"Cannot be solved from outside." He said it against her jaw, already easing her across his lap, and felt rather than heard herlaugh, that impossible laugh, nerves and joy in one body, and then the laugh went away and something better replaced it.
After that, the city drove by unwatched.
It was slower this time, and quieter, her hands in his hair and his name kept low, like a secret from the front seat, and when she came apart it was with her face pressed into his throat and his arms locked around her like the vehicle might try to take her somewhere, and for a long few minutes afterward they simply stayed like that, tangled and rumpled and sixteen again, her heartbeat arguing against his.
"We are in a car," Aislinn said finally, into his collar, scandalized at both of them approximately eight minutes too late.
"We are."
"I'm a mother."
"Demonstrably."
She laughed, wobbly and warm, and swatted him without any force at all, and she was still in his lap with her hair ruined when her phone rang.
She fished it out of the seat, glanced at the screen, and every drop of the warmth left her face at once.
Stephanie, the screen said.
Her friend from college was calling.
Chapter Fourteen
THE FIRST CALL TOOKfour minutes.
Stephanie made it from her kitchen island with a glass of wine she didn't drink, to a number she'd sworn she'd never need again, and the voice that answered still remembered her, which was either flattering or terrible, she'd decide later. The order was simple and she kept her own voice bored while she gave it, the way you were supposed to, no names on the line, just a description, an address in a bad building, a schedule. A single mother, she said. Walks home late from work. No one will look very hard.
The voice quoted a price. She doubled it for speed.
It wasn't personal, she told herself, ending the call, and almost laughed at herself, because of course it was personal, it had been personal for eleven years. But it was also just cold math now. Aislinn had been seen on Valerio Le Sabre's arm in front of half of society, and men like Le Sabre pulled threads for a hobby, and every thread in that woman's life ran backward through a library table straight to Stephanie's hands. The math only worked one way. The dupe had to go before anyone thought to ask the dupe any questions.
One loose end. Then the good life got to keep being good.
She topped up the wine she wasn't drinking, arranged herself on the sofa, and made the second call.
Aislinn picked up on the third ring, and her voice came through warm as ever, warm like eleven years hadn't passed, warm like a person leaving her lunch open on the table for whoever needed half.
"Steph! I was just thinking about you."
"Liar," Stephanie said fondly, and settled in. "You're famous, you know that? You're in two feeds and a group chat. A billionaire, Ais. You have to tell me everything."
And Aislinn laughed, embarrassed, and told her almost nothing, which was so exactly like her that Stephanie could've screamed, and instead she cooed and coaxed and drew little circles on the sofa arm with one fingernail. It's all been so fast, Aislinn said. It's complicated, Aislinn said. I want to tell you properly, not on the phone, Aislinn said, and Stephanie smiled at the ceiling.Dupe.
Still. After everything, after eight years, a deepfake, and a library table, the girl was still a dupe, still worrying about telling her properly, and the old envy stirred in its sleep one more time, because how, how did a person stay this soft and keep surviving—
"Soon, though," Aislinn was saying. "We'll talk soon, Steph. I promise."
"Soon," Stephanie agreed. "Take care of yourself, babe."
She ended the call.
The apartment was very quiet for exactly one second.
Then, from three places in the darkness around her, came the sound her whole childhood knew before her mind caught up,oiled, mechanical, slow, the sound of guns being cocked, and every lamp in her apartment came on at once.
The wine glass tipped. She didn't hear it break.
They were already in the room. That was the part her brain kept refusing, they were already in it, four of them, five, positioned the way furniture is positioned, men in dark suits standing in her twelfth-floor apartment with its river view and its doorman who remembered names, and not one of them was looking at her like she was a person. They were looking at her like a task.
