There was a soft click from behind her, and she turned to find that the heavy door through which she’d entered was now shut. The woman in the Louboutins had left, and left them their privacy. She suddenly understood the purpose of that superfluous lobby, an empty room in a building where square footage came at a serious premium: it was a symbol, a hundred-thousand-dollar buffer between you, the private client, and the ordinary business practiced elsewhere in the firm. In here, you were special. In here, you were safe.
“Adrienne, then,” said Richard Politano. “And you’ll call me Rick, of course. As for your last visit, weren’t the two of you here together? You and Ethan? Just the once, I think. It would have been quite some time ago, during that . . . well, unpleasantness.”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“Well, we meet today under better circumstances, then. Have a seat,” he said, sweeping his hand to one side to indicate a pair of armchairs, cozily arranged at angles to a polished coffee table. “Can I offer you a coffee? Or a glass of wine? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I had to shuffle a few things to fit you in, but of course I’m always happy to make time for you, and Ethan. How is Ethan?”
“Ethan is fine . . .” She trailed off, pressing her lips together, shifting in her seat—and noted with pleasure the way Rick shifted forward incrementally in his, leaning hungrily into the space where something was clearly being left unsaid. She decided there was no need to beat around the bush: “But as you can see, Ethan is not here.”
It was a statement designed to elicit a response, and she wasn’t disappointed: in the split second it took for Rick Politano to temper his reaction, she saw a series of emotions flit across his face. Amusement, surprise, intrigue, excitement. Good, she thought. She offered him a smile, tentative and sly.
“Rick. I’m going to speak candidly. I can do that, can’t I? You’ve always struck me as a man who takes confidences seriously.”
“Of course,” he said, and this time, he made no effort to hide his interest. His tone didn’t change, but his smile did; the upper lip crept up by a millimeter, and in an instant, Rick Politano’s expression shifted from friendly and businesslike to positively vulpine.
“I’m asking because I need an advisor. Someone I can trust,” she said.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Rick replied, cocking his head in a way that suggested he understood her perfectly.
She leaned forward, keeping her eyes locked on his, and said, “I don’t want to be one of those women who gets blindsided by life. One of those women who lets the husband handle everything, assuming she’s safe and taken care of, and then the shit hits the fan, and it turns out she has nothing.”
“I see,” Rick said. “Is there something I should know? To borrow your expression, Adrienne, has the shit hit the fan?”
“No,” she said. Then: “I don’t know. Not yet. Maybe it won’t. But if something happens, if something is coming, I want to be prepared. I want to know where I stand. And ever since the . . . unpleasantness, I feel I’m lacking that information. Ethan doesn’t tell me much. I feel . . . I feel as though I’m not in control. And it feels terrible.”
Rick Politano had thick black eyebrows under a swoop of thick white hair, and as she finished speaking, he knit them together in disapproval.
“I’m surprised to hear that,” he said. “A man who keeps his wife in the dark is walling himself off from a valuable ally, especially—if you don’t mind my saying—if she’s as ambitious and intelligent as you are. I always thought Ethan understood that, but . . . well, who’s to say. Perhaps he didn’t want to trouble you.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But here I am, troubled.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” Rick said, smiling. “So let me assure you, every possible scenario has been considered and planned for. It’s thorough but not complicated. I’m happy to walk you through it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please do.”
Chapter 8
Lizzie
There’s still so much I haven’t told you. About the life I had with Dwayne, and the life we made together. The baby, so small and so still, in the glimpse I had before they took him away. Dwayne’s accident, and the addiction that followed. The way things soured and festered over the years, the way our happiness rotted from the inside, until it all ended with a bang, literally.