Chapter 5: The Man Who Needed Something
The meeting room was in a law office on the fourteenth floor of a building downtown β neutral ground, my father's lawyers had insisted.
Nathan's team had agreed faster than expected.
That told me something.
I arrived first.
I sat with my back to the window, the city behind me, the door in front.
My father's lead attorney, a woman named Claire Sutton, sat to my left.
She had a notepad, a pen, and the particular stillness of someone who had done this many times.
"He'll try to make you feel sorry for him," Claire said, not looking up from her notepad.
"I know."
"He may cry."
"I know."
"Don't answer anything he asks.
Let him talk.
If he has something real, he'll give it to you without being asked, because he needs the trade more than you do."
"I know," I said again.
She looked up.
Something shifted in her expression β not quite a smile.
"Good," she said.
Nathan came in five minutes later.
He looked smaller.
Not physically β he was still the same height, same build β but the way he moved had changed.
The particular ease of a man who believed rooms rearranged themselves for him was gone.
He sat down across from me and for a moment he just looked at me, and I let him.
"You look well," he said finally.
I said nothing.
He glanced at Claire, then back to me.
"I'd like to speak to you privately."
"That's not possible," Claire said.
His jaw tightened.
Old habit.
He turned back to me.
"I need you to understand something," he said.
"What happened at Blackthorn β I know what it looked like.
I know what it was.
I'm not here to excuse it." He stopped.
Started again.
"She pushed me to it.
Every time.
For two years she found ways to push me further than I would have gone on my own."
"Nathan," I said.
He stopped.
"I'm not here to discuss what she made you do," I said.
"I'm here because you said you have information.
Give it to me or don't.
That's the only conversation available."
Something moved across his face.
Not quite shame.
Something adjacent to it.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed a small USB drive on the table.
"Celeste has a second identity," he said.
"Not the Varga name β your people already found that.
A third identity.
British passport.
The name on it is Eleanor Marsh." He nodded at the drive.
"That drive contains the contact information for the man who made the passport.
It contains records of three bank accounts held under that name in Singapore and the Cayman Islands.
And it contains a video."
Claire's pen stopped moving.
"What's on the video?" I asked.
Nathan looked at the table.
"It's from eighteen months ago," he said.
"Celeste didn't know I had a camera in my private office.
She made a phone call.
She didn't know I could hear it." He paused.
"She was talking to someone about Douglas Hale.
About what she had done.
She was β she was laughing about it."
The room was very still.
"She kjlled him," I said.
"Yes," Nathan said.
"And on that recording, she says so.
Clearly.
By name."
I looked at the USB drive on the table.
"Why didn't you go to the police?" I asked.
He looked up.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"Because by the time I understood what she was, she already had enough on me to destroy everything," he said.
"I was trapped.
I thought if I kept her close, kept her satisfied, I could manage it.
I thought I could control the situation." His voice cracked slightly.
"I was wrong."
"Yes," I said.
"You were."
I looked at Claire.
She picked up the USB drive and placed it in a sealed evidence bag she had ready in her briefcase.
She had known.
My father had known.
They had expected exactly this.
I stood.
Nathan looked up at me.
"Does this help me?
With the charges?"
"That's not my decision," I said.
"It never was."
I walked to the door.
"Vivienne." His voice came from behind me.
I stopped.
He had not used my name once in the last two years of our marriage.
He had called me *her*, or *your wife* to other people, or nothing at all.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I stood at the door for a moment.
May you like
"I know you are," I said.
I left.
