Page 126 of Unlocked

“It is unfortunate, but your father has managed to keep a distance between himself and Bunny’s misdeeds.”

“So the Curator gets away once again.”

“Perhaps for now. But I think the stain from your mother will spread to him. He will not remain unscathed. Eli Fisher, however, is a different story. There is nothing to link him whatsoever.”

“But you will keep trying?” Tatum asked. “These people should be punished.”

“We will keep trying.”

“Good. Then I am happy to go today.”

Armand nodded once, with the finality of something settled, and said nothing further, which was exactly right.

The door to the boardroom opened, and people began filing in. Tatum stood and smoothed her jacket, and was about to follow when someone touched her arm.

She turned.

Jason Sakstra was standing behind her. He looked different from the last time she'd seen him, less hollowed out, less like a man carrying something that was slowly crushing him. There was color in his face that hadn't been there in months, and his eyes, though cautious, had something in them that she recognized as relief.

"Tatum," he said. "I need to say something to you."

She blinked. "Jason."

"My account," he said. "This morning. There was a deposit. A significant one." He paused and looked at her steadily. "I know it was you."

"Jason, I don't know what⁠—"

He said quietly, "You and Archer were the only ones who knew. The only ones who cared enough to actually do something about it." He stopped. His jaw worked for a moment. "And Archer is gone."

The last three words landed in the space between them with a finality that stole her breath.

Grief moved through her, the kind of sharp, stabbing pain that arrived without warning in the middle of ordinary moments and took the air out of the room. She pressed her lips together and tried to control her emotions.

"I'm glad it helped," she said. Her voice came out steady. She was still proud of that.

"It's not just me," Jason said. "Is it? There are others."

"I really don't know what you're talking about," Tatum said, with a faint smile that she thought he understood.

He looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded. "Thank you," he said simply, and meant it in the way that made simple words carry everything.

She nodded back and turned toward the boardroom before she lost the steadiness she was working so hard to maintain.

The room was the same as it always was. Long table, heavy chairs, the particular quality of light that came through the windows at this hour and fell across the polished surface in long flat bands. She had sat in this room a hundred times. She had sat in it when Archer was at the head of it, when his presence had organized everything around it the way a gravitational field organized space, and the absence of that now was something she felt in her body rather than just her mind.

Knees suddenly weak, she sat down.

The others arranged themselves around the table. Remy Tanger at the head, which was right where she should be for this. Remy was the last of the founding families, the granddaughter of Remington Tanger, and she carried that with the particular grace of someone who had always understood what it meant and had never once made a fuss about it. She caught Tatum's eye across the table and gave her a brief nod that carried more in it than a nod usually did.

Eli Fisher was at the far end.

Tatum looked at him once and then looked away. He was impeccably dressed, as always, his expression arranged into a mask of gravity and readiness in equal measure. He had the look of a man who had been preparing for this room for a long time and had decided this morning was the morning it paid off.

She looked at the table instead.

Sharon Edgerstone was there, and Alan Forgerty, and the others, faces she knew from a hundred meetings that had started with Archer walking in and the room reorganizing itself around him without anyone acknowledging that was what was happening.

Remy called the meeting to order.