We Never Said We Went Bankrupt! novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Kerrigan Capital

She storms his office; he offers a public arrangement; she says no until her brother is shoved out of his club.

Kerrigan Capital took up the top four floors of a glass tower on the Greenwich waterfront, and nobody in the lobby would look at me.

I knew the feeling by now.

On Monday morning I had stood in my father's boardroom with a pot of coffee and a stack of bound statements.

Exactly two of the people I'd invited had come.

One was a nervous accountant.

The other was a man who wanted to sell us a copier.

So at ten past eleven I took the white card out of my coat.

I walked into the one building in town where somebody might actually tell me the truth.

The receptionist did not ask my name.

"He's expecting you," she said, and pointed.

His office was a long, bare room with a table and no pictures.

Lawrence Kerrigan stood at the window with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He had forearms, which I did not need to notice.

"You came faster than I thought," he said without turning.

"Who started it?"

"Sit."

"I'll stand."

He turned around and looked at me, and I felt it low in my stomach, unfairly.

"The account that posted the rumor was opened in a Delacourt employee's name," he said. "That much I can prove."

"Then prove it. Take it to the papers."

"The papers would print that I did it."

"Why would they print that?"

"Because I have no friends in this town," he said evenly. "And she has all of them."

I set my bag on his table.

"Then why are you helping me?"

"I'm not."

"You paid my valet."

"I paid for a car."

His gray eyes didn't move off mine.

"I want something from Regina Delacourt, and she isn't going to give it up in private."

"She has to say things in public, in front of people, with her own mouth."

"You've seen her do it."

"And I'm the bait."

"You're the reason she keeps doing it," he said. "Every time she sees you, she can't stop talking."

I thought about the stage and the pearls.

He was right, and I hated that he was right.

"What do you want from me?"

"Be seen with me," Lawrence said.

"At the events, the dinners, the places she goes."

"Arrive on my arm. Don't explain. Let her wonder what I am to you."

"A fake relationship."

"A public one. The details are yours to decide."

"For how long?"

"Until she runs out of rope."

"And what do I get?"

"Everyone who laughed at you gets to watch what I do next."

I laughed once, short and not nice.

"I don't want to be watched. I want my father's name back."

"Then you want the same thing I do."

"No," I said. "I want it from the front. I want to walk through the front door as myself and make them take it back."

"They won't."

"Then I'll make them."

"You walked into a ballroom as yourself," he said quietly. "Look what it got you."

That landed, and I let it land.

Then I picked up my bag.

"I'm not going to be your decoration, Mr. Kerrigan."

"I'm not asking you to be."

"You're asking me to stand beside a man I met two days ago and let strangers decide what I am."

"They've already decided," he said. "I'm asking whether you want to stand alone while they do it."

I stared at him.

The cold in his voice had something under it, something tired, and it unsettled me more than anything else he'd said.

"No," I said.

"Then I'll walk you down."

"I know where the elevator is."

I pushed through the door before he could answer.

All the way down thirty-one floors, I told myself I'd done the right thing.

The lobby doors opened onto the plaza and the gray harbor wind.

My phone buzzed with a message from Teddy, and I almost didn't look.

It was short and frantic:

Come get me.

Then a second one.

Please.

I called him.

It rang through to voicemail.

I called again, and again, and I was already running for the parking structure when a number I didn't know lit up the screen.

"Ainsley?" a boy's voice said, too casual, over a lot of laughing. "You should come down to the Yacht Club. Your brother's on the curb."

The line went dead.

I ran.

It took me ten minutes to get there.

Teddy was sitting on the curb in front of the Greenwich Yacht Club with his blazer torn at the shoulder and blood on his lip.

Three young men in navy club jackets stood on the steps above him, watching him.

One of them was holding Teddy's membership card between two fingers.

He tore it in half.

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