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This time, Woodrow can’t even hide his relief. “Oh, sir! Such happy news. Your mother will be delighted.”
I think about my mother, in her conservative gowns and her necklaces of pearls, coming face-to-face with Willow Lynch from Greenleigh, and I almost burst out laughing. If nothing else, this year’s gala will be anything but boring.
“I live to delight,” I tell Woodrow. “Any news on Mitchell?”
“Our lawyers have been in touch with him. He’s confirmed he’s working on a piece on you, sir, and he has raised the possibility of an exclusive interview. A chance for you to have your own voice heard, have some agency over the direction of the piece. Or so he says, of course.”
“Mitchell will write whatever he wants to.” I set my paper down, folding it neatly across my lap. “He’s probably hoping to wheedle some juicy quotes out of me.”
“Which decision would be most unwise?” Woodrow asks with his customary tact. “To grant him the interview or to eschew it?”
“I’ll think on it.”
If Mitchell wishes to drag me through the mud, he’s going to need some evidence, and the only evidence exists right here in my home, which no power on earth could give him access to. Mitchell could pull at the loose strings of my operation; he might even get a couple of CHOKE clients to crack under the pressure and give him something, but most of them are strangled by so much legal paperwork they wouldn’t so much as risk saying my name out loud.
Still, Mitchell has formally announced himself as an adversary, and I prefer to meet all my foes head-on. It’s so much more enjoyable when I inevitably crush them under my boot.
Maybe it’s time we finally meet face-to-face after all.
Willow doesn’t return. Accordingto my staff, she went to Greenleigh—briefly—and then to a bar in central London. I try not to let it concern me too much, even though I’m aware she’s successfully slipped through my fingers before.
At midnight, I get dressed and drive myself into the finance district. Glass towers glisten black and orange in the London night. The rest of the world sleeps, but this part of London is loud with noise: traffic, music, the dull roar of male voices. Hundreds of wannabe wolves of Wall Street clamour for each other’s attention, like little boys playing pretend. My staff point me towards the green and gold façade of a bar—the Swing Swan.
Inside, the interior is all industrial chic and Edison chandeliers. This is the kind of place for wealthy London yuppies to frequent under the guise of having a personality, and the crowd confirms this evaluation. Identical men with identical haircuts drink craft beer, talking loudly to nobody in particular while never lifting their eyes off their phones.
This bids the question: what the fuck is someone like Willow doing in a place like this?
Those don’t look like the kind of men who would make for lucrative blackmail victims, and something tells me Willow would rather have the skin flayed off her than sleep with these men for any sort of financial advantage. Nor do I imagine she’s one of the women in this egregiously male-dominated field—she’s not the type.
I don’t need to keep wondering for very long. The crowd obscuring the bar dissolves suddenly in a cloud of laughter, revealing the bartender. Black hair tied in a messy ponytail, along-sleeved crop top the colour of blood, a violently red mouth shaped like a love heart.
Willow as a bartender is all sultry laughter and effortless efficiency. If I didn’t know her right leg was a mess of chewed-up muscle and flesh, I would never have guessed she was injured.
When I walk up to the bar, she looks up from the drink she’s mixing and rolls her eyes with the petulance of a teenager.
“Don’t harass me in my workplace,” she says by way of greeting.
I lean against the bar. “Youwork. Who would have thought.”
“Some of us actually contribute to society.”
I sweep the crowded bar with a look. “The only thing you’re contributing to is the alcoholism statistic in the finance field.”
“And what statistics do you contribute to aside from nepotism and inbreeding in the British upper class?”
As she says this, she leans forward to slide a drink over to one of the punters. There’s a tiny twitch of movement in her cheek, a flash of pain so brief you would have missed it if you weren’t looking for it.
“How’s the leg, Lynch?”
“Fucking fabulous, Luca.”
I lean over the bar to get a look at her. She’s wearing high-waisted, loose black trousers, hiding her injury from view. I look back up at her.
“The doctor said you’d heal well enough with time andrest.”
“I’m not losing my job because you decided to get your dogs to maul me.”
“You wouldn’t need a job if you won the hunts,” I point out. “And you’re not going to win any hunt if you don’t let your leg heal.”
