Page 7 of Her Surrender

Day one, she told the elevator mirror, as the floors ticked down and the city assembled in lights beyond the lobby glass. Don't get interested in her. Get good at this.

She had to say it twice.

3

SERENA

One week. Serena had given the experiment one week before she'd allow herself a conclusion, and the week was up on Friday at six, and the conclusion was inconvenient.

Not a single error. Not one. Serena had checked, because she always checked, and because some stubborn corner of her had wanted to find something, which was itself information she declined to pursue. The diary ran clean, the calls were screened with judgment rather than rules, and the briefs arrived complete, on time, in prose that didn't need translating. More than that, and this was the part Serena kept turning over, three times the new EA had anticipated something Serena hadn't asked for. A weather contingency for the Thursday rooftop viewing, attached without comment. Background on a buyer's silent partner that Serena had been planning to request on Monday. A revised car schedule on the day the freeway closed, in her inbox before Serena had heard about the freeway.

And twice this week, difficult clients had rung in hot and been handed back cooled, settled, and slightly charmed, with a steadiness Diane hadn't produced in six years of practice.

The Hendricks call had been the better of the two. Serena had heard the first thirty seconds through her open door, Hendricks at full volume about a contract clause he hadn't read, and had been halfway to rising when the new EA's voice came through underneath his, low and even and entirely unimpressed, asking him a question about his own position that he'd evidently never been asked. By the time Serena reached her doorway there was nothing to intervene in. By the end of the call, Hendricks was laughing.

Serena said none of this to Peter. There was no need to say it to Peter. He set her coffee on the desk Friday afternoon and said, "The Hendricks call. She had him laughing by the end of it. Laughing, Serena. The man once made a sommelier cry."

"Is there a question somewhere in that?"

"No question. Just data."

He collected the empty cup from the morning and paused at a professionally calibrated distance.

"Six o'clock Friday was your deadline, I believe. For deciding whether Emily's favour was a favour."

"Goodnight, Peter."

"Goodnight." He left it there, because nine years had taught him exactly where to leave things, and Serena looked at the closed door for a moment and then went back to work, and did not write the conclusion down anywhere.

She called Emily on Thursday evening from the house, ostensibly about the Marchetti introduction, a property matter, entirely legitimate, ten minutes of genuine business that Emily conducted with her usual competence while Serena stood at the kitchen counter and ate olives out of the jar like a woman half her net worth.

Then, the business concluded, Emily let half a second of silence elapse.

"So how is Charlotte getting on?"

"She's capable."

"Serena."

Serena put the lid back on the olives and screwed it down with more attention than the task required.

"She's very good."

"Yes, she is," Emily said, and then said nothing further, which was the conversational equivalent of leaving a door open and standing well clear of it.

Serena had told herself, on the drive home, that she wasn't going to tell Emily about the annotation. The resolution lasted eleven seconds.

"On her first day I gave her the March file. The investor dinner, no warning, four-o'clock deadline."

"The salted one. You're a monster, I've always said so."

"She found every error, fixed two I hadn't planted, and rebuilt the security roster on her own initiative. I made one annotation on the seating, a thing she couldn't have known. She moved the Kesslers to the chef's room within the hour and reportedly convinced the property it had been their idea."

Emily laughed her I-knew-it laugh, the one she produced when information she'd long had on hand was finally announced publicly.

"Did she push back? On the annotation."

"Not directly."