JOSEPH'S POV
Across the city, in a reserved bar that was dark and expensive and quiet enough that nobody would overhear, Wendy Chase was on her third drink.
The bar was the kind of place she liked. Low lighting, good music played at the correct volume. Staff who recognised faces and knew when to approach and when to leave well enough alone. She had been coming here for years, long before Gideon
She sat at the corner table with her phone face down and her glass half empty and stared at nothing in particular.
She had seen the photograph again an hour ago.
Someone had sent it to her. She wasn't sure who. It didn't matter who.
What mattered was what was in it.
Gideon with his hand at the small of that girl's back. Gideon looking at the camera with the particular stillness he had when he was being photographed, composed and controlled and slightly removed. And beside him, that girl. That girl in a dress that Wendy recognised because she had seen it in a shop window three months ago and considered buying it herself.
Esther Collins…..
Wendy picked up her glass, set it down again without drinking.
She thought about the photograph, it was something else.
The photograph was real.
She picked up her glass. Drank.
She was still sitting there when the door opened and a man came in from the street.
She didn't look up immediately. She wasn't expecting anyone. She had come here specifically to be alone.
But the man walked directly to her table and stopped.
She looked up.
He was older. Well dressed. Silver at the temples. A warm face with kind eyes and the particular ease of someone who had spent a lifetime making people feel comfortable around them.
He smiled at her the way people smile when they want something.
"Ms. Chase," he said. "My name is Joseph Mercer. May I sit down."
Wendy looked at him for a moment.
"I don't know you," she said.
"No," he agreed pleasantly. "But we know the same people. And I think we may want the same things." He gestured at the chair across from her. "Five minutes. If I'm wrong about that I'll leave and you'll never see me again."
Wendy studied him. The warm face. The kind eyes. The careful ease.
She recognised performance when she saw it because she practised it herself.
She gestured at the chair.
He sat down.
"You're angry," he sad with confidence that he knew what he was talking about.
"I'm having a drink," she said.
"You're angry and you're having a drink." He folded his hands on the table. "That photograph was the first time it became real for you."
Wendy said nothing.
"Because the announcement was a decision," he continued. "And decisions can be reversed. But that photograph showed you something that decisions don't show you." He paused. "It showed you that she is already inside it. Already inside his life and already inside whatever he is building."
The bar was quiet around them.
Wendy turned her glass slowly on the table. "You said we want the same things. What do you want?" She asked almost irritated.
"The same thing you want," Joseph said. "For that marriage to end."
"And why would you want that?" She asked inquisitively.
He smiled. "Because Esther Collins is not who Gideon Cross thinks she is." He leaned forward slightly. "And because what she stands to inherit could change things for me and including you."
Wendy looked at him carefully. "You want the inheritance." She said smiling.
He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"And what do I get?" she asked.
"Gideon," he said simply. "Or if you decide you don't want him after all, which I suspect you might once the marriage falls apart publicly, you get something better. You get the story. The full story. Everything about why he really married her and what he has been hiding." He sat back. "A woman like you with a story like that could do anything she wanted with it." He said, now in a cunning way.
Wendy looked at him for a long moment.
"You said she is not who Gideon thinks she is," she said. "What do you mean by that?"
Joseph smiled.
"Esther Collins," he said, "is the daughter of a man who owes me something, my very close friend and partner. A debt that has been outstanding for a very long time." He picked up the drink menu and looked at it casually. "Gideon Cross has been interfering with my ability to collect that debt. And I intend to stop him."
Wendy was quiet.
"You have media access," Joseph said. "You have public trust. You have a face that the world believes." He set the menu down. "I have information, evidence. Everything needed to make Gideon Cross look like the man I know him to be instead of the man the world thinks he is."
"What man is that?" Wendy asked.
"A man who married a vulnerable girl to access her inheritance," Joseph said smoothly. "A man who has been building a case against an innocent person for seven years because he needed someone to blame for his sister's death." He paused. "A man who destroyed a family for profit and dressed it up as protection." He said
Wendy stared at him, confused at the same time interested.
The bar hummed quietly around them.
"His sister," she said slowly. "Elena."
"You know about her?." Joseph asked
"He mentioned her once , just once. He never talked about it."
"No," Joseph said. "He wouldn't." He signalled to a passing staff member for a drink. Then he looked at Wendy with those careful kind eyes. "He wouldn't because the story he has been telling himself for seven years is built on a lie. And the lie is the foundation of everything he has built since." Joseph said
Wendy sat very still.
"If that foundation breaks," Joseph said, "everything above it breaks with it."
The staff member brought his drink. He thanked her warmly and waited until she walked away.
"Are you interested?" he asked.
Wendy looked at her glass. She thought about the photograph. Gideon's hand at the small of that girl's back. The way he had looked at the camera with the stillness she had spent two years trying to get behind.
She had never gotten behind it.
She thought about the article this morning. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
She thought about a man sitting across a table from her who had walked into this bar knowing her name, knowing her table, knowing exactly what she was feeling and exactly what to say about it.
She picked up her glass.
"I'm listening," she said.
Joseph smiled.
In that bar were two people who didn't need to trust each other but made one quiet decision together.
To burn it all down!