Chapter 21: Stay

Mateo's POV

At eleven that night I was standing in her kitchen with my badge in my hand.

I had practiced the sentence all the way up in the elevator.

Ingrid came in from the bedroom in a gray robe, with her hair down and the envelope in her fingers.

She had not opened it.

She put it on the counter, squared it against the edge, and looked at me.

"You've got your coat on," she said.

"I'm not staying."

"Say it, then."

"Tomorrow they vote on your father. If it goes your way, you're the chair."

"And?"

"And the first thing every paper says is that the chair's lover runs the night shift."

"I've heard the headline."

"Henrik's deadline," I said. "You need a husband he approves of, or he keeps your mother's vote. I'm not that. I never will be."

"Mateo."

"So I can resign tonight. Quietly. You walk into that board room clean, and nobody can say you kept your lover on the payroll."

I put the badge on the counter beside her letter.

"I didn't believe it was true of you," I said. "But I believed it of the name. I'm sorry for that."

She looked at the badge for a long time.

Then she laid two fingers on it and slid it back across the counter to my hand.

"No," she said.

"Ingrid."

"I'm not asking you to leave so I don't have to choose. I already chose."

She came around the counter.

She untied my tie with two sharp pulls and dropped it on the floor, and she didn't ask.

"You think I'd pick the building over you."

"I think you were raised to."

"I was raised in a house where every kindness had a price tag on it," she said. "You haven't asked me for a single thing."

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