You have a daughter, and daughters are expensive, and Roland Cross has more money than God. " She was watching him very carefully now, and Daniel understood that this was a test, maybe the biggest one she'd given him. "So, tell me, what's your price? " And Daniel felt something go cold and hard in his chest. Not anger, exactly, but close to it. The specific hurt of being measured by a person you'd started to think measured you differently. "You still don't get it," he said quietly, "after all this, after the water, after the board meeting, after every single time I could have walked and didn't.
He set down the glass he was still holding. You want to know my price, Victoria? Here it is. You already paid it. You gave my daughter her lungs back.
There is no number Roland Cross can write on a check that competes with the sound of my little girl running up a flight of stairs and not stopping at the top to catch her breath. He can't buy me because you already gave me the only thing I ever wanted, and you gave it to me before you even knew if I'd say yes. He held her eyes. I'm not for sale. Not to him, not to anybody.
And the fact that you still had to ask He stopped and shook his head. That's the saddest thing about you. You know that you genuinely believe everyone would sell you out for the right price because everyone always has. Victoria Hale looked at him, and for a moment the mask didn't just slip. It fell all the way off.
"Yes," she said, barely a whisper. "Everyone always has. " And Daniel saw it, then saw the whole shape of her loneliness in a single word. Saw 11 years of a woman holding herself together in the dark because she'd learned in the hardest way possible that the second she let anyone hold her up, they'd let her fall. "Not me," he said. "I don't care how long it takes you to believe it.
Not me. " She didn't answer. She couldn't. She just turned back to the window, and Daniel saw her shoulders were not quite steady, and he had the good sense to leave her alone with it. That night his phone rang at 11:40. He was awake folding Lily's laundry, and he answered before the second ring.
"Yeah. " "Daniel. " Just his first name. She'd never used just his first name before. And her voice was wrong, thin, and strained in a way that put him on his feet instantly, laundry forgotten. "I need you to come to the penthouse. Now.
I can't" A sharp intake of breath. "I can't get up off the floor. " "Where's Grace? Where's your doctor? " "Grace doesn't know about the penthouse. Nobody does. Dr. Reyes is in Boston until Thursday.
A pause, and when she spoke again, her voice broke on it just slightly, just enough. There's no one else, Daniel. There's no one else I can call. That's the entire point of view. Please.
Please, Victoria Hales said. Please. I'm calling Mrs. Alvarez to sit with Lily, and I'm on my way. Daniel said, already grabbing his keys. Stay on the phone with me.
You hear me? Don't hang up. Tell me exactly what happened. I fell. Her breathing was ragged.
In the bathroom. My legs just they went. I've been on the floor for 40 minutes trying to A sound that might have been a sob quickly strangled. I can't get leverage. Everything I try makes it worse.
Okay, okay, listen to me. You're going to stop trying to get up. Do you hear me? Just stop. Lie still.
You're not alone anymore. I'm coming, and the getting up is my job now, not yours. All you have to do is breathe and stay on this phone. Can you do that? There was a long shaking pause.
Yes, she whispered. Good. Now, tell me the address. Daniel broke every speed limit between his apartment and the penthouse, and he talked to her the entire time. Kept her voice in his ear.
Kept her tethered. He talked about Lily. He talked about the fish tank at the doctor's office and how Lily had named a fish Mr. Bubbles and demanded they visit him at every appointment. He talked about nothing and everything, and he heard Victoria's breathing slow down. Heard the panic drain out of it degree by degree.
Because for the first time in 11 years, she was on a bathroom floor, and she was not alone. The doorman knew him now. He rode the private elevator up with his heart going like a hammer, and when he let himself into the penthouse with the code she'd given him, he found her exactly where she said she'd be, on the bathroom floor, her back against the tub, her face gray with pain and exhaustion. And she looked up at him, and something in her face at the sight of him was so naked and so relieved that Daniel had to swallow hard before he could speak. "Hey," he said softly, crouching down beside her, the same way he had that first night in her office.
"There you are. I've got you now. " "I'm sorry," she said. And Victoria Hale, who had never apologized to anyone in the years Daniel had known of her, said it again. "I'm sorry. I didn't want you to see me like this.
I didn't want anyone to ever Stop. " He said it gently. "There's no anyone here. There's just me. And I have seen my own daughter fight for every breath in her body, and I have cleaned the floors of a hundred men richer than God. And I promise you there is nothing about a person needing help that I have ever once thought was shameful, not once in my life. " He held out his hand, palm up, exactly like he had the first night.
"Now, same as before, you set the pace, use my arm. We're going to get you off this floor, and then I'm going to make you a cup of tea, and you're going to tell me the truth about how bad the last few nights have really been. Deal. " She looked at his open hand. And this time she didn't hesitate, not the way she had that first night. This time she took it right away.
Getting her up took a long time. He was patient. He let her rest twice. He never once made her feel the weight of it. And when she finally sank onto the edge of the enormous bed in a room bigger than Daniel's whole apartment, she was trembling with the exhaustion of it.
But she was up. He made the tea. He found the kitchen after some searching in a penthouse so vast and so empty it made his chest ache because there was nothing in it. No photographs, no clutter, no evidence that a human life happened here. It looked like a hotel room for a guest who'd never quite arrived.