Chapter 4 - The Wife Who Asked Questions
Trevor called her from a number she didn't recognize.
Sadi answered because Maya was waiting for a call from an engineer and had given out Sadi's number as an additional contact.
“You're making this worse,” Trevor said.
She stopped beside the diner's back door.
“Don't contact me again. You can speak to my attorney.”
“I was trying to apologize.”
“Then you chose a strange opening sentence.”
He exhaled sharply.
“You know how things get when you misunderstand people.”
There it was. The apology that needed her to become responsible for the injury first.
“I understood your shoe perfectly.”
“Be careful, Sadi. Your husband's name won't look good attached to a crusade about vulnerable tenants.”
She looked through the small window toward Della washing cups.
“Is that a legal opinion or a threat?”
He hung up.
She saved the call information and told Maya.
Then she sat outside on the delivery step until her breathing slowed.
Roman found her there an hour later.
He didn't ask what Trevor had said. She had already sent him the message.
“The investment team has paused the next available disbursement,” he told her. “They're checking the supporting documents. The developer is threatening a claim.”
“Will it hurt your companies?”
“It could.”
She looked at him.
“I didn't ask you to do it because we're married.”
“I know. I should have asked the questions when the recommendation reached my desk.”
He sat carefully beside her, his expensive coat folding against a damp brick wall.
“Arthur says there's a resident meeting tomorrow evening.”
“There is.”
“I would prefer you didn't go.”
Her shoulders tightened.
He noticed.
“I said prefer.”
“You said it in your people-usually-listen voice.”
Despite himself, he smiled briefly.
“It's a difficult habit.”
“So is apologizing before I ask for anything. I'm working on mine.”
He looked across the alley.
“Someone hurt you in public while you were standing a few feet from people whose job was to keep you safe. I'm having trouble being reasonable about it.”
She let that settle.
Under the anger, she could hear the fear.
“I need to go,” she said. “This is my work. Those people know me. If I disappear the minute somebody makes it unpleasant, what am I telling them?”
He turned back.
“Tell me what would help.”
“Arthur with me. Clear arrangements. No surprises. And you asking how it went instead of deciding I shouldn't have gone.”
He nodded.
It wasn't surrender. She could see him making a choice he found uncomfortable.
She loved him more for making it.
That afternoon, she met with the lawyer helping her respond to the assault and the online allegations. She provided her account, the injury documentation, and the details of Trevor's call. Requests for corrections went through counsel.
The full boutique footage had reached investigators. Several witnesses had agreed to give statements.
Still, the shorter clip kept circulating.
People discussed her sweater, her shoes, the size of her ring. Some decided she had staged the incident because no woman with a wealthy husband would tolerate humiliation quietly.
Sadi closed the screen.
She had tolerated plenty of things loudly in her head.
That had never stopped them happening.
When she went downstairs, Louise was trying to persuade Roman to eat lunch. He had been on the phone since they returned.
Sadi took his untouched plate and sat across from him.
“Food,” she said.
“I'm working.”
“So am I. We're both apparently capable of doing it with a sandwich.”
He ended the call.
They ate in the kitchen instead of the dining room.
For ten minutes, they argued about whether tomatoes belonged in the refrigerator.
She needed the argument's smallness more than she knew how to explain.
Near five, a message arrived from Chloe.
Sadi stared at the name.
The police had exchanged contact information with counsel after the incident; Chloe had obtained hers through that process. There was nothing mysterious about it.
The message itself felt less ordinary.
I need to correct what I told the officer. Please don't meet Trevor alone. May I speak to you somewhere public?
Sadi read it twice.
Then she forwarded it to her attorney.
May you like
She wasn't going to mistake a request for trust for evidence that trust had been earned.
But she wasn't going to ignore a woman asking for a safer room, either.
