The Hudson Takes Everything
The phone left my hand before I hit the water.
I'd thrown it—muscle memory from years of tossing manuscripts across my desk—aimed at the rooftop where Callum stood frozen, his arm still extended from trying to catch me. The device arced through the air, spinning, the screen's glow tracing a path like a falling star. Then the Hudson swallowed me whole.
Cold doesn't describe it. Cold is forgetting your coat in November. This was every nerve ending screaming at once, my lungs seizing, the dress Victoria had picked out—silk, because of course it was silk—turning into a lead weight that dragged me down. I kicked. The heels came off somewhere in the dark. My grandmother's ring caught the faint light from above, a gold flash in the black.
I broke the surface gasping.
"Sloane!" Callum's voice, distant. Panicked. I'd never heard him panic.
I treaded water, my arms already burning. The current pulled at me, stronger than I'd expected. The pier was maybe thirty feet away. Might as well have been thirty miles.
A splash behind me. Then another.
The guards. Of course Victoria sent the guards.
I swam. Not well—I'd taken lessons at the country club when I was twelve, back when Mom was still alive, or pretending to be alive, or whatever the hell she'd been doing—but enough to put distance between me and the sound of them cutting through the water. My dress tangled around my legs. I reached down, grabbed the hem, pulled. The fabric tore. Better.
The pier's ladder materialized out of the dark. Rusted metal, slick with algae. I grabbed it anyway, hauled myself up. My palms screamed. I didn't look down to see if I was bleeding.
Footsteps on the pier above me. Running.
I climbed faster.
A hand closed around my ankle.
I kicked back, connected with something soft. A grunt. The hand released. I scrambled up the last few rungs, rolled onto the pier, and ran.
My feet left wet prints on the wood. No shoes. No phone. No plan.
The pier stretched ahead of me, empty except for a few shipping containers and a crane that looked like it hadn't moved since the eighties. Behind me, the guards were climbing up. I could hear them shouting to each other, coordinating.
I ducked behind a container, pressed my back against the corrugated metal. My chest heaved. Water dripped from my hair, my dress, pooling around my bare feet.
Think. I needed to think.
The recording was gone. I'd thrown it to Callum, but even if he'd caught it, Victoria would take it from him. She had the leverage. She had everything.
Except she didn't know where Mom was hiding.
I pushed off the container, kept moving. The pier ended at a chain-link fence, eight feet tall, topped with barbed wire. Beyond it, the street. Cars. People. Witnesses.
I grabbed the fence, started climbing.
"Stop."
Not a guard's voice. Callum's.
I looked back. He stood twenty feet away, soaked through, his shirt plastered to his chest. No tie. No jacket. He must have jumped in after me.
"Get away from me." My fingers found the next handhold.
"Sloane—"
"You were going to give her everything. Sign it all over. Let her win."
"To keep you alive." He moved closer. "That was the only thing that mattered."
"Bullshit." I climbed higher. The fence rattled under my weight. "You were protecting yourself. Protecting whatever deal you made with my mother seven years ago."
"Yes."
I stopped. Looked down at him.
"Yes," he said again. "I made a deal with Evelyn. She needed to disappear. I needed—" He paused. "I needed someone who understood what it meant to lose everything."
"Poetic." My hands were shaking. From cold or adrenaline, I couldn't tell. "Really moving. Doesn't change the fact that you lied."
"I did."
"And you'd do it again."
"Probably."
I laughed. It came out sharp, brittle. "At least you're honest about being a liar."
"Sloane." He was directly below me now. "Come down."
"So Victoria's guards can grab me? So you can hand me over with a bow on top?"
"I have the phone."
My fingers slipped. I caught myself, barely. "What?"
He held it up. My mother's phone, water dripping from the case. "You have terrible aim. It hit me in the chest."
"Does it still work?"
"I don't know." He pressed the power button. Nothing happened. "Probably not."
"Then it's useless."
"Maybe." He pocketed it. "Or maybe I know someone who can recover data from a waterlogged device."
I stared at him. His hair was plastered to his forehead, water still streaming down his face. He looked nothing like the man who'd walked into my office three days ago with his perfect suit and his careful pauses.
He looked human.
"Why should I trust you?" My voice cracked on the last word.
"You shouldn't." He stepped closer to the fence. "But you're going to anyway. Because you need me, and I need you, and your mother needs both of us if she's going to stay hidden."
"Mom can rot."
"You don't mean that."
"Don't tell me what I mean." I started climbing again. "I'm done. With her, with you, with all of this."
"Where are you going to go?"
"Anywhere that isn't here."
"In a wet dress with no shoes? No phone, no wallet, no ID?" His voice stayed level. Reasonable. It made me want to punch him. "Victoria has people everywhere. You'll make it three blocks before someone spots you."
"Then I'll make it three blocks."
"Sloane—"
"Stop saying my name like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you care." I reached the top of the fence. The barbed wire bit into my palm. I ignored it. "You don't get to care. You lost that right when you decided my mother's secrets were more important than the truth."
Silence. Then: "You're right."
I looked down again. He'd moved back, giving me space. His hands hung at his sides.
"I don't get to care," he said. "I don't get to ask you to trust me. I don't get to—" He stopped. Started over. "But I'm asking anyway. Come down. Let me help you."
"Why?"
"Because Victoria's not done. She has the company, but she doesn't have Evelyn. And she won't stop until she has both."
"That's Mom's problem."
"It's yours too. You're leverage. As long as you're alive, you're a tool she can use against Evelyn."
The barbed wire dug deeper. Blood welled up, warm against my cold skin. "So what are you suggesting? I disappear too? Fake my death and hide for seven years?"
"No." He met my eyes. "I'm suggesting we end this. Tonight. Before Victoria realizes the recording might still be recoverable."
"How?"
"I know where she keeps her files. The real ones. Everything she has on Evelyn, on me, on the fraud investigation." He pulled out his own phone, still somehow functional. "We break into her office. We take it all. And then we burn it."
I laughed again. Couldn't help it. "You want to commit corporate espionage."
"I want to level the playing field."
"That's the same thing."
"Yes."
The fence swayed under me. My arms were starting to shake. I couldn't hold on much longer.
"If I come down," I said slowly, "we do this my way. No more secrets. No more protecting me from information I deserve to have."
"Agreed."
"And when this is over, you tell me everything. Every detail of whatever deal you made with my mother. Every lie you've told. Every corner you've cut."
He hesitated. Just for a second. "Agreed."
I climbed down.
My feet hit the pier, and my legs nearly gave out. Callum caught my elbow, steadied me. His hand was warm despite the water. I pulled away.
"Where are the guards?" I looked around. The pier was empty.
"I told them I'd handle you."
"And they listened?"
"I'm still technically their employer. For another—" he checked his phone, "—six hours."
"Then we'd better move fast."
Callum's car was parked two blocks away, a black Mercedes that probably cost more than my apartment. He opened the passenger door. I slid in, leaving a wet mark on the leather seat.
He got in the driver's side, started the engine. Heat blasted from the vents. I held my hands up to them, trying to stop the shaking.
"There's a blanket in the back," he said.
I twisted around, grabbed it. Wool. Expensive. I wrapped it around my shoulders anyway.
He pulled into traffic. Late enough that the streets were mostly empty, early enough that the bars were still open. A group of people stumbled past, laughing. One of them had a birthday crown on. Normal people. Normal problems.
"Victoria's office is in Midtown," Callum said. "Forty-third and Lex. She keeps the files in a safe behind a painting of her father."
"How do you know?"
"I've been in her office."
"Recently?"
"Last week." He changed lanes. "She wanted to discuss the terms of her takeover. Show me what she had. Make sure I understood the consequences of refusing."
"And you didn't think to mention this before?"
"You didn't ask."
I pulled the blanket tighter. "What else haven't I asked about?"
"A lot of things."
"Try me."
He was quiet for a moment. The car hummed beneath us. "Your mother didn't fake her death because of the fraud investigation."
My stomach dropped. "What?"
"That was part of it. But not the main reason." He turned onto Lexington. "She was being threatened. Someone wanted her gone. Really gone."
"Who?"
"I don't know. She never told me." He glanced at me. "But whoever it was, they had enough power to make her believe death was the only way out."
I stared at him. "You're saying someone tried to kill her."
"I'm saying someone made her think they would. And Evelyn doesn't scare easily."
The buildings blurred past. My mother, terrified. My mother, running. It didn't fit. Nothing about this fit.
"Why are you telling me this now?" My voice came out flat.
"Because you asked for no more secrets." He pulled up to a red light. "And because if we're breaking into Victoria's office, you deserve to know what we might find."
"You think Victoria was the one threatening her."
"I think Victoria knows who was."
The light turned green. He accelerated.
"There's something else," he said.
Of course there was.
"The fraud investigation. The one Victoria's been using as leverage." He paused. "It's not about Evelyn."
"What do you mean?"
"The fraud is real. The investigation is real. But Evelyn wasn't the one who committed it." He turned onto Forty-third. "I was."
The car swerved slightly. He corrected.
"You," I said.
"Me."
"You committed fraud."
"Yes."
"And you let everyone think it was my mother."
"She offered. Said it would be easier for her to disappear if people thought she was running from something." He pulled into a parking garage. "I didn't argue."
I should have been angry. Should have been furious. Instead, I just felt tired.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Insider trading. Securities fraud. Tax evasion." He parked in a spot marked 'Reserved.' "The usual billionaire crimes."
"How much?"
"Forty million. Give or take."
I closed my eyes. "Jesus Christ."
"I was twenty-six. Stupid. Desperate to prove I could run the company better than my father." The engine cut off. "Evelyn found out. She could have reported me. Should have. Instead, she helped me cover it up."
"Why?"
"I don't know." He opened his door. "Maybe she saw something in me worth saving. Or maybe she just wanted leverage of her own."
I got out of the car. The blanket fell away. I left it on the seat.
"So Victoria has proof that you committed fraud," I said. "And she's been using it to control you."
"Yes."
"And my mother has been hiding for seven years because someone threatened her life."
"Yes."
"And you've been lying to everyone, including me, this entire time."
"Yes."
I walked toward the elevator. He followed.
"Anything else I should know?" I pressed the button for the lobby. "Any other massive revelations you want to drop before we commit multiple felonies?"
The elevator arrived. We stepped in.
"I'm in love with your mother," he said.
The doors closed.
I didn't respond. Couldn't. The elevator climbed, floor numbers ticking past. Callum stood next to me, hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead like he'd just commented on the weather.
"You're in love with her," I finally said.
"Yes."
"My mother."
"Yes."
"Evelyn Mercer. The woman who faked her death and let you take the fall for fraud."
"I didn't take the fall. I committed the fraud." He looked at me. "She just helped me hide it."
The elevator stopped. Thirty-fourth floor. The doors opened onto a marble lobby, empty except for a security desk. A guard sat behind it, reading something on his phone.
Callum walked up to the desk. I followed, my bare feet silent on the marble.
"Mr. Hargrave." The guard stood. "Didn't expect to see you tonight."
"Last-minute meeting with Victoria." Callum's voice was smooth. Easy. "She asked me to pick up some files from her office."
The guard glanced at me. Took in my wet dress, my bare feet, my hair still dripping onto the floor.
"And the lady?"
"My assistant. There was an incident with a water main." Callum didn't miss a beat. "We need to get those files before the morning meeting."
The guard looked skeptical. I didn't blame him.
"I can call Ms. Hargrave to confirm," he said.
"Please do." Callum pulled out his phone. "I have her on speed dial."
The guard hesitated. Then sat back down. "That's all right. I'll just need you to sign in."
Callum signed. I signed. The guard handed us visitor badges.
"Forty-seventh floor," he said. "Elevators are to your left."
We walked away. I waited until we were in the next elevator, doors closed, before I spoke.
"You were bluffing. If he'd called Victoria—"
"He wouldn't have." Callum pressed the button for forty-seven. "It's three in the morning. No one calls their boss at three in the morning unless they want to get fired."
"You're very good at this."
"At what?"
"Lying."
He didn't deny it.
The elevator climbed. I watched the numbers tick past, trying to process everything he'd told me. My mother, in hiding because someone threatened her. Callum, in love with her. The fraud, the lies, the seven years of deception.
"Does she know?" I asked. "That you're in love with her?"
"No."
"Are you going to tell her?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she doesn't feel the same way." He said it matter-of-factly. "And because telling her would only make things complicated."
"Things are already complicated."
"More complicated, then."
The elevator stopped. Forty-seventh floor.
The doors opened onto a hallway lined with offices. Dark, except for the emergency exit signs. Callum led me to the end, to a door marked 'Victoria Hargrave, CEO.'
He tried the handle. Locked.
"Do you have a key?" I asked.
"No." He pulled something from his pocket. A small metal tool, thin and curved. "But I have this."
"Is that a lock pick?"
"Yes."
"Where did you get a lock pick?"
"Amazon." He knelt, inserted it into the lock. "Two-day shipping."
I watched him work. His hands were steady, precise. The lock clicked.
"You've done this before," I said.
"Once or twice." He pushed the door open. "After you."
Victoria's office was exactly what I'd expected. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A desk the size of my kitchen. Leather chairs. A bar cart in the corner, crystal decanters catching the light from the street below.
And on the wall behind the desk, a painting of a man in a suit. Stern face. Cold eyes.
"Her father," Callum said.
He crossed to the painting, lifted it off the wall. Behind it, a safe. Digital keypad.
"Do you know the code?" I asked.
"No." He pulled out his phone again. "But I know someone who can crack it."
He made a call. It rang twice before someone picked up.
"It's me," Callum said. "I need a favor."
A pause. Then a woman's voice, tinny through the speaker. "Do you know what time it is?"
"Yes. Can you crack a digital safe remotely?"
"Depends on the model."
Callum read off the numbers from the safe's panel. Another pause.
"Give me ten minutes," the woman said. "And you owe me."
"I know."
The call ended. Callum pocketed his phone.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"A friend."
"You have friends who crack safes?"
"I have friends who do a lot of things." He leaned against the desk. "You should sit. This might take a while."
I didn't sit. I walked to the windows instead, looked out at the city. Lights everywhere. People everywhere. All of them with their own secrets, their own lies.
"Why did you really jump in after me?" I asked.
Behind me, silence. Then: "Because I couldn't let you drown."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
I turned. He was watching me, his expression unreadable.
"You said you're in love with my mother," I said. "But you jumped in after me. You're here, breaking into Victoria's office, risking everything. For me."
"For Evelyn."
"Bullshit." I moved closer. "If this was about her, you'd have called her. Told her what was happening. Asked her what to do."
"I did call her. She didn't answer."
"So you decided to commit corporate espionage instead."
"I decided to protect you." His mouth went flat. "Which is what she would have wanted."
"You don't know what she wants. You haven't known for seven years."
"I know her better than you think."
"Do you?" I was right in front of him now. Close enough to see the water still clinging to his collar. "Because from where I'm standing, you're in love with a ghost. A woman who doesn't exist anymore. Who maybe never existed."
"You're wrong."
"Am I?" I reached up, grabbed his collar. "Prove it. Tell me one thing about her that's real. One thing that isn't a lie or a secret or a carefully constructed fiction."
He looked at me. Really looked at me. And for the first time since I'd met him, I saw something crack in his expression.
"She hums when she's nervous," he said quietly. "Old jazz standards. Billie Holiday, mostly. She doesn't realize she's doing it."
My hand dropped.
"She takes her coffee black with two sugars, but she tells everyone she takes it black because she thinks it makes her seem tougher." He kept going. "She's afraid of heights. Terrified. But she'll never admit it. And she—"
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out, checked the screen.
"The safe's open," he said.
He crossed to it, pulled the door. Inside, files. Dozens of them. He started pulling them out, spreading them across Victoria's desk.
I moved to help. My hands were shaking again.
"Here." Callum handed me a folder. "Evelyn Mercer. Everything Victoria has."
I opened it. Photos. Documents. Bank statements. And at the bottom, a single sheet of paper with a name I didn't recognize.
"Marcus Chen," I read aloud. "Who's Marcus Chen?"
Callum went very still.
"Callum. Who is Marcus Chen?"
He took the paper from me. Read it. His face went white.
"We need to leave," he said. "Now."
"What? Why?"
"Because Marcus Chen is the man who threatened your mother." He grabbed the files, started shoving them into his jacket. "And according to this, he's been watching you for the past three days."
The office door opened.
Victoria stood in the doorway, and she wasn't alone.