Chapter 2

Theo read the last line on my phone twice before he looked up.

“This is revenge.”

His champagne glass stood untouched beside the contract, a thin chain of bubbles climbing and breaking against the rim.

“For seven years,” he said, “you have not attended a board meeting, approved a budget, or taken part in the theater’s management. You do not get to appear on the day it is about to fail and call this a decision.”

I did not defend myself. Revenge was easier for him to understand than grief; it gave him something to fight instead of a loss he might have to feel.

I laid seven ticket stubs across the sale contract. The first had faded blue, the last was burned at one corner, and together they made a path across Theo’s signature.

Their paper edges caught against my thumb. I had kept them hidden because each one proved I had been there, even after Theo learned to speak of the theater as if it belonged only to him.

“Seven theaters,” I typed.

“I can count.”

I slid out one more ticket: a boarding pass printed that morning, his name beneath MIDDLE SEAT.

“This is yours.”

Dominic gave a small laugh. “You expect him to go on vacation while the company is insolvent?”

“It is not a vacation,” I said.

My voice came out in a thread of air. Theo’s eyes flicked to my throat and away.

I laid the written agreement over the tickets. “Seven stops. You travel with me. In Los Angeles, I decide whether to withdraw the injunction.”

“If I abandon the seven-stop journey before reaching Los Angeles by my own choice,” I added, “I sign the sale agreement immediately. No appeal. No delay.”

His lawyer read the terms. “You want this enforceable?”

“I want the words to mean what they say.”

Theo looked from the injunction to the apartment renderings, then back to me. The theater had forty-six employees, unpaid vendors, and a buyer who could walk if the injunction remained.

He could hate my terms. He could not ignore them.

“You will not make business decisions on this trip.”

“I am not asking you to stop working.”

“My lawyer comes.”

“Fine.”

“My phone stays on.”

“Fine.”

He lowered his voice. “When this is over, you do not move the line again.”

I looked at the seven tickets. “I have never moved it.”

He signed with the same black pen he had used on the sale contract.

When Dominic and the lawyer left, the room smelled of cold champagne and copier toner. Theo stayed at the table while I tried to cap my pen.

My fingers would not close around it. I pressed them against my skirt and waited for the tremor to pass, hating that he could see it and hating more that a part of me still wanted him to ask why.

“Elara.” He offered his hand. “Let me.”

After the fire, that hand had answered for me before I could write a word. I stepped away before it could close over mine.

“No.”

My suitcase waited outside the conference room, one wheel turned toward the elevator. I pulled up its handle, then heard paper shift behind me.

Theo had turned to the final page of our agreement. Where a departure date should have been, I had written a deadline in blue ink.

FIFTY-SIX DAYS. Four days before the sale would close.