from the east wing. The fire hoses had soaked everything, and even with the windows thrown wide open to the cool night air, the scent of destruction clung to the curtains.
I sat cross-legged on the bare mattress in the center of the room. I was still wearing the red silk dress from the auction, the fabric pooling around me like spilled wine. My heels were kicked off into a corner, and my toes curled against the drop cloth protecting the floor.
Tristan sat opposite me on an overturned bucket, his long legs stretched out under the plywood. He looked like a ruin of a man. He was still in his tuxedo trousers and white dress shirt, but the jacket and tie were gone. He had unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, exposing forearms dusted with soot.
He looked exhausted. Deep purple bruises shadowed his eyes, and the stubble on his jaw caught the light of the single, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Yet, his gaze was sharp. He watched me with the intensity of a hawk circling a field, waiting for a mouse to move.
"You're not eating," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel tumbling in a mixer.
I poked at a carton of vegetable lo mein with my chopsticks. The noodles were cold and clumped together.
"I’m not hungry."
"You cost me half a million dollars tonight," he said dryly, picking up a carton of General Tso’s chicken. "Eat the damn noodles, Mina. I don’t want my investment passing out from low blood sugar."
I took a bite. It tasted like nothing. Or maybe it tasted like ash; I couldn't tell where the flavor of the food ended and the taste of the fire began. I swallowed it down with difficulty.
"Why are we here, Tristan?" I asked, setting the chopsticks down on the plywood. They made a hollow sound. "You said you wanted a partner. But sitting here... it feels less like a partnership and more like I’m a witness for the prosecution."
He stopped chewing. He swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
"Because I need to understand," he said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between them. "I need to understand how I missed it. How I lived in the same house with her, grew up with her, and missed that my own sister was poisoning my wife. How I missed that she was... evil."
I looked at him. Really looked at him. The arrogance that usually armored him was gone, stripped away by the fire and the fear.
"You didn't miss it," I said softly.
He flinched. "That’s harsh."
"It’s true. You saw the signs, Tristan. You saw how possessive she was. You saw how she would walk into a room and the temperature would drop if I was holding your hand. You saw how she treated me—like an interloper. Like a stain on the family carpet."
I took a breath, the air cold in my lungs.
"But you chose to see love instead of control," I continued. "Because it was easier. Because after your parents died, she was the only anchor you had left. You let her behavior slide because confronting her meant risking the only family you had."
He looked down at his hands. He was turning his signet ring round and round on his finger.
"And now I have nothing," he whispered.
"You have a half-burned house," I said, gesturing to the dark window. "And a very expensive, very tired architect."
He let out a laugh. "True."
He reached behind him and grabbed a bottle of wine. It wasn't one of the vintage reds from his cellar; that part of the house was currently a swimming pool. This was a cheap Pinot Grigio with a screw top that we’d picked up from the bodega down the road. He cracked the seal and poured the pale yellow liquid into two plastic cups we’d found in the painting supplies.
"Drink," he said, sliding a cup toward me. "It helps."
I took the cup. The plastic was flimsy in my hand. I took a sip. It was acidic and tasted faintly of pears, but the alcohol hit my empty stomach with a comforting burn.
Tristan took a long pull from his cup, then set it down. He stared into the swirling liquid as if it held the answers to the universe.
"Tell me about the baby," he said.
The air sucked out of the room.
The wind outside seemed to stop. The creaking of the house silenced. All I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears.
I stared at him. "Tristan..."
"Please," he said. He didn't look up. His voice was barely a whisper. "I need to know. I’ve been driving myself crazy thinking about it. Was it... did you know if it was a boy? Or a girl?"
I felt a phantom cramp in my stomach, a ghost of the pain from five years ago. I swallowed the lump of glass in my throat.
"I didn't get that far," I whispered. "I was only eight weeks along. It was too early to tell."
He nodded slowly, his jaw tight.
"I hadn't even told you yet," I continued, my voice trembling. "I wanted to wait. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to get past the first trimester so I could give you the news without worrying about... about this."
He closed his eyes. I saw a tear leak out and track through the soot on his cheek.
"And then she gave you the tea," he said.
"Yes. Her 'special herbal blend.' For stress, she said. She told me I looked pale. She said I needed to relax or I’d drive you away."
"And you drank it."
"I trusted her," I said. The words came out fractured. "I trusted her because you trusted her. I thought... I thought she was finally trying to help me. I thought she was trying to be a sister."
He slammed his plastic cup down on the plywood. Wine sloshed over the rim, soaking into the wood.
"I will kill her," he said.
The tone wasn't angry. It was flat. Factual. Cold as the grave.
"When she comes back," he said, staring at the wall. "When we invite her to the housewarming... I’m going to kill her with my bare hands."
"No," I said. "You won't."
He looked at me then, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of grief and rage. "Why not? She took my child. She took my wife. She burned my home. She deserves it."
"Because death is too easy," I said, leaning forward. "Death is an escape, Tristan. It’s over in a second. I don't want her to escape."
I felt a cold hardness settle in my chest, the steel spine that I had forged over five lonely years in Milan.
"I want her to live," I hissed. "I want her to live in a cell. I want her to rot in a concrete cage for forty years. I want her to wake up every single morning knowing that we are out here, alive. Knowing that we are happy. Knowing that she failed to break us."
He stared at me. The rage in his eyes flickered, replaced by something softer. Awe, maybe. Or sorrow.
"Happy?" he asked. "Do you think we can ever be happy again? After all this?"
"I don't know," I admitted, looking down at my hands. "But I know we can be free. And for now, that has to be enough."
He stared at me for a long moment. The wind picked up outside, whistling through a gap in the window frame.
Slowly, he reached across the makeshift table. He took my hand.
His palm was warm, rough with callouses from the construction work he’d been doing alongside the crew. His grip was firm.
"You’re stronger than me," he said. "You always were."
"I had to be," I said. "One of us had to survive."
"I’m sorry," he whispered. "I’m sorry I wasn't strong enough to protect you then."
"You’re protecting me now," I said. I squeezed his hand back. "You bought me for half a million dollars to keep Thorne away. That’s pretty protective."
He managed a small, crooked smile. It didn't reach his eyes, but it was there. "Best investment I ever made. The returns are going to be exponential."
He squeezed my hand again, then hesitated.
"Mina?"
"Yeah?"
"When this is over... when the trap is sprung and she’s in prison... what happens to us?"
I looked at our joined hands. The contrast was stark, the smooth red silk of my sleeve against the crisp, soot-stained white cuff of his shirt. Past and present, colliding.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "I’m still your architect, Tristan. I still have a job to finish. This house isn't built yet."
"And after the job?"
"I go back to Milan," I said. "To my life."
His thumb stopped rubbing the back of my hand. "To Lonnie?"
I looked up. His eyes were guarded, bracing for the blow.
I let out a sigh.
"Lonnie is my friend, Tristan. My business partner. My roommate when rent is high."
Tristan frowned. "But..."
"He’s not my lover," I said clearly.
Tristan’s eyes widened. "He’s not?"
"No. He’s gay. Very gay. And happily partnered with a man named Marcus who bakes excellent sourdough bread."
Tristan stared at me. He looked like I had just told him that gravity was a suggestion. His mouth opened slightly, then closed.
"You let me believe..." he trailed off, a flush rising up his neck. "You let me be jealous of him for weeks. I nearly punched him at the gala."
"It was safer," I said, shrugging. "If you thought I was taken, you wouldn't try to get close. You wouldn't try to... do this." I gestured to our joined hands. "And I needed space. I needed to focus on the work."
"You needed a shield," he corrected.
"Yes."
He let out a long, ragged breath. His shoulders dropped two inches. He looked relieved. Ridiculously, absurdly relieved.
"So," he said, a new, dangerous light sparking in his dark eyes. "You’re single."
"I’m unavailable," I corrected sharply. "There’s a massive difference."
"Is there?"
He leaned forward. The table was small. Suddenly, the room felt very intimate.
"I think," he whispered, his voice dropping to a rumble, "that you are available. I think you’re scared."
"I am terrified," I admitted. "Of you. Of this house. Of what happens if I let you in again. The last time I let you in, I almost died, Tristan."
"Let me prove it," he said intensely. "Let me prove I’m not the man who signed those divorce papers. Let me prove I’m not the boy who let his sister run his life."
"How?"
"By finishing the house," he said. "By building the fortress you designed. By trapping the monster. And by waiting."
He let go of my hand, slowly, letting his fingers brush against my palm as he pulled away. He sat back on the bucket, straightening his spine.
"I will wait for you, Minerva," he said. "As long as it takes. Until the paint dries. Until the walls are solid. Until you believe me."
I looked at him. The playboy billionaire was gone. The broken husband was gone.
The man sitting in front of me was a builder. And he was looking at me like I was the blueprint for the rest of his life.
He meant it.
And for the first time in five years, the heavy stone that sat in the center of my chest felt a little lighter.
"Eat your noodles," I said, my voice thick.
He smiled, and this time, it reached his eyes. "Yes, ma'am."
We ate in silence.
But it wasn't the heavy, pressurized silence of the library, or the angry silence of the courtroom. It was the silence of a truce.
Outside, the wind howled around the corners of the house, rattling the scaffolding. The charred ruins of the east wing groaned in the dark, settling into their destruction.
But inside the yellow room, under the single hanging lamp, we were safe.
For now.
Tristan left an hour later to sleep in the guest room on the west side of the house, the furthest point from the smell of the fire. He had offered to stay, to sleep on the floor, but I had sent him away.
I needed to think.
I lay on the mattress in the master suite, staring up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling.
I couldn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ida’s face. I saw her standing in the window, watching the fire. I saw the satisfaction in her smile before she vanished.
She had burned the journals. She had destroyed the evidence of her slow poisoning, of her manipulation. She had escaped into the night.
But Ida was sentimental. And Ida was arrogant.
She wouldn't have destroyed everything.
I sat up, the sheet pooling around my waist.
I reached for my bag on the floor. I pulled out the battered leather satchel that I had stolen from her room before the fire. I had emptied the journals from it earlier, tossing them into the flames to save the house, but I had kept the bag.
I pulled it into my lap.
I ran my hands over the cracked leather. It was old, expensive, worn smooth by years of handling. It smelled of her perfume.
I opened the main flap. Empty.
I checked the side pockets. Empty.
I ran my fingers along the lining of the bottom panel.
I stopped.
There was a lump.
It was small, barely noticeable, hidden between the leather exterior and the silk lining.
I frowned. I pressed down on it. Hard metal. Flat.
There was something sewn inside.
I looked around the room. I spotted a stray ballpoint pen lying on the drop cloth. I grabbed it and jammed the tip into the stitching of the bag’s lining. The old thread snapped with a satisfying pop.
I dug my fingers into the hole and pulled.
It slid out into my palm.
It was a key.
Small. Silver. Non-descript. It looked like the key to a diary, or perhaps a safe deposit box.
But it wasn't just a key. Wrapped tightly around the metal shaft was a crumpled slip of thermal paper.
I unfolded it carefully, my hands trembling.
It was a receipt.
U-STORE-IT Queens.
Unit 404.
Payment: Cash.
The date at the bottom was from three days ago.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Three days ago. Just before the auction. Just before everything went to hell.
Ida hadn't burned everything. She had moved something. She had taken something valuable out of the house and she had stashed it in a storage unit in Queens.
What was it?
More journals? Money? The stash of poisons she used to mix my tea?
Or something worse?
I gripped the key in my fist, the metal biting into my skin.
Tristan wanted to wait. He wanted to rebuild the house, throw a party, and lure her back into a trap. He wanted to play defense.
I lay back down on the mattress, sliding the key under my pillow.
Tomorrow was Sunday. The construction crew wouldn't be here. Tristan would be busy meeting with the insurance adjusters for the east wing.
He wouldn't notice if I took the car for a few hours.
I stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, I was going to Queens.
Alone.