Page 53 of Cruel Lies

It is not, for example, about the fact that he is the only person in the entire city who looked me in the eye and told me the truth about my own situation.

It is not about the wayMs. Meadowssounds in his mouth.

It is certainly not about the spoon dripping with dark chocolate and vanilla cream.

A woman at the lobby front desk looks up as I approach. Before I can launch into the speech I've been rehearsing on the way over—I'm here to see Mr. Akov, no I don't have an appointment, yes I'll wait, no I will not be told he's busy—she simply smiles.

"Ms. Meadows," she greets. "He's on the forty-first floor."

I stop dead.

"You… How do you…?" I give up. "Does this man have afileon me at the front desk?"

"I'll let him know you're coming up," she says serenely, and gestures toward the elevators.

I get in the elevator feeling, once again, like the least-informed person in my own story. The doors close on my reflection—flushed cheeks, blazer slightly askew, eyes a little too bright—and I have a moment of clarity where I think,Cali, what exactly are you doing?

The doors open before I can come up with an answer.

His office is somehow even more grand than I remember. Ronan is standing by the window with his back to me, on the phone, speaking low and fast in Russian. He doesn't move a muscle when I come in, but I feel his attention fixate on me anyway.

He says something final into the phone and sets it down on the desk—facedown, I notice, the way Todd used to do it.

"Ms. Meadows," he says, spinning to face me. He doesn't look surprised. He lookspleased."To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You can't pay off my company's debts," I announce.

He considers this. "I already did."

"This is a slippery slope. That's my company. Mine! I built it from nothing while my husband was busy stealing it out from under me, and theone thingI have left that's entirely mine is the right to dig it out of its own holes."

"Forty-one thousand dollars," he reminds me, "is a deep hole."

"I'd have figured it out."

"By Monday?"

I frown. The service-suspension notice was scheduled for Monday. How does he know that?

"That's not the point," I argue.

"No, it's not." He strides around the desk. He's in shirtsleeves again, the cuffs rolled, and I make the unforgivable error of noticing his forearms before I remember I'm supposed to be furious with him. "The point is that you don't like being helped. Especially not by me."

"Yeah, well, when you learn that your husband has been manipulating and gaslighting you for most of your marriage, you kind of tend to get a little gun-shy around scheming men."

"I'm not him."

"Aren't you?" I set my cold coffee down on the corner of his desk. "Todd managed my whole life. He told me what I should weigh and what I was worth and what I ought to be grateful for. So forgive me if I get a little twitchy when a man I've known for two weeks decides to starttaking care of thingswithout asking."

Ronan says nothing, nor does his facial expression change one bit. But, like how I knew he was aware of me when I walked in, I get the feeling that something beneath the surface is moving around.

"You're right," he says eventually.

I blink. "I am?"

"I should have asked." He leans against the front of his desk, hands braced on either side of him, and looks at me with those impossible, churning eyes. "I won't apologize for clearing the invoice, because if I hadn't, your infrastructure would have gone dark on Monday and you'd have had a much worse week than this one. But I should have told you I was going to do it. That part, I got wrong."

I stand there with all the wind sucked out of my sails. "Uh… Well," I say. "Good. Yes. That's… Thank you for acknowledging that."