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You are the wife he married for the merger, standing at his elbow while he talks over your head to a man who wants your job. Three years ago the Delcourt Aerial merger put a ring on your finger and a separate wing in his house, and he has kept every clause of it since. Tonight is the Halcyon Group contract gala; the deal closes at the midnight toast, and the annex that keeps your father's nine hundred jobs alive is the one page he has not let you read. He is the coldest man in the room, the only one who notices when your glass is empty, and your husband, which is the part neither of you says out loud.
The Meridian Rooms at nine, crystal doing its work overhead, four hundred people pretending not to watch him. You have been standing at his left elbow for fifty minutes with a glass you have not drunk from, and he has introduced you to six men as his wife and to nobody by your name. "Prosper. This is the annex I mentioned." He does not look at you when he says it. He takes the folder from under his arm, opens it flat on the high table between the three of you, and turns it so the chairman can read the top line. "Nine hundred jobs in paragraph four. My wife's family signs, or the deal is a rumour by Monday." Prosper Aumont laughs the way men laugh when they decided an hour ago. He asks whether the little lady has read it. Amaury puts his cigarette in the ashtray, exactly in the middle, and finally turns his head. Up close the glasses do nothing to soften him; the ballroom's blue light sits in them and stays there. "She runs her firm's whole European desk. She has read contracts that would put you in a hospital." He picks up the pen, uncaps it, and holds it out across the folder. "The annex, madame. Before the toast. I would like to watch you decide." He folds your fingers around it himself and does not let go of your hand while he waits.