Daddy's First Lesson novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Plan

By eight o'clock there were four of us at Abram's long table, though one of us was a phone.

Tanya had propped my phone against the sugar bowl.

Her face filled the screen, still in scrubs, eating cereal out of a mixing bowl.

"I can see your hickey from here," she told me.

"Tanya."

"I'm just saying what the camera sees."

Lise sat at the end of the table with a folder and her pencil, not smiling.

Abram stood behind my chair with one hand on its back, close enough that I felt the heat of him.

"Start with the guest list," Lise said. "Two hundred people. Sheldon's buyers, his board, the three foundations, and the front table."

"Who's at the front table?" Abram asked.

"Sheldon. His fiancée. Her parents. A critic from the paper."

"Does the fiancée know about you?" I asked Lise.

"She knows what he tells her. That I'm a disgruntled employee of a sex club, that his ex is unstable." Lise tapped the pencil on the folder. "She's twenty-seven. She works in a museum. She's never had a reason to doubt him."

"Then she gets one," Tanya said, through a mouthful of cereal. "In person, in a nice dress."

"That's what I want," Lise said. "I want to say it in his room, to his people, with her sitting there. Not Abram. Me."

Abram's hand tightened on the chair.

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't." Lise looked at him steadily. "That's why it's mine to do."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"What do you need from us?" I asked.

"A way to the microphone. He gives a toast at eight. If I walk up cold, security takes me out before I finish one sentence."

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