Chapter 3 3

The client presentation ended at 2:47 PM. Alena remembered the time because she stared at the clock on the conference room wall for forty-five minutes, her mouth moving on autopilot, her hands gesturing at slides she hadn't reviewed. She said "synergy" seven times. She made a joke about banner ads that got a polite laugh. She shook hands with the client, whose name she immediately forgot, and walked back to her desk to collect her bag.

Her hands were steady. She was proud of that, later. The way her fingers closed around her keys without trembling, the way her heels clicked against the floor in a rhythm that sounded like competence.

She told Brenda she had a migraine. Brenda's eyes lingered on her face, searching, but Alena had learned from the best how to perform normalcy. She smiled, squeezed Brenda's shoulder, said she'd be fine after some sleep.

The parking garage was underground, fluorescent lights buzzing, the air thick with exhaust and the smell of concrete. Alena's was in section C4, the same spot for three years. She unlocked it, climbed inside, and pressed the lock button four times. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Silence.

She pulled out the burner phone she'd bought six months ago, the one she kept for "emergencies" that she'd never defined. The SIM card was prepaid, unregistered, the kind of thing Kane had taught her about without realizing he was arming her against himself.

Her fingers found his agent's number from memory. Three transfers, each one asking her to hold, please hold, and then his voice, filtered through speakerphone, the echo of a large room behind him.

"Alena." Not a question. A statement of fact, like her name was a problem he was noting for later.

"I'm recording this," she said, her thumb hovering over the red circle on her screen. "I want you to know that."

A pause. The sound of a lighter, the inhale of breath, the exhale that carried across the connection like he was in the car with her.

"Five years," she continued, her voice cracking on the second word, steadying by the third. "Five years, and you accuse me of leaking your location? You destroy our entire history with one magazine cover and you think I'm the threat?"

"You're shouting," Kane said. His voice was calm, amused, the same tone he'd used when she burned dinner or cried during a movie. "You know I don't like it when you shout."

"I want a statement. Joint. Saying I had nothing to do with any leak. Saying we ended things-" She stopped, swallowed, forced the words out. "Say we ended things mutually. With respect."

The laugh came then, low and intimate, the sound he made in bed when she said something naive. "Respect," he repeated. "That's what you want."

"Yes."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I go to LAPD. I file a report. I tell them-"

"You'll tell them what?" The amusement was gone, replaced by something colder. "That you signed an NDA so restrictive you can't legally confirm we ever met? That your apartment is in a trust I control, your car is leased by my production company, your entire life is a paper trail leading back to my attorneys?"

Alena's hand tightened on the phone. The recording app showed seventeen seconds elapsed. She needed sixty. She needed proof.

"The TMZ leak," Kane continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that filled her ear like poison. "The IP address traces to your building, Alena. Your floor. Your unit."

"That's a lie."

"Is it?" Another pause, the sound of ice in glass, the familiar clink that used to mean he was home, he was relaxing, he was hers. "You're not the only one who can record conversations, sweetheart. I have eighteen months of your late-night calls, your jealous texts, your little tantrums about wanting more. You think any of that plays well in court? You think a jury of my peers-"

"Five million," Alena said.

The words came from somewhere outside herself. She remembered her mother, after the divorce, hollow-eyed and proud, saying, "When they take the love, you take the money. Don't you dare walk away with nothing but memories." He had turned their relationship into a transaction. Fine. She would set the price for its dissolution.

"Five million dollars," she repeated, her voice steady now, almost foreign. "Transfer it to an account I specify. I'll sign whatever you want. I'll disappear. You'll never hear from me again."

Silence stretched across the line, elastic, dangerous. She could hear him breathing, could picture him in whatever office or trailer or penthouse he occupied, his perfect face arranged in an expression she couldn't read.

Then the laugh came, different this time, stripped of all performance. The sound of genuine delight, of a predator watching prey walk into a trap it had built for itself.

"Five million," he said. "Finally. The real price."

"Is that a yes?"

"That's a never." His voice hardened, each word precise as a blade. "You don't get a cent. You don't get a statement. You don't get to pretend this was a transaction, Alena. You don't get to be the woman I paid off. You're the woman I used until I was done, and now you're done."

The line went dead.

Alena stared at the phone, the recording still running, thirty-four seconds of silence that proved nothing. She saved the file, her thumb moving to upload it to her cloud backup, to anywhere safe.

A red warning box appeared. Network connection failed. Upload terminated.

She tried again. The phone's signal bars, full moments ago, dropped to zero. The Bluetooth icon, which she'd disabled that morning, glowed blue in the corner of her screen.

The car's speakers crackled. Static, loud enough to make her jump, then a voice, processed through distortion, mechanical and inhuman.

"Parking level C4. White Land Rover. License plate 7XKF229."

Alena's head snapped up. The garage was empty, rows of concrete pillars, the distant hum of the elevator. She looked at the rearview mirror, the side mirrors, saw nothing.

"Step out of the vehicle, Ms. Gordon."

She grabbed her bag, her hand finding the door handle, her body moving before her mind could catch up. The door opened, her foot found the concrete, and her ankle turned, the heel of her pump catching in a drainage grate.

She fell. Hard. Her knee hit the ground, her palms scraping against rough concrete, her bag spilling open. Lipstick. Keys. The wedding invitation, now smeared with motor oil from the grate.

Headlights swung around the corner. High beams, blinding, pinning her to the ground like a specimen on a slide. She raised one arm, shielding her eyes, and through the glare she saw the shape of it. Black. Massive. American steel.

The Cadillac Escalade stopped one meter from her knees.