Page 65 of Cruel Lies

"You did your homework, I see."

His face glows ethereally blue in profile. "I like a thing that's smarter than it looks and wants out of its container." He glances at me, and I decide very firmly not to examine that sentence for a decade or so.

Dinner is set up in front of the kelp forest. It's a two-person table with linen and candles, situated at the foot of a two-story wall of gently waving green. There's enough wine for a table of ten, a first course already plated, and no one else in the building except us and a staff so discreet they might as well be ghosts.

"Sit," he suggests, pulling out my chair. "You've had a week."

I have indeed had a week. I drop into the offered seat gratefully.

The food is extraordinary in the way everything with Ronan is extraordinary. I've stopped being surprised by it, which is in itself a little unnerving. Some small back-office corner of my brain has flagged the not-being-surprised for review.

We eat while the kelp sways and a shark makes his slow circuit, a patient loop at the edge of the candlelight.

"So," I say, around a bite of something with brown butter in it. "Business, before I forget I'm mad at you on principle. The filing."

"Handled." He refills my glass without being asked. "The response went in Thursday morning. There's a hearing on the calendar for the twelfth. It won't survive contact."

"You sound very sure."

"The attempt was sloppy," he says, not cockily but just matter-of-fact. "The provision they're trying to exercise requires notice that was never properly given. There are half a dozen procedural errors in the first page alone. Whoever drafted it wanted it done fast and cheap." He shrugs one shoulder. "Fast and cheap is easy to unmake."

I squint at him. "You're enjoying this, aren't you? You actually are."

"I enjoy competence," he says. "I resent its absence. This is the latter, so no, I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it. I'm merely relieved on your behalf."

I set my fork down. "How relieved should I be? On a scale of throw a party to sell a kidney?"

"Keep both kidneys, Ms. Meadows. I like you put together just the way you are." His dangerous smile surfaces and swims away, just like the shark.

I choke on my wine, but he pretends not to see and pours me water like nothing ever happened.

We're most of the way through the second course when a man appears at the far end of the hall. One of the discreet ghosts, except this one isn't a waiter.

This one is in a dark coat and stands at the edge of the blue light where the tanks glow behind him. He doesn't approach.

Ronan has already seen him. The fork settles on the plate, unhurried, and his attention leaves the table entirely.

"Excuse me a moment," Ronan says, rising. "One thing."

He goes over. They speak low, the man's head bent, Ronan's face unreadable in profile against the enormous glass. It lasts ninety seconds, maybe less. Then the man is gone, folded back into the dark, and Ronan is walking back to me at the same unhurried pace he left at.

"Sorry," he says, sitting. "A matter that couldn't wait."

"It couldn't wait until we finished the branzino?" I tease.

Ronan laughs. "I can only hope the branzino will forgive me."

"But will I?"

"That remains the open question of the evening." He picks up his fork again and resumes eating.

After a moment, unable to help myself, I ask, "Who was that?"

"An employee."

"Your employees wear coats like extras from a Cold War movie?"

"There's a dress code," he says. "I'm a serious man."