Chapter 187 *
The apartment was forty-five floors above Midtown, the kind of place that charged for discretion and views in equal measure. Miranda had been standing at the window for the better part of an hour when the buzzer sounded.
Sal came through the door first. His suit was still intact, his posture controlled, but she had known him for thirty years. She could read the difference between Sal performing calm and Sal actually possessing it.
This was performance.
Zelda followed him in. She dropped her overnight bag by the door.
Miranda had poured three glasses of scotch while she waited. She needed something to do with her hands. She pushed two glasses across the kitchen island.
"Owen's accounts are frozen." Sal picked up the glass but didn't drink. "All of them. Lorenzo moved faster than I expected."
"Lorenzo's been building this for months." Miranda's voice came out flat. "We should have seen it coming."
"What we should have done isn't useful right now." Sal set the glass down. "What's useful is knowing what we have left to work with."
Miranda looked at him. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the counter to stop it.
"Do you understand what we just walked into?" Her voice went up slightly. "Scarlett married Damon Wolfe. Not some second-tier operator. Not some connected guy we could negotiate with. Damon Wolfe."
"I know who he is."
"Do you?" She took a step toward him. "Because I've been thinking about nothing else since this morning. She was supposed to be gone. Permanently gone. And instead she's married to the one man in New York that nobody touches."
"You made that decision." Sal's voice was quiet.
Miranda turned to look at him fully.
"I made it with your full knowledge." Her words came out precise and controlled. "With your tacit approval. Because you wanted Zelda in that house and you wanted Viviana too broken to ask questions."
"I never told you to have her taken."
"You never told me not to." She moved around the island toward him. "You never said a word against it. Not when I told you what I was planning. Not when it was done. Not for nineteen years afterward."
"That's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?" She was in front of him now. "You paid the detective, Sal. You used family money to kill the investigation. You made sure no one came looking. If you had a problem with what I did, that was the moment to have it."
Sal said nothing.
"You built your entire empire on Viviana's family foundation." Miranda's voice was shaking now. "Her father's docks. Her family's contacts. Her money in the early years. You know that. You've always known that. And when you finally had enough of your own, you didn't leave. You stayed and you took more."
"You think that's worse than what you did?" Sal asked.
"No." Her voice cracked. "I think we're exactly the same. I think we've always been exactly the same. The only difference is you got to pretend otherwise for thirty years because you had a wife to stand behind."
"You thought I was going to leave her." His voice stayed quiet. "Thirty years and you still thought that."
Miranda didn't answer.
"I told you what this was," Sal said.
"You want to know the funny thing?" She wasn't looking at either of them. "I gave up everything for you. I was twenty-three years old and I decided you were worth it. Thirty years. I gave you patience and loyalty and two children and I stayed in the background like a ghost because that's what you needed."
"And for what." Her voice came out sharp and bitter. "For a man who never once told Viviana the truth. Not once in thirty years."
"If you wanted the truth told, you would have told it yourself," Sal said.
"Because you would have chosen her." Miranda turned to face him. "You would have chosen her every single time. And I knew it. I knew it from the beginning and I stayed anyway."
She took a step toward him.
"I watched you build that empire with her money. I told myself it didn't matter. That what was coming later would be worth it. That once Owen was in position, once Zelda had the name, once Viviana finally fell apart for good—"
She stopped.
"You fucking greedy—"
Sal hit her.
Miranda went sideways into the kitchen island. Her hip caught the corner and she grabbed the counter with one hand to keep from going down.
Zelda made a sharp sound from across the room. "What the fuck—"
Miranda straightened up.
Whatever she had been holding back for thirty years let go all at once.
The glass closest to her hand hit Sal before he registered she'd picked it up. It shattered against the wall behind him. The scotch left a dark mark across the white plaster.
He moved toward her and she got both hands on his chest and shoved. The kitchen island caught the back of his legs and he went down hard against it. Then he was on his feet again and she was screaming things that had waited decades to be said. Every sentence she had swallowed in the interest of patience and strategy and the long game that had just ended in a conference room in Staten Island.
Zelda pressed herself against the far wall.
The lamp on the side table went over. Something in the kitchen fell. A chair scraped across the floor.
"You used me!" Miranda's voice tore through the apartment. "You used me for thirty years and you never once had the spine to tell her the truth!"
Sal grabbed her wrist. "You knew what this was from the beginning!"
"I knew you were a coward!" She wrenched her arm free. "I knew you'd never leave her money!"
Zelda looked at the door. She looked at the two of them, and then she looked at the door again.
She picked up her bag from where she'd dropped it by the entrance.
She opened the door and left.