Olivia arrived ten minutes early, which Nathan noticed as he slid into the booth.
"You are early," he said. "You are never early for lunch with me."
"I wanted the quiet table," Olivia said.
"I brought no lecture," Nathan said, holding up both hands. "I brought an appetite."
"Ask," Olivia said.
"Ask what?"
"You have been holding a question since you sat down."
Nathan smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. "Did you ask him?"
"About his supervisor," Olivia said. "Yes. Last night, over that pasta he insists is a family recipe."
"And?"
"I said, you have never told me who you report to. If I sent flowers to your office, who would I address the card to?"
"Very casual," Nathan said.
"It beat saying, my brother thinks you invented your job."
"What did he say?"
Olivia turned her glass slowly. "He laughed. Then he said the structure shifts every quarter. Then he said the managing partner prefers a low profile. Then he changed the subject to art."
"He answered three ways, and none was a name."
"I noticed."
She looked up, sharp. "Last night. I lay awake noticing it. Give me that much credit."
"Did you push?"
"I said, surely it is one person. People do not report to a fog. He kissed my forehead, said I would love the viewing tonight, said I was overthinking. Then his phone buzzed and he took it into the bathroom."
"Do not," Olivia said quietly. "Let me finish my own sentence."
"There was another thing," Olivia said. "Small. Probably nothing."
"Tell me the probably nothing."
"Yesterday a courier came while Chase was in the shower. He looked at the envelope label and said, oh, this says forward from the Brickell mail room, the junior pool address. Chase came out in a towel, took it too fast, and said the firm routes executive mail centrally."
"And the fourteenth floor?" Nathan asked.
"That is what he has always said. Fourteenth floor, corner, view of the bay. The courier said junior pool like a daily address."
"It might have been a mistake on the label," Nathan said, carefully, too carefully.
"I know it might. Do not handle me like glass. I am telling you cracks, not conclusions."
"Cracks, then. Is there another?"
Olivia hesitated, and that told him more than words. "Last Friday, the valet at Carbone, the young one who remembers names. He brought the car around, said good evening to Chase, then told me my brother had been there Tuesday."
"I was not there Tuesday."
"I know. I said he must mean someone else. He grinned and said, the older gentleman with Mr. Donovan, the one he introduced as family. Later Chase said the man was a client, and did not remember any introduction at all."
"That is subtle," Nathan said.
"That is deniable. Everything is deniable, one piece at a time. Alone, each one is a shrug. Together they make a shape I do not like."
Nathan leaned back. "Liv, you do not have to prove a case to me. You never did."
"I have to prove it to myself. Or disprove it. I am not leaving a man because my brother ran a background mood."
"You laid out the Harbourline deal and a title nobody would confirm, and I defended him in your office like it was my job. Partly because admitting you were right feels like admitting I was careless with the one thing our family asked me to protect."
"You were not careless," Nathan said. "You were trusting. There is a difference, and Dad knew it, which is why the trust has two trustees."
"Tonight," Olivia said, and her voice steadied. "Tonight I watch him at the Glass Pavilion with clear eyes. Not yours. Mine. How he talks to Karp. How he talks about money that is not his to promise. Whether he performs."
"And if it is not true?"
"Then I will know it from him, not from a courier, a valet, or you. I need that. I need to be the one who sees it."
"I can live with that," Nathan said. "I will be there tonight if you want me."
"I want you there. Quietly. Brother quietly, not trustee quietly."
"There is a difference?"
"Brother quietly brings me a drink and does not take notes."
He nodded. "Done."
Their entrees arrived, and they ate talking about their mother and a cousin's engagement party, Olivia quietly relieved to have said the doubts aloud.
Outside, as she waited for her car, she thought about that envelope again, and what she had glimpsed that morning on mail Chase left on his counter. His name, yes. But beneath it, in smaller type, not the penthouse address at all. A different street, a small apartment across the river, printed plain as fact.
Chapter 12: Unsigned