Page 209

Then I duck in after her from the curbside before the traffic stacking up behind us starts honking.

The door shuts.

The city slides past the tinted windows as the car pulls away. Reflected glass. Late-afternoon traffic. All of it looking the same way Seattle always looks when you're too tired and running on zero sleep.

Sienna glances up from her phone as I settle beside her.

"You look terrible," she says.

I loosen my tie another fraction. "Good afternoon to you too."

"It is afternoon." She sets the phone down beside her. But "I'm not convinced it's good."

Neither am I.

The briefcase rests beside me. Aria's invitation is still inside it, tucked between legal folders and paperwork I haven't actually looked at since Christian handed them to me.

I turn toward Sienna.

"You wanted to talk privately in my town car," I say. "You didn't want an audience. Now you have me alone. What is it you need to say that no one else can hear?"

Sienna looks at me for one long second, before blurting it out.

"Jeremy sold you out."

I take a second, shaking my head at the thought.

"Jeremy…?" I ask.

"That’s right," she says, her eyes on her phone as if casually checking an email.

"As in my assistant…?" I ask. "That's a serious accusation."

"It's not an accusation," she says. "It's what happened."

I look away from her. Out the window. At nothing.

"How do you know?"

"Because an associate of mine called me three days ago asking why your assistant was trying to cut himself into one of your merger deals before you moved on it."

I turn back sharply.

"What?"

Sienna folds one leg beneath her and angles toward me, voice calm in a way that makes this worse.

"He approached someone I know. Mid-level player, but close enough to hear about things before they become formal. Jeremy was trying to position himself ahead of a transaction you've been circling. The South Florida deal. He made it sound like he'd have visibility and leverage before you moved."

The city outside goes gray.

"That doesn't make sense."

"No," she says. "It doesn't. Which is why my associate called me. He thought it was weird that Everett Kauffman’s assistant came into a large sum of money and was trying to cut him out of the deal."

I stare at her.

"So he called me," she says. "Asking if I knew what was going on and how Jeremy came into that much money."