An Understated Dominance novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Room Above the Hardware Store

Thea storms into Colter's tiny office, finds six years of rescues in his ledger, and watches Russell Voelker humiliate him and call him a Merrow.

I went to find Colter's office at eight the next morning, on no sleep.

I had never been there.

In six years I had never once asked where it was.

The address he gave in the end was a single line on a sticky note, left on the kitchen table beside the mug.

Pine Street, Denver, above Delgado Hardware.

It was a narrow brick building with a rake and a wheelbarrow chained to the front door.

A staircase went up the side, through a door with no sign.

I climbed it in my camel coat and my good heels, still wearing last night's makeup under a fresh coat of anger.

The door at the top said Pine Street Partners in peeling gold letters.

I did not knock.

The room was one room.

A wooden desk, two filing cabinets, a kettle on a hot plate, and a window that looked out over the roof of the hardware store.

A bookkeeper in a cardigan looked up from a ledger and went white.

"You must be Ms. Forsberg," she said. "He's, um. He said you might come."

"Where is he?"

"Getting coffee. He'll be right back."

"Show me the ledger."

"I'm not sure I'm allowed."

"You're allowed," I said. "I'm his wife until January."

She handed it over.

It was a big green book, ruled by hand, with entries going back six years.

I turned the pages, standing in the middle of the floor.

Each line had a date, an amount, and a small note in Colter's tidy writing.

March, sixty thousand, bridge for Thea's first factory run.

August, two hundred thousand, covers payroll gap, do not tell her.

I turned another page.

October, one million, Aurora line, she cried at the bank.

November, a phone call to a retail buyer in Chicago, no money, just my name.

I stood there with my coat half off my shoulder.

The buyer in Chicago had given me my first national order.

I had told that story from a stage.

I had said I earned the meeting by sending forty emails.

Colter's note said, "She sent forty. I made it forty-one."

My knees did something strange.

I put my hand on the desk.

"Thea."

He stood in the doorway holding two paper cups.

He had showered and put on a clean shirt, and he looked a hundred years older than he had at the party.

"You can't keep a ledger like that," I said, "and call it love. It's a file on me."

"It's an accounting."

"It's a file on me, Colter!"

"It's the only way I could stop myself from fixing every little thing."

He set the cups down on the desk.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I mean it. I'm sorry I decided for you."

I opened my mouth to say something terrible.

Footsteps rang on the iron stairs outside, quick and heavy, with no hesitation in them.

The door swung open without a knock.

Russell Voelker came in wearing a camel overcoat, with a young associate carrying his briefcase.

He looked around the room.

"Well, would you look at this," he said. "This is it? This is Pine Street?"

"Mr. Voelker," Colter said evenly.

"I've seen bigger closets at my gym."

He picked up the kettle off the hot plate and shook it, listening for water.

"Colter Briscoe," he said. "Mr. Managing Member."

"I need your signature on a few extra pages. Escrow, indemnity, the usual."

"Thea's lawyers can send them."

"I'd rather do it now, in person, so I know I have you."

Russell tossed a pen onto the desk.

It rolled across the ledger and stopped against Colter's hand.

"Here. You like a pen, don't you? Little accountant. Little insurance man."

"Russell," I said.

"I'm talking to your husband, Thea. Soon to be your ex."

He smiled at me with all his teeth.

"I mean, look at him. He isn't even a real investor."

"He's a placeholder."

"We all know who's really buying you out."

Colter signed the pages one by one.

His hand did not shake.

He signed while Russell stood too close and read over his shoulder, breathing coffee at him.

"Careful with the loops," Russell said. "I'd hate for the old man to find a smudge."

Colter stopped, and for the first time I saw his jaw move.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, come on. We're friends here."

"Don't act like you didn't hear it from Gilbert himself."

Russell shook the ink off the last page and tucked it under his arm.

He looked at the bookkeeper, then at me, then at Colter.

He seemed delighted.

"Gilbert Merrow's boy," he said, "playing house in a loft over a hardware store."

"Hell of a hobby."

He left the way he had come in.

The associate looked sick.

Nobody in the room said anything for several seconds.

I was staring at Colter, and Colter was staring at the pen.

The name had been on the lips of every person who loved my company's sale.

Gilbert Merrow.

Russell had said it to my face last night, at the party, and I had let it slide past me.

He is our lead backer, Russell had said.

"Colter," I said. "Who is Gilbert Merrow?"

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