Chapter 2 - The Architecture of Cold
The private security guards at St. Ambrose had already begun to move toward the gates, their earpieces glowing in the twilight. Passersby in luxury SUVs were slowing down, their headlights illuminating our tableau on the sidewalk: the billionaire, the crying heiress, and the feral runaway.
“Thomas,” I barked without looking back.
My driver was beside me in two strides, his bulky frame effectively blocking the sightline of the school guards.
“Get Sophie into the car,” I ordered quietly.
“No! Dad, don’t hurt her!” Sophie cried, clinging to my coat. “She helped me!”
“I am not going to hurt her, Sophie. I swear to you on your mother’s memory. Get in the car.”
The mention of Eleanor worked like a key in a lock. Sophie sniffled, looked at Maya with desperate eyes, and allowed Thomas to guide her into the warmth of the Maybach.
I turned back to Maya Vance. She hadn’t run during the distraction, which told me everything I needed to know about her intelligence. She had calculated the distance to the alley, calculated my driver’s speed, and realized she would be tackled before she cleared twenty yards. Instead, she stood her ground, her back against a brick retaining wall, breathing hard through her nose, clutching her broken backpack like armor.
“You have three seconds to call your goons before I start screaming bloody murder,” she hissed, her lips pale blue from the drop in temperature. “Let’s see how the Chicago Tribune likes the headline: *Daniel Harrison assaults dead partner’s homeless child.*”
“You’ve been watching this school,” I said, keeping my voice level, stripped of all corporate authority. “You didn't stumble across Sophie on the curb by chance. You knew who she was.”
A bitter smirk curled the corner of her dry lips. “I didn't plan on her being outside the gate. I planned on leaving something in your mailbox at the Gold Coast penthouse, but your guard dogs would have shot me on sight. Then I saw her sitting here, weeping over fifth-grade polynomials because some idiot teacher told her she wasn't gifted.” Maya scoffed, wiping her nose with the frayed cuff of her sleeve. “Your wife was gifted, Harrison. Arthur always said Mrs. Harrison was the only person in your entire glass tower who understood that numbers were meant to build things, not just starve people.”
Hearing Eleanor’s name spoken with reverence by a street child felt like an open wound being scrubbed with salt.
“Your father was an embezzler, Maya,” I said, testing the water.
“My father was murdered!” she snapped, the fury exploding out of her so violently that she took an aggressive step toward me, heedless of the difference in our size. “He didn't steal your damn money! He found out who did! He went to your wife three days before she died because he knew you were too blind, too obsessed with your quarterly earnings to see what Marcus Croft was doing!”
The air in my lungs turned to ash.
Marcus Croft. My senior managing partner. Eleanor’s cousin. The man who had sat by my side at Eleanor’s funeral, who had poured my scotch when I couldn't stop shaking, who had overseen the liquidation of Arthur Vance’s seized assets to cover the missing millions.
“You’re lying,” I said, though the foundation of my reality shifted beneath my feet.
“Check the date on that expulsion letter,” Maya choked out, tears of pure rage finally breaking through her defiance. “ Croft signed it twenty-four hours after my dad’s body was fished out of the water. He didn't just fire my father; he evicted us from company housing, froze our personal checking accounts under a corporate lien, and pulled my tuition guarantee. I’ve been living in a storage locker off Cicero Avenue for fourteen months, Daniel. Do I look like the daughter of a man who stashed forty million dollars in the Caymans?”
I looked at her. Really looked at her.
Her wrists were thin as kindling. Her skin had the greyish cast of chronic malnutrition. Under the dirt on her cheekbones, I saw the ghost of Arthur Vance—the brilliant, soft-spoken mathematician who used to bring homemade lemon squares to our annual strategy retreats, who had wept openly when Sophie was born with a congenital heart murmur and had personally written the code for the monitoring software the hospital used.
The streetlights buzzed overhead, flickering to life as darkness consumed the boulevard. Snowflakes, heavy and wet, began to drift through the beam of the Mercedes' headlamps.
“Get in the car,” I said.
Maya laughed, a harsh, jagged bark. “Go to hell.”
“It’s going to drop below twenty degrees tonight, Maya. You’re shivering so hard your teeth are clicking. Get in the car, or I will have Thomas pick you up, put you in the back seat, and I will drive you directly to the 18th District police precinct, where I will file a report that will place you in state custody by midnight. You know what Cook County juvenile facilities are like. Or, you come to my home, you eat a warm meal, and you show me whatever proof you have about Marcus Croft.”
She stared at me, calculating the odds with her father’s mathematical mind. Her eyes darted from me to the warm, leather-scented glow of the car, then down the freezing, desolate alleyway.
“If you touch me,” she said, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper, “I will burn your house down around your ears.”
May you like
“Fair terms,” I said.
***
