Esmeralda Vale.
Our eyes met. Hers narrowed. Mine, I’m sure, went wide, because my poker face was and always had been nonexistent, and the sight of Christopher’s stepmother in a confined metal box thirty floors above the ground was not something I’d emotionally prepared for this morning.
She looked at me the way she’d looked at me in the courthouse. Like I was an obstacle she was measuring for removal.
“Mrs. Vale.” She said it the way you’d say a word in a language you didn’t respect. “How lovely. Visiting your husband at work?”
“I am.”
“How domestic.” She pressed the button for her floor. The doors closed. We were alone in a metal box rising through a building that bore her dead husband’s name, and I could feel the confrontation coming the way you feel a storm in the air before the first drop falls. “Tell me, does he have you on a schedule? Public appearances on Tuesdays, office visits on Thursdays? I imagine the whole arrangement runs like clockwork.”
I looked at her. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” She turned to face me fully. Her eyes were dark and sharp with resentment. “This marriage is a performance. Christopher has never loved anyone in his life except one woman, and he loved her like a fool, and she proved what everyone already knew, that Christopher Vale is not the kind of man people stay for.”
I didn’t know who she was talking about. The curiosity sure did scratch my heart, but I kept my face neutral because Esmeralda was watching me the way a predator watches something it has already decided to eat.
“You seem to have a lot of opinions about a marriage you’re not part of,” I said.
“I have opinions about a fraud being committed under the Vale name. A name my husband built. A name that means something to people who actually cared about him.”
“A name Christopher also carries. Whether you like it or not.”
Her eyes narrowed. “He carries it like a costume. He puts it on when it suits him and takes it off when something better comes along. That’s what actors do, dear. They pretend.”
“And what do stepmothers do? The ones who lock children out of their own family and call it parenting?”
The air in the elevator went cold. I’d gone further than I intended. But something about this woman, the way she talked about Christopher like he was a stain she’d spent years trying toscrub off the family name, lit a fire in me that I didn’t know was there until it was already burning.
“No? Stop creating your own narratives.” She recovered fast, straightening her shoulders. “But your fake performance has evidential proof. I’ve seen the photos. Very well staged. I was married to a man who staged his entire life, and I know what performance looks like.”
The elevator hummed between floors. My pulse was loud in my ears. I thought about walking away, being the bigger person, all the things reasonable people do.
But I was not feeling reasonable.
“I respect my elders,” I said. “I was raised to. Even the ones who didn’t deserve it.” I met her eyes and held them. “But I will not stand here and listen to you slander my husband.”
“Your husband destroyed?—”
“My husband is doing his best to lead a company that was dropped on him by a family that never gave him anything except reasons to leave. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want it. He took it because his grandmother asked and because the alternative was letting people like you tear it apart.” I was gripping the lunch bag so hard the leather was creasing under my fingers. “So you can question his methods. You can question his image. But you do not get to question his character in front of me.”
Esmeralda stared at me. For the first time since I’d met her, her composure looked less than perfect. Dented.
The elevator doors opened on her floor.
She stepped out and turned, looking at me one more time with an expression I couldn’t read and didn’t want to.
“You’re either very brave or very stupid,” she said.
“I’ve been both,” I said. “The brave parts worked out better.”
The doors closed between us. I exhaled so hard my lungs burned.
My hands were shaking. So was the rest of me. I stood in the elevator and replayed what I’d just said to Christopher Vale’s stepmother and thought, very clearly,Torres, what did you just do?
The doors opened on the executive floor and Trisha was standing there like she’d been waiting for a delivery.
“You look pale,” she said. “What happened?”
