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“Did you discuss the specific information in the email?” Marcus asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t share any unpublished data with him,” I said.

Marcus and Alexander exchanged a brief look.

“Thank you, Dr. Rossi,” Marcus replied.

The meeting moved on to the next item on the agenda. I paid attention like someone who had been caught not paying attention, though part of my mind remained stubbornly elsewhere. I was going to leave this room with more questions than answers. The one that made me the most uneasy was Julian.

Forty minutes later, Alexander closed his folder, thanked everyone present, and the room began to move. Chairs pushed back, conversations resumed, and people began filing toward the door. I gathered my materials slowly, giving no indication that the meeting had altered anything beyond my schedule. Years in science had taught me how to absorb an unexpected result without reacting before I understood it.

The elevator doors were open when I reached them.

I stepped inside, pressed the button for the sixth floor, and stood facing forward. The doors began to close as a hand stopped them. Alexander stepped inside. He pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed.

I was aware of him on a molecular level. His height, the two feet of air between us. I was not prepared for any of it. The elevator was not small, yet it felt impossibly so.

He stood facing forward, which meant we were both looking at the same closed doors. My heart was beating hard enough to feel it against my ribs and I wondered, absurdly, whether he could hear it. I looked at the floor indicator as the numbers changed.

My gaze shifted to the reflective doors. His eyes were not on the indicator. They were on me. For the length of one slow breath, we looked at each other.

His hand had come to rest against the rail and his knuckles were not entirely relaxed. I understood, with a dangerous certainty, that his composure was under the same strain as my own.

The elevator dinged, indicating that we had reached the sixth floor. The doors opened. I walked out of the elevator and did not look back.

* * *

Alexander

I was heading to my suite.

I needed some time to think about what had unfolded over the last hour. Emilia had been distracted. Her attention had been elsewhere; the first question confirmed it. Then as soon as we started talking about Aurora, she came back. Perhaps I put too much pressure on her by including her in the meeting. I wanted her in the room. Aurora was hers, and she deserved a place at the table when decisions affecting it were made. I wanted the Board to know her as more than a name attached to a research program.

I had also wanted to see her.

She mentioned Mercer. I recognized the name immediately. Six years ago. Project Helix. Marcus had caught it too. I would have him look into Mercer. On any other morning, the connection might have meant nothing. Less than twelve hours after Victoria Caldwell’s name appeared in a forensic report, it meant considerably more. Were Victoria and Mercer connected?

I had noticed Emilia’s distraction the moment I began speaking. At the time, I assumed the meeting itself had unsettled her. Now I wasn’t as certain. I remembered the way she had looked at my hands during the meeting and the way her eyes had met mine in the elevator’s reflection. Her breathing had changed in the elevator.

Perhaps the meeting had not been what had distracted her. Perhaps it had been me. The possibility was deeply satisfying.

I had made one mistake. Incidents. She had caught it immediately. I had corrected the question, but I could not be certain she had accepted it or merely allowed me to make it.

Chapter 11

Emilia

Saturday morning arrived with absolutely nowhere I needed to be.

I stayed beneath my comforter longer than usual, watching pale morning light make its way through the curtains. There was no alarm to silence, no meeting waiting for me, no reason to get up except that eventually I wanted coffee. When I finally did, I pulled on my favorite leggings and a soft cream sweater. My hair had decided to cooperate, so I brushed it and left it down. A wool coat completed the minimum effort required to survive an autumn morning in New York.

I stepped into the corridor without deciding where I was going and let my feet choose for me. I ended up in the gardens.

Autumn was showing itself everywhere. The flower beds were thinning, the hedges were perfectly clipped, and the roses seemed determined to hold on a little longer. Dew darkened the stone paths beneath my feet. At the far end of the garden, two gardeners were already at work improving things that needed no improvement.

A piano sounded from somewhere above me, and I stopped to listen. I found a spot beneath a maple tree and looked up, trying to place which window it was coming from. I didn’t recognize the piece. A few measures repeated, changing slightly each time, as though the music were still becoming what it was meant to be. When the last of the notes faded, I started walking again. The café was opening nearby, and the smell of coffee drifted across the garden as the staff arranged the chairs outside. Normally, that would have been enough to change my plans. I already had coffee, though, and I liked not having a plan at all.

A few weeks ago, everything at Blackwood had felt new enough that I was constantly trying to remember where I was going. Now I knew which paths curved back, where the café opened onto the garden, and which turn would bring the conservatory into view. I didn’t have to think about any of it anymore.