Chapter 2 Are You Insane

Elena did the only thing her body would let her do. She lifted her phone and took a picture.

The first page. The last page. Her grandfather's signature, steady and young, sitting beside the name of a man she had never met. Vivian's heels were thirty feet away and closing. Elena shut the folder, slid it to the exact angle she had found it at, and stepped back into the hallway just as the corner opened up.

"There you are." Vivian stopped under the sconce with her wine glass held like an accessory. Up close her smile had tiny cracks in it. "I was starting to think you'd run off."

"Looking for my coat."

"Your coat is in the hall closet. Where it always is." Vivian's eyes moved to the study door, then back to Elena's face. "Your father likes his papers left alone."

"I wasn't touching anything."

"Of course not." A pause, soft and deliberate. "You know, I have watched this family for three years and I've learned something. Everybody in it is hiding something. Your father. Your grandfather. You, I think, most of all."

"And you?"

Vivian laughed, a lovely, empty sound. "Oh, darling. I'm the only honest one. I want exactly what everyone else wants and I don't pretend otherwise." She stepped aside to let Elena pass. "Enjoy the wedding."

Elena did not breathe properly until she reached her car.

Naomi opened the door of her apartment at ten fifteen holding a bag of takeout and a face like a thundercloud. She had gotten the news in a three word text. WE NEED TO TALK. She walked straight past Elena, put the food on the counter, turned around, and stared.

"Say it again."

"I said yes."

"To marrying a man you've never met."

"Yes."

"Damian Cole."

"Yes, Naomi."

Naomi sat on the arm of the couch. Then she stood up again. "Are you insane? Seriously, are you out of your mind? I need to know whether to call a lawyer or a doctor, and I am a lawyer, so this is awkward."

Elena laughed and it came out wet. She dropped onto the couch and put her face in her hands. "I'm not happy about it. I need you to know that. I'm not secretly thrilled. I'm not telling myself it's a fairy tale. I did it because my father looked at me."

"Looked at you."

"And asked. He said the word, Naomi. I'm asking. Five years and he finally said it."

For a long moment Naomi said nothing. When she spoke again the jokes were gone. "Elena, that's not a reason. That's a symptom."

"I know."

"Do you? I've watched you do this since we were eighteen. Someone wants something, you hand it over, and you call it duty." She crouched in front of the couch and took Elena's hands. "You're the smartest person I know and you'll walk into a fire if somebody asks nicely."

"There's something else."

She meant to tell it slowly. Instead it all came out at once, the study, the lamp, the yellowed pages, the two signatures. She pulled up the photos and handed Naomi the phone and watched her best friend's face change from worry into something sharp and focused.

Naomi read it standing up. Then she sat down on the floor. Then she read it again.

"This isn't a contract," she said quietly. "I mean it is, technically. But look at the language. Whereas the houses of Whitmore and Cole, having built their fortunes in common cause. It's a family pact. It's the kind of thing two old men write over scotch to make themselves feel like they're building a dynasty."

"But my grandfather signed it."

"Thirty two years ago." Naomi zoomed in on the date, then on the clause. "And this line. In the next generation, by marriage. That's you, Elena. That's you and Damian. They wrote it before either of you were born."

"My father said Eleanor Cole made an offer. Out of nowhere. To save Hart Industries."

"Your father is lying or he's been lied to." Naomi pushed herself up. "Is it legally binding? Almost certainly not. You can't contract an unborn person into a marriage. But it doesn't have to be binding to be useful. Somebody wanted this to happen for a very long time."

Elena stared at the screen. Her grandfather in his armchair, his shaky hands on the chess pieces. She had told him everything for twenty seven years. The scraped knee, the first heartbreak, the night after the funeral when she couldn't stop shaking. He had never once told her this.

"Why wouldn't he say anything?"

"I don't know." Naomi was already pulling out her laptop. "But I can find out whether Whitmore has a copy. If this was a real agreement between the two companies there'd be a file in the vault. I've been through that vault more times than I can count. I know every box in it."

"Naomi, it's eleven at night."

"Which is why nobody will be watching the network." She typed with the fierce speed of a woman who had decided to be useful instead of afraid. Elena stood behind her and watched the cursor blink.

Search. Cole 1994. Whitmore archive.

One result.

Naomi frowned. She clicked. A folder opened in the legal archive, labeled Cole Global Family Agreement. Under it a scanned index card, yellowed at the corners, read Contents: original agreement, two witnessed copies, correspondence.

The folder was empty.

Naomi scrolled to the sign out log and went completely still. "That's weird."

"What?"

"I've never seen this file. I've been head of legal for three years. It wasn't even in the index until this moment." Her finger hovered over the screen. "Someone hid it. Hid it well enough that I never found it. And whoever pulled the contents did it recently."

"How recently?"

Naomi turned the laptop around so Elena could see.

Signed out three weeks ago. Initials H.W.

Henry Whitmore.

Elena's ears began to ring. Three weeks ago her grandfather had asked her to lunch and talked about chess and the weather and her mother's garden and never once let on that he had walked into the company vault with a key he wasn't supposed to still have.

Her phone buzzed on the cushion.

A message from an unknown number. A single line.

Don't trust anyone at your wedding. Least of all the groom.