Chapter 3
It appeared the answer might arrive faster than expected.
“And the wedding?” she asked.
Nikolai nearly smiled.
Of all the questions available to her, that was the one she chose.
“What about it?”
“The Plaza. The flowers. The guest arrangements. My dress.”
“Paid deposits are probably gone.”
Elise leaned back.
“Probably?”
“My attorneys are still sorting through it.”
Across the room, Wren lowered her eyes.
But she had seen enough.
Elise touched the diamond on her finger.
Nikolai noticed that too.
“We’ll figure something out,” Elise finally said.
There it was.
The sentence he had been waiting for.
Except it sounded rehearsed.
She rose, crossed the room, and kissed his cheek.
“You should get some sleep.”
“You’re not staying?”
“I have a headache.”
“Elise.”
She stopped.
“If I lose everything,” Nikolai said quietly, “does anything change between us?”
For the first time, she looked directly into his eyes.
And she smiled.
“Of course not.”
Then she walked away.
Nikolai remained at the table.
He should have felt relieved.
Instead, he felt nothing.
Because men like Nikolai Cross did not survive by listening only to words.
They survived by watching what happened after the words were spoken.
And twenty minutes later, Elise made her first phone call.
---
Wren found the phone at 11:47 p.m.
She was cleaning the sitting room after Elise had left for her apartment across town.
The device lay beneath the velvet sofa.
It was not Elise’s usual phone.
Wren knew that because she had retrieved Elise’s silver-cased iPhone from charging stations dozens of times.
This one was black.
Cheap.
Disposable.
Wren almost placed it on the side table.
Then it vibrated.
A message appeared.
**Victor: Did he buy it?**
Wren froze.
Another message arrived.
**We need the transfer codes before morning. If Cross is really finished, we move tonight.**
Wren stared at the screen.
She knew she should put it down.
She was a maid.
She was paid to clean fingerprints, not investigate them.
Then a third message appeared.
**Delete everything after you photograph the vault ledger.**
Her stomach tightened.
Wren looked toward the hallway.
The penthouse had gone silent.
She picked up the phone.
The device had no lock.
That was Elise’s first mistake.
Her second was assuming no one who cleaned her rooms could understand what she was reading.
Wren had spent two years studying accounting before her father died and left behind debts large enough to swallow the rest of her education.