Evelyn ignored him. “Did he tell you what happened twelve years ago?”
“No.”
“Then allow me. My son was engaged once.”
Adrian’s face went utterly still.
“Her name was Celeste Vale. Beautiful girl. Old money. Excellent bloodline. Terrible judgment.” Evelyn tilted her head. “She died in the crash that damaged him.”
A cold thread slid down my spine.
Rain.
Glass.
Blood on a white cuff.
A bracelet rolling across asphalt.
I looked at Adrian.
His eyes were on his mother, but his face was somewhere else entirely.
Evelyn stepped closer. “Afterward, Adrian became… untouchable. A poetic punishment, some said.”
“No one said that,” Adrian said.
“I did.”
The cruelty was so casual I almost missed it.
Almost.
Evelyn turned to me again. “Whatever you are, Miss Coleman, you are not the first miracle someone has tried to sell my son.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Adrian crossed the room and pressed the elevator button. “Daniel will escort you out.”
Evelyn’s smile vanished.
“There are board members who still remember whose name opened doors before yours did.”
“And there are documents in my possession that would make them forget yours entirely.”
A pulse beat in her jaw.
For a moment, mother and son looked at each other like two people standing over the same grave, each accusing the other of digging it.
Then the elevator opened.
Evelyn walked inside.
Before the doors closed, she looked at me one last time.
“Ask him who was driving.”
The doors slid shut.
Adrian turned away first.
He went to the bar, poured whiskey into a glass, then did not drink it.
I should have stayed quiet.
I had never been good at should.
“Who was driving?”
The glass cracked in his hand.
Not shattered.
Cracked.
A thin red line opened across his palm.
I moved before thinking. “You’re bleeding.”
“Leave it.”
“No.”
I grabbed a towel and crossed to him.
He stepped back. “Mara.”
It was the first time he used my first name.
Not Miss Coleman.
Mara.
That should not have mattered.
It did.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
“No.”
“You’re dripping blood on imported stone. Isn’t that a felony in your house?”
His mouth tightened. “This is not amusing.”
“Neither is infection.”