Chapter 6 - The Price of Staying
Federal agents met Adrian in a plain conference room with bad coffee and a clock that clicked too loudly.
No leather chairs.
No employees waiting outside.
No one who called him sir because they had to.
His attorney sat beside him.
Across the table, Special Agent Dana Bell opened a folder.
“Mr. Voss, cooperation does not erase your conduct.”
“I understand.”
“We will verify what you provide.”
“I expect you to.”
“And you will not conduct your own operation against Caleb Mercer.”
Adrian glanced at his lawyer.
She had already told him the same thing.
He agreed.
Over the next several days, he surrendered records and answered questions about businesses he had spent years insulating from scrutiny.
Some answers implicated men he hated.
Others implicated him.
The second kind took longer.
At the apartment, Elena returned to ordinary tasks with the concentration of someone rebuilding a wall one brick at a time.
Breakfast.
Laundry.
A visit with Sophie’s new counselor.
A walk to the bookstore.
Sophie asked whether the grown-ups had caught the closet man.
“Not yet,” Elena told her. “But people are working on it.”
“Do I have to help?”
Elena knelt beside her.
“No, sweetheart. You’ve already told us what happened. The grown-ups can do the rest.”
Sophie thought about that.
Then she asked for a book about whales.
For the first time in days, Elena laughed.
Adrian came by the following afternoon after calling first.
He brought no jewelry, no flowers, no extravagant apology disguised as a gift.
He carried a replacement battery for the smoke detector Elena had mentioned during their last conversation.
Sophie inspected it.
“You’re tall enough.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
She almost smiled.
After he changed the battery, Elena made coffee.
Sophie went into the next room to build a blanket fort within Mrs. Alvarez’s line of sight.
Adrian looked toward the doorway.
“She seems better.”
“She slept four hours before waking last night.”
“That’s better?”
“For now.”
He accepted the correction.
Elena sat opposite him.
“Miriam says you’re cooperating.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He could have named Sophie.
He could have named her.
Instead he looked at his hands.
“Because I’ve spent years calling myself responsible for people while letting them carry the consequences of my choices.”
She waited.
“My father tried to fix things privately. I kept believing I could control what followed. Neither of us wanted to surrender the part that made us powerful.”
“And now?”
“Now there’s a little girl who checks under furniture before she can sleep.”
Elena’s throat tightened.
“That isn’t all because of you.”
“Enough of it is.”
Outside, a delivery truck rattled past.
Adrian looked around the modest apartment.
“Do you have everything you need?”
“For today.”
He nodded.
It was an answer he was learning to respect.
A knock sounded.
One of the guards stood outside with an envelope that had arrived through a courier.
It was addressed to Adrian.
Inside was a photograph from his father’s funeral.
Adrian and Caleb stood shoulder to shoulder beside the grave.
On the back, someone had written:
REMEMBER WHO STAYED.
Elena watched his face.
“Don’t go after him.”
“I won’t.”
“You answered too quickly.”
He looked up.
She held his gaze.
“I know what a man looks like when he’s deciding he can solve something alone.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
For a moment, she thought he would argue.
Instead, he took out his phone and called his attorney.
Then he asked how to preserve the envelope.
Elena let out the breath she had been holding.
When the call ended, Adrian said, “I wanted to.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to find him.”
“I know.”
He looked ashamed of the admission.
Elena shook her head.
“What matters is what you do next.”
From the adjoining room, Sophie called, “Mr. Voss? The roof fell down.”
Adrian glanced at Elena.
She nodded.
He went to help repair a fort made of chairs and blankets.
Elena watched from the kitchen doorway.
He could not repair her life.
May you like
She did not want him to.
But watching him sit on the floor and ask a five-year-old where the roof belonged, she began to wonder whether he might be capable of building a different one for himself.
