Chapter 3 Front Door

• Chapter Three: Front Door
• His assistant sent a car on the day we were supposed to meet .
• And it was Black, of course.
• These men are so predictable about their black cars and their fake obsession with luxury and pretending to be a better version of themselves.
• I settled into the back seat with my coat folded across my lap and watched Manhattan do its thing through tinted glass and thought about nothing in particular, which is something I’ve gotten very good at.
• The driver tried to make conversation twice. I let both attempts die naturally till we got to a very familiar building.
• Ellison Capital occupied the top three floors of a building on 53rd that was trying very hard to look like it had always been there.
• New money dressed as old money.
• I recognized the impulse and the thinking behind it. After all, I used to watch Daniel practice it in the mirror.
• A woman in a headset met me at the elevator and introduced herself as Priya.
• “Hello Ms Vaste, it’s nice to have you with us. Mr Ellison himself is looking forward to the meeting”
• I exchanged a fake smile with her. Priya was one of the staff that had always treated me like I was human. She was one of those who would smile politely at me despite Daniel insulting me in their presence several times.
• The memory wasn’t an easy one but I’ve trained myself for days like this. “Fake a smile through it till you’re out.” I mentally screamed at myself.
• “That’s wonderful” I said in a cold voice that wasn’t wonderful. She had the foresight not to say anything again as we rode up together in a silence that would be uncomfortable for her but was home for me.
• “Can I get you anything before we start? Water, coffee?”
• “I’m fine.” I replied with another fake smile, she didn’t ask again before excusing herself with the urgency of someone who would rather be elsewhere.
• I wasn’t nervous.
• That’s the thing about spending three years building toward a single moment, by the time it arrives, it doesn’t feel like a huge moment.
• It feels like a normal day of the week.
• The conference room door was ajar opposite where Priya abandoned me.
• I stepped into the room which was glass on three sides with a view of the city that was genuinely impressive and almost certainly the reason they held meetings up here.
• Control the view, control the room. Daniel had learned that from someone smarter than him and never gave them credit either.
• He was already inside, I could smell his familiar Parfum VI by Gianni Vive Sulman that smelled like cherry tobacco and warm cognac.
• I remember buying it for him fifteen years ago with all my savings and since then he seems to have taken a special interest in it and has always ordered a new one before it finishes.
• He was standing at the window with his back to the door, phone to his ear, doing the thing he always did in important meetings — making sure the other person arrived to find him already comfortable, already belonging, already there first.
• Twenty-two years.
• I know every single one of his moves.
• Another secretary whose face was unfamiliar touched the door frame gently. “Mr. Ellison, Ms. Vayne is here.”
• He turned and I had the pleasure of watching his face do what faces do when they process a beautiful stranger.
• The flicker of appreciation before the professional mask drops back into place. The fractional pause and then nothing else.
• There was no flicker of recognition, no tremor or any sign that anything about me was remotely similar to anyone he knew.
• He was just a man who saw a woman he didn’t know and found her interesting.
• Could it be because I went back to bury the empty casket?
• “Ms. Vayne.”
• His voice brought me back to reality as he crossed the room with his hand out, the walk he’d perfected, unhurried but purposeful.
• “Daniel Ellison. Thank you for making the trip.”
• His hand was warm and firm, he held it a beat longer than necessary.
• I shook it and smiled with exactly the right amount of warmth for a foreign investor meeting a potential partner for the first time.
• Not too warm and definitely not too cold. I’d practiced that smile in the mirror for a reason.
• “The trip was easy,” I said. “I like New York in spring.”
• “First time visiting us?”
• “First time in this building.”
• He smiled in a way that had nothing to do with warmth and everything to do with making you feel like the only person in the room. I’d watched him use it on clients, on colleagues, on the women at dinner parties who laughed a little too readily at his jokes.
• I’d watched him use it on Taska at the firm Christmas party three years before he put me in the ground.
• “Please.” He gestured toward the table. “Sit wherever you’re comfortable.”
• I chose the chair at the head, I saw the moment his eyes registered it and his smile slipped briefly after which he moved on and sat to my right without comment, which was the move of someone who understood power and was deciding not to contest it, which meant he really wanted whatever this was so badly enough to swallow the small things.
• Good.
• His CFO was there, a man named Brett who had the energy of someone who hadn’t slept in several weeks, and two junior associates who were there to take notes and radiate competence.
• I’d read all their files and I knew Brett had a gambling problem he was managing badly. The associates were both excellent and underpaid and vaguely resentful about it.
• Useful things, all of them.
• “So,” Daniel said, and he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and gave me his full attention, the eye contact, the deliberate focus that made people feel seen.
• “Tell me about Vayne Capital. We’ve done our research but I’d rather hear it from you.”
• “I’m sure you would.”
• He smiled again but it was different this time like he found something unexpectedly interesting.
• “Your portfolio,” I said, and I opened the folder in front of me and slid the first page toward him, “has a problem on page four.”
• Brett stiffened.
• Daniel’s smile didn’t move but something behind his eyes did. He looked down at the page before looking back up at me.
• “You did your research too,” he said.
• “I don’t go anywhere without doing my research.”
• The meeting ran ninety minutes and by the end of it Brett was sweating lightly and Daniel was looking at me the way he looks at things he wanted to acquire.
• I had agreed to nothing concrete and implied everything necessary, and when I stood to leave he walked me to the elevator himself.
• “Dinner,” he said. “This week, if you’re in the city. Of course, it’s nothing formal.”
• I considered him with a look that didn’t say if I was interested or not.
• “I’ll have Priya send over some options,” he added.
• The elevator doors opened and I stepped in.
• “Ms. Vayne.” He said it just before the doors closed, the timing deliberate, the smile easy. “I have a feeling this is going to be a very interesting partnership.”
• Then the doors closed before I could say anything.
• I looked at my reflection in the mirrored wall.
• “You have no idea,” I said with a smirk.