Chapter 6
Stephen went completely still.
He looked at me for what felt like a hundred years.
The drink had fogged his eyes over, and I couldn't read a thing in them.
It was a long time before he spoke. "You already know everything, so you may as well go."
I knew what he was worried about.
So I kept my voice low. "Don't worry. I'm not going to make trouble at your wedding."
Something in his face broke, like I had hit him somewhere fatal.
The color drained out of him and his mouth started to shake.
He looked down at me and reached for my hand.
It was the same reach as that night under the streetlight, when he laced his fingers through mine.
I hadn't pulled away from him then.
This time I moved my hand before he could touch it.
I didn't have another round in me. "Fine. I'll go. Whatever you want."
I stepped around him and headed for the door.
He came after me, unsteady on his feet, and blocked my way.
He was the one who had told me to leave, and now he wouldn't let me.
He held my eyes. "Alysha, you don't have anything to say to me?"
I looked at him and shook my head.
Something raw came up in his eyes and stayed there.
"You're not going to ask me anything? Not one thing?"
I thought about it, and in the end I did say something.
"Congratulations on the wedding, then."
He swayed hard.
Out there in the moonlight he almost went down.
I watched him and didn't say another word.
Stephen told me he had arranged everything for me out there.
I never waited for him to hand any of it over.
I bought my own ticket the next morning and left.
Nobody knew where I went.
A few months later, a fire started in my apartment and killed me.
*****
It took me a while to claw my way out of all that.
Stephen was still in the back seat, working through the Sutton business with his assistant.
He came back to the same point over and over, and it was always speed.
I didn't follow any of it then. I understood soon enough.
For the next two weeks he barely stopped.
On the day before Christmas Eve, I rode with him to Foster Enterprises.
That afternoon Emma turned up, and she never went anywhere less than perfect.
Her hair was everywhere, her face was wild, and she came at the boardroom in nothing but a nightgown.
His secretary trailed after her, wanting to stop her and not daring to.
Stephen was inside working a contract that mattered.
The numbers on it were enormous, and half the top firms in the state had people at the table.
More than a dozen executives sat around it, with their assistants and secretaries behind them.
Every eye in that room watched Emma crash through the door looking like she had lost her mind.
The nightgown was thin and she had no shoes on.
She came barefoot across the floor and went straight for Stephen.
Anybody would have felt for her, the way she was wrecking herself in public, and Stephen was supposed to be the one who loved her.
He stayed in his chair.
He didn't so much as shift his feet, and he watched his own wife come apart without a flicker.
I had never once seen him look at Emma that coldly.
She almost reached him before he spoke, and it came out disgusted. "Hold her back."
His assistant and his secretary caught her by both arms, and there was nothing gentle about it.
Emma stared at him sitting there so calm, her face twisted and her eyes red raw.
She had so much she wanted to say.
In the end all that came out was one wrecked scream. "You lied to me!"
Stephen laughed under his breath.
He stood up and turned to the executives around the table.
His voice turned cruel. "Mr. Sutton is in prison. Sutton Holdings is getting carved up, and every one of you walks away with a piece."