Chapter 4 4

Alena didn't move. The concrete was cold through her skirt, grit pressing into her palms, and she stared at the grille of the SUV like it might transform into something else if she watched long enough. The engine idled, a low predator's purr that vibrated in her sternum.

The driver's door opened. A woman stepped out, her silhouette backlit by the headlights, her heels clicking with deliberate slowness across the garage floor. She stopped at the edge of the light, looking down at Alena with an expression that managed to combine boredom and mild distaste.

"Ms. Gordon." She didn't offer a hand. "I'm M. Blackwood. Mr. Moody's crisis communications director."

Alena pushed herself up, her ankle screaming, her dignity in fragments around her. "I don't care who you are. Tell your driver to move this vehicle."

Blackwood reached into her jacket and produced a card, extending it between two fingers like she was feeding a treat to an animal. Alena slapped it away. The card fluttered to the ground, landing face-up in a puddle of something dark.

"Suit yourself." Blackwood's voice was flat, trained, the vocal equivalent of a press release. "Mr. Moody asked me to deliver this."

She held out a manila envelope, thick, heavy. Alena took it because her hands were moving without instruction, because some part of her still believed that information was power, that knowing was better than not knowing.

Inside: photographs. Eight by ten, glossy, professional quality. Alena in her car, thirty minutes ago, holding the burner phone. Alena pressing record. Alena's face in close-up, her mouth open mid-sentence, the words five million dollars visible on her lips even without audio.

"Your vehicle has been fitted with surveillance equipment since March of last year," Blackwood said, as if discussing weather. "For your own security, of course. Mr. Moody was concerned about stalkers."

Alena's hands shook, the photographs rustling like dead leaves. "This is illegal. This is-"

"This is a courtesy." Blackwood reached into her jacket again, produced a second envelope, thinner. "The alternative is tomorrow's headline: 'Moody Ex-Girlfriend Arrested for Extortion.' The LAPD report is already drafted. The recording of your call is being transcribed."

She turned toward her vehicle, then paused, her head tilting in a gesture of manufactured sympathy.

"Oh. One more thing." Her voice dropped, intimate, the tone of someone sharing a secret at a party. "The Cartier necklace. The Art Deco emerald piece from the December auction. Two point four million, hammer price."

Alena's blood stopped moving. She remembered the auction, vaguely, Kane mentioning something about estate jewelry, tax advantages, a favor for a friend. She'd signed papers without reading them, as she always did, as he'd trained her to do.

"Mr. Moody purchased it in your name," Blackwood continued. "For Ms. Weaver. The provenance is quite public. Your name, the trust account, the charitable donation structure." A small smile. "You gave a two-million-dollar gift to his new fiancée. How generous."

The Escalade's engine revved. Blackwood climbed inside, her door closing with the solid thud of expensive engineering. The vehicle reversed, turned, disappeared around the corner, leaving Alena alone with the photographs and the envelope and the knowledge that she had been used so completely she couldn't even identify where her own choices had ended.

She drove home. The word felt wrong in her mouth, home, but she had no other. The elevator rose, the city spread below her, and she walked into the apartment with its perfect sight lines and its invisible cameras and its smell of Kane's cologne still lingering in the master bedroom.

She found the documents in the safe, behind her jewelry, behind the watches he'd given her that she never wore because they felt like collateral. The auction paperwork. Her signature, flowing and unthinking, on a proxy bid authorization. Two million four hundred thousand dollars. Gift tax implications. A donation to the Motion Picture Fund in her name.

She sat on the floor of the closet, surrounded by his suits, his shoes, the physical evidence of a life she'd believed was shared. Her phone was in her hand. She opened Messages. She typed.

You disgusting piece of shit. You used me to buy her jewelry. You used me to hide your money. Five years and I'm nothing but a tax shelter to you, a fucking shell company with tits.

She sent it. The status changed to delivered. No response.

I hope she cheats on you. I hope she takes everything. I hope you die alone and afraid and you think of me in your last moment and you know that I hated you.

Delivered. Read. Nothing.

She stood. Walked to the living room. The photograph of them, her favorite, the one from Cabo in year two when he'd still looked at her like she mattered-she picked it up, felt the weight of the silver frame, and threw it against the wall.

Glass shattered. The photograph fluttered down, landing face-up, their smiling faces intact amid the shards.

She walked to the closet. Found his favorite suit, the charcoal Tom Ford he'd worn to the Golden Globes. She took the scissors from her desk, the ones she used for packaging, and she cut. Through the lapel. Through the pocket. Through the silk lining that cost more than her monthly rent.

The tears came then, hot and humiliating, streaming down her face as she destroyed things that couldn't feel, that couldn't care, that represented nothing but her own stupidity. She cut until her hand ached, until the floor was covered in expensive debris, until she had nothing left to damage.

She picked up her phone. The auction documents were in her camera roll, photographed for evidence, for leverage, for the journalists she would call in the morning. She opened Twitter, started a new message, attached the photos.

The ambient lights died. The hum of the climate control and refrigerator cut out, plunging the room into a shocking, sudden darkness. But the seventy-inch screen in the living room remained aglow, a solitary, menacing eye. The screensaver of tranquil landscapes vanished, replaced by stark, white text on a black background, scrolling slowly:

You. Are. Making. A. Mistake.

Alena's breath came in shallow gasps. She backed toward the door, her hand finding the wall, her feet crunching on broken glass. The elevator chimed. Not her elevator. The service entrance. The one that connected to the freight hall, the one that required a keycard she didn't have.

Footsteps in the hallway. Multiple sets. The murmur of voices, excited, hungry.

"Ms. Gordon?" A man's voice, muffled by the door. "TMZ. We have sources saying you're inside. Any comment on the Kane Moody engagement?"

Flashlights through the peephole, white and blinding. Camera shutters, the sound of vultures finding carrion.

Alena pressed her back against the wall and slid down until she was sitting in darkness, surrounded by the wreckage of a life that had never been real.