Chapter 3
The doors were heavy. She put her shoulder into them.
Rain hit her face like needles.
Behind her, the Grand Meridian blazed. Somewhere in there, Marcus was already rebuilding the night — she knew him well enough to know that by now he had already decided she was drunk, or unwell, or having some kind of episode. He would have his story before the valet brought his car.
She didn’t care. She stood on the top step with rain running down her neck and thought: there is nothing behind me but a cage, and the door is open, and I am the only one who ever had the key.
Then she heard the door open again behind her.
For one terrible second she thought it was him.
It wasn’t. A man in a dark suit stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light — no coat, no umbrella, drink still in hand. He didn’t call out to her. He didn’t move to stop her. He just stood there and watched her with an expression she couldn’t read, and then he set the glass down on the step.
Elena turned and went down into the rain.
CHAPTER 2
She didn’t stop at the bottom of the steps.
The sidewalk was cold enough to shock her whole body awake — one flash of real, of now, before the numbness came back. The Grand Meridian’s lights threw her shadow long and thin across the wet pavement. Somewhere behind her the doors opened again.
“Elena.”
She kept walking.
“Elena — stop.”
Jessica’s hand caught her arm and spun her around. Marcus’s sister stood in the rain in a five-hundred-dollar dress with no umbrella, mascara running in dark ribbons down both cheeks, looking at Elena like she’d just watched someone walk off a cliff.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I’m done.”
Elena’s voice came out steady. Too steady. It was the voice of something that had already broken and stopped hurting.
“Done.” Jessica’s laugh was awful. “You just humiliated him in front of the mayor. The city council. Every investor he has.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any idea what he’s going to —”
“He called me a placeholder, Jess.”
The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Jessica’s mouth opened. Closed.
“An hour ago. He pulled me into the coat room by the kitchen and he told me I was a placeholder. A beautiful, expensive placeholder. Until he found someone worthy of the Martinez name.”