Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Black Sedan
Roman Vale had not spoken to his mother in eighteen months.
Not because she was cruel.
Cruelty was easy to recognize.
Vivian Vale was more complicated.
She loved her son.
She also believed love gave her the right to arrange his life.
At sixty-five, Vivian controlled the Vale Foundation, sat on three hospital boards, and could make politicians answer calls they ignored from governors.
She also remembered every humiliation the Vale family had ever suffered.
Roman considered that her most dangerous talent.
He drove Emma to her cousin’s apartment himself.
She objected three times.
He ignored the first two.
On the third, he said, “You can leave the car whenever you want.”
Emma looked at him.
“That sounded like an actual choice.”
“It was.”
She stayed.
Claire was safe.
Two of Roman’s security men waited downstairs, which Claire found alarming until Emma explained Grant had been watching the building.
Claire became angry instead.
“Call the police.”
“I did last week.”
“And?”
Emma laughed without humor.
“They told me being followed by an ex isn’t automatically a crime.”
Roman stood near the window.
“Did you document everything?”
“Yes.”
“Messages?”
“Yes.”
“Photos?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Claire looked at him.
“You’re Roman Vale.”
“Yes.”
“The Roman Vale?”
Roman glanced at Emma.
“I’m starting to dislike that phrase.”
Claire crossed her arms.
“Why are you helping my cousin?”
Roman answered honestly.
“I don’t know yet.”
Emma appreciated that more than a charming lie.
Roman’s team learned Grant had been paid through a consulting company called Northbridge Civic Intelligence.
Northbridge was owned by another company.
That company belonged to a trust.
The trust’s attorney had once worked for Vivian Vale.
Emma stared at the screen.
“Your mother hired my ex to watch me?”
Roman’s face remained unreadable.
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
“That’s the part I don’t understand.”
Emma paced the small living room.
“I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Your parents?”
“My mother died when I was nineteen. My father when I was twenty-three.”
“Names?”
“Linda and Samuel Reed.”
Roman froze at her father’s name.
Emma saw it.
“You knew him.”
“No.”
“That was too fast.”
Roman looked toward Marco Bell, his security chief.
Marco looked away.
Emma stepped closer.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Roman spoke carefully.
“There was a Samuel Reed who worked for Vale Shipping twenty-two years ago.”
Emma’s stomach tightened.
“My father was an accountant.”
Roman nodded.
“That Samuel Reed was chief internal auditor.”
Emma sat down.
Her father had almost never spoken about his work.
She remembered late nights.
Locked drawers.
Arguments between her parents behind bedroom doors.
Then one winter he quit without explanation.
“What happened?”
Roman said, “He accused my father of moving money through false freight companies.”
“Was he right?”
Silence.
Emma laughed once.
“Great.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“My father is dead.”
“That didn’t answer me.”
“Yes.”
The word landed hard.
“My father?”
“He found irregularities.”
“And yours?”
“Was involved.”
Emma looked at Claire.
Then back at Roman.
“So my father exposed your family?”
“He tried.”
“What happened to him?”
Roman frowned.
“You said he died when you were twenty-three.”
“Heart attack.”
“How old?”
“Fifty-one.”
Roman and Marco exchanged a glance.
Emma stood.
“No.”
Roman said nothing.
“What does that look mean?”
Marco answered.
“Three people tied to the old audit died within five years.”
Emma felt cold.
“Of heart attacks?”
“One car accident. One drowning. Your father’s heart attack.”
Claire whispered, “Jesus.”
Emma turned to Roman.
“And now your mother is watching me.”
Roman reached for his phone.
“I’m calling her.”
“No.”
He looked at Emma.
“No?”
“If she hired Grant, she already knows we’re together.”
“We’re not together.”
Emma gave him a look.
“You know what I mean.”
Roman almost smiled.
She continued.
“If you call now, she controls the conversation.”
Roman considered.
“You think strategically.”
“My father taught me chess.”
That sentence stayed with him.
They met Vivian the next morning at the Vale Foundation.
Emma insisted on going.
Roman insisted she could leave at any point.
Vivian received them in an office overlooking Lake Michigan.
She wore a cream suit and pearls.
The same pearls Emma had seen in the sedan.
Vivian looked at Emma for a long moment.
Then she stood.
“You have Linda’s eyes.”
Emma stopped.
“You knew my mother?”
Vivian looked at Roman.
“You brought her here without telling her?”
“I learned her father’s name twelve hours ago.”
Vivian closed her eyes.
“This is worse than I thought.”
Emma stepped forward.
“Did you hire Grant Keller?”
“Yes.”
Roman’s face hardened.
“Why?”
“To protect her.”
Emma laughed.
“He has been stalking me.”
Vivian’s expression changed.
“That was not his instruction.”
“What was?”
“Observe. Report. Intervene only if approached by someone connected to the Reed audit.”
Roman frowned.
“Who?”
Vivian opened a drawer.
She removed a photograph.
Five people stood outside a warehouse.
Roman’s father.
Samuel Reed.
Linda Reed.
Vivian.
And a fifth man Emma did not recognize.
Vivian tapped the stranger.
“Thomas Wren.”
Roman knew the name.
A former city prosecutor.
Now a federal judge.
Emma looked at Vivian.
“What does a judge have to do with my parents?”
“Everything.”
Vivian’s voice dropped.
“Your father did not expose my husband.”
Emma waited.
“He helped him.”
Roman stared.
Vivian continued.
“They discovered someone was using Vale companies to launder public money without either of them knowing.”
“Who?”
Vivian looked at the photograph.
“Thomas Wren.”
Emma felt the floor shift.
Vivian opened another file.
Inside was a handwritten letter from Samuel Reed.
Emma recognized her father’s writing immediately.
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, FIND THE GIRL WITH THE RED RIBBON.
Emma frowned.
“What girl?”
Vivian looked at her.
“You.”
“I never wore red ribbons.”
“Not you now.”
Vivian slid over an old photograph.
A five-year-old Emma sat beside another little girl.
Both wore red ribbons.
Emma stared.
“I remember her.”
“What was her name?”
Emma searched thirty years of memory.
Then it came back.
“Lily.”
Vivian nodded.
“Lily Wren.”
Judge Thomas Wren’s daughter.
Roman said, “Where is she now?”
Vivian looked toward the window.
“No one knows.”
Then Emma’s phone buzzed.
A message from Grant.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT VALE OUT OF THIS.
Below it was another photograph.
Claire.
Leaving her apartment alone.
Emma stood.
Roman was already moving.
May you like
Then another message appeared.
THIS TIME I WON’T MISS.
