Chapter 245 A Freaking Plan!

Chapter 245 A Freaking Plan!
Chapter Two Hundred And Forty-Three

The house was not peaceful when he arrived.

He had understood from the quality of the light through the front windows, which were more brightly lit than usual for this hour, that Monica was awake and active, which on an evening like this one, after the day he had had, was not the information he most wanted.

He came through the front door and set his briefcase down.

He had his coat halfway off when Monica appeared from the sitting room.

She was in that particular state he had come to recognize over years of marriage, as the state that preceded a specific kind of conversation.

The calm before the storm.

Her movements were slightly more deliberate than usual, and her expression had the focused quality of a woman who had been thinking about what she was going to say for some time before she said it.

She was holding her phone.

The phone was, he noticed, open to something she had been reading.

“We need to talk,” she said, her tone brooking no refusal

Nathan was legit tired, “Monica—”

“She won another one,” Monica said. She turned the phone toward him. “This is the third industry recognition this month. This one is the Crestmont Business Leadership Award. They gave her the award and they interviewed her and the interview has been shared approximately eight hundred thousand times.” She set the phone down on the hall table with a precision that communicated more than the gesture itself, then scoffed in disbelief, “Eight hundred thousand times, Nathan.”

Nathan took his coat off and hung it. He pressed his fingers into his temple, feeling the pangs of an oncoming headache.

“I saw it,” he said.

“Oh really, you did?” she said, with a twisted smile, “And what did you think?”

“Nothing,” Nathan answered. 

Monica’s smile faded and was replaced by a snarl.

“It’s an award, Monica,” Nathan went on, through gritted teeth, “People get awards.”

“People do not get eight hundred thousand shares on an interview about an award,” Monica shot back at him, “People do not take over two of the largest companies in the city in eighteen months and get named the most influential new executive in Crestmont business and have the entire internet talking about them.” She paused, her chest heaving as she spat out, “Not people who were supposed to be nobody.”

“She is not nobody,” Nathan said.

He moved past her toward the bar, because he needed a stiff drink, and because moving past her slightly extended the interval before the full weight of the conversation landed.

“What did you say?!” Monica uttered sharply as she followed him.

He ignored her

“What are you doing about it?” she pressed on.

Calmly, Nathan took out a bottle of wine from the bar, and poured himself some.

“Nathan,” she said.

“I am getting a drink,” he said.

“That is not what I mean and you know it,” she said. “What are you doing about Aria Beaumont? About what she has been doing? About the fact that every day she gets stronger and every day our position gets less secure, and you are doing nothing?”

He set the glass down.

“I am doing what needs to be done at the appropriate time,” he said.

“That is not an answer,” she said. “That is a phrase that sounds like an answer.”

“Monica—”

“I have been patient,” she said. Her voice was controlled but the control was the same kind Clara’s had been earlier, the kind that was being held by effort and was showing the effort. “I have been patient for months. I sat with you while Lucian’s situation developed and I said nothing. I watched the Rainbow project become Aria Beaumont’s victory and I said nothing. I watched Kurt Eugene be arrested in the Vaughn boardroom—”

“I am aware of what has been happening,” he said.

“Then do something about it!” she yelled. The control broke, cleanly and completely, not into tears but into the specific heat of a woman who had been swallowing her frustration for a significant period and had reached the end of her capacity for it.

“You have been sitting on this for months! You keep saying the timing, the timing, we need to wait for the right timing, and meanwhile she is taking everything! She is taking the Graves family. She is taking the public. She is taking the name and the business and the reputation and she is being celebrated for it every single day while we sit here and do nothing!”

Nathan looked at her.

“What exactly,” he said, very quietly, “do you want me to do?”

“I want you to come up with a plan!” Monica’s voice was lower now,“You are supposed to be the one who thinks ahead. You are supposed to be the one who sees things before they happen. Where was that when Aria Beaumont was building her case? Where was it when she signed that contract with Kurt? Where was it—”

“I did not have all the information—”

“You should have gotten the information!” she screamed at him. “That is literally what you do! You watch people and you gather information and you anticipate moves! How did she get ahead of all of us? How did a woman who arrived in this city eighteen months ago get this far ahead of everyone who has been here for years?!”

Nathan had his head down, stewing quietly, while his hand gripped the glass tightly.

This was not a question he wanted to answer out loud because the honest answer to it was uncomfortable and the comfortable answer to it was not honest.

Monica, for all her considerable irritations, was not a woman who accepted comfortable answers.

“She’s better at it than we gave her credit for,” he said.

The silence that followed this statement was significant.

“That,” Monica said, with a cold precision that was the successor to the heated frustration of a moment ago, “is the most useless thing you have ever said to me.”

“It’s true,” he said.

“I don’t want it to be true,” she said. “I want a freaking plan!”