Unfinished Seductions

by Raleigh Davis

  I call up a new blog post and start typing away. At this point, writing the blog is almost like talking to myself, except with the identifying details obscured.

  Divorce, I title it. There’s no way anyone will know it’s me, because as far as the Valley is concerned, Callie has disappeared. And there’s always a high-profile divorce happening.

  I’m supposed to get half.

  I let that sentence sit there. I don’t want half. Not of his money—our money—not the house, not his shares in Bastard Capital.

  I want what I thought our marriage would be, back in the early days. Back when I thought quitting my job would be fine, that I’d find something new to do. Back when I thought Logan’s work schedule would stay light, the way it was when we were dating. I could handle sixty hours a week of him being gone.

  But the things I chose to fill my life with instead of a job didn’t satisfy me, although they were what I was supposed to be doing. And I found that Logan being gone for over eighty hours a week was not something I could handle.

  I don’t want half. I want what we had before, the promise of what our marriage should have been. Money and shares in his company don’t even begin to cover the loss of that.

  The words start to flow out of me, and as the shadows grow long and Meowthra sleeps in the corner, I pour my heart out.

  Chapter 4

  I wake up with a dry mouth and a bleary head, as if I drank myself stupid last night. I didn’t touch a drop though: this is a purely Logan-induced hangover.

  I push myself up against the mattress, my sheets and blankets twisted around my legs. It looks like I tried to run a marathon in bed. I don’t remember my dreams, but I was clearly tossing and turning in them.

  The cottage is damp and overheated, the windows coated in condensation. I closed them before I went to bed, and now it feels like the house is desperate to breathe. I crack open a few windows but leave the back door closed. I need the fresh air, but I also need to close myself in, to cover up my raw bits. I slept in my ratty old sweater, needing the comfort of it, but even tugging the sleeves over my hands isn’t giving me enough protection.

  Once my coffee is ready, I open my laptop. My email tells me I’ve had ten comments on my latest post since yesterday. Most of my commenters are regulars, and all of them comment under fake names. CoderGirl has written that I shouldn’t take the shares—she knows I can make my own way. Judging by her comment history, she’s one of the talented women who’ve been pushed aside by the Valley’s dudebro culture.

  KatinaKat says I should take the shares and my rightful place in the boardroom. Just elbow aside all those idiot men. My guess is that she has an MBA and is frustrated she can’t use it.

  The last comment makes me want to cry. Susie—no last name—comments on most of my posts. All she’s said on this one is “I’m so very sorry to hear about your divorce. I wish there were some way I could help you.”

  I wish there were too. But I have no idea who Susie really is. My guess is that she’s like me: no one who’s high powered or brilliant at coding or a marketing genius. Just an ordinary woman who fell for a man who was anything but.

  I close my email. The next thing I do is my own dirty secret: I pull up TidBytes. TidBytes is the gossip spot of Silicon Valley, part tech news and part tabloid. I hate TidBytes, but I can’t look away from it. For the past year, it’s been the very first place I’ve gone to on the internet, even as it makes me sick.

  When the home page loads, I let myself breathe, my stomach unknotting.

  Logan isn’t on the front page today. He very often is though, usually with a woman in the picture. Not me—I’ve never been in TidBytes.

  All the pictures of Logan—and the women with him—have been taken at parties. Things that were supposed to be business events, things he said would bore me. I believed him. At first.

  But as I saw photo after photo of handsome, charming Logan with a new woman each time, the doubt slipped in. It found the crack in my heart and split it wide. It wasn’t the main reason I left him, but those pictures didn’t help.

  Today though, it’s not Logan looking back at me from the home page—it’s me.

  Are the Bastards Breaking Up?

  Oh, what a nasty clickbait headline. Of course Bastard Capital is just fine. So why do they have a photo of me?

  As I read, my breathing gets faster and faster until my lungs can’t keep up and I stop entirely. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely scroll through the story.

  TidBytes knows about the divorce papers Logan handed me yesterday. Somehow they’ve found out. There’s a very pointed mention in the story of the shares I’ll be getting and how I’ll be the most eligible divorcée in the Valley.

  My mind gets hung up on the word divorcée because it’s so silly and old-fashioned and looking for a scandal, when I’m not any of those things, but the distraction is better than processing the rest of the story, which is just… awful. Nauseating.

  But finally my brain gets to everything TidBytes seems to already know about my divorce, and my body reacts with a bone-deep shiver. I get up and shut all the windows completely, although it’s too late. Somehow, someway, this stupid gossip rag has been inside my business and seen the things only Logan and I should know.

  For a brief, guilty moment, my mind flicks to the blog post I wrote yesterday. Maybe…

  I snap the last window shut, cutting off the rest of that thought. If TidBytes knew I write The Silicon Wife, they’d have put me on the front page way before now. My identity isn’t one of those open secrets either; people speculate on who the Silicon Wife might be right in front of me, totally oblivious. My name has never come up.

  No, that secret is safe. So how did they get this info?

  Maybe Logan told them. Or one of the other Bastards. That makes more sense, although it’s also a stab in my gut. To leak that before Logan even gave me the papers is pretty shitty. But they probably don’t feel like they owe me anything. They never did before.

  I settle back into my desk chair, having worked out some of my anxious energy. Okay, so everyone knows. They were going to know sooner or later, because I would have to sign those divorce papers. I don’t want to, but accepting his entire offer is the only way Logan will let me go. If I sign, then this is over.

  I reread the article—they picked a picture of me leaving a private club in San Francisco, fleeing that disastrous meeting with Mark, and thank God they didn’t catch Julian in the shot too—and I have the good sense to close the browser window before I get to the comments.

  Logan has to know about this. Immediately. If he didn’t tell TidBytes about the divorce, he’s going to be livid. He was always protective of my image, not letting any magazine or website get near me unless he approved. Of course, he didn’t seem to care if TidBytes featured him all the time, but I guess that’s the good old double standard at work.

  I sigh and reach for my phone. I drop it at first, shocked by the coldness of it, then have to dive under the desk for it. My hair, which is way too long, flies in my face, clinging to my cheeks and catching on my lips. I shove all the strands back haphazardly because there’s no one here to see me. I don’t have to worry about things like that anymore.

  I call up my contacts list and scroll through it. I used to call him several times a day; talking to him on the phone was sometimes the only contact I’d have with him for days. I haven’t dialed him in months, but my fingers remember exactly where his info is in my phone.

  There his number is, tagged with a picture of him I took with my phone. He’s smiling widely, half goofy and half embarrassed, like it’s awkward how happy he is with me.

  It wasn’t awkward to me, although it could be frightening at times, the jolt of pure pleasure that would rush through me at the sight of him. I’d see someone who looked like him on the street, and my stomach would swoop and dive.

  It’s diving right now, heading straight for my feet, and I’m terrified it will never settle back into plac
e. I wrap my arm around my waist as I hit Call.

  There’s nothing but silence for several long seconds as the call connects. With each passing heartbeat, my stomach cramps tighter and tighter.

  I pull the phone from my ear and check that I actually hit the right button. A ring comes from the tiny speaker finally.

  And then a knock at the door.

  This time I don’t jump—only my heart does. So Logan was already on his way over. He’s never been an early riser, which means he probably didn’t sleep last night. He does that sometimes, paces through the night when his mind can’t let go of a problem. I’d wake up in an empty bed and hear him walking in the next room. He’d try to be quiet about it, but somehow I always heard him.

  I hang up before the call connects to his voice mail. My throat is dry, almost too dry to swallow past, but I do it anyway.

  This is it. He’s come for the signed papers. When he leaves me today, it will be for good.

  Some far-off corner of my mind howls at the thought, but I shut it down before it can take over my mouth.

  Instead, I open the door wide, pretending to be unafraid.

  Except it’s not Logan. It’s a woman I’ve never seen before.

  “Excuse me?” It’s an incredibly rude way to greet someone, but it’s out before I can even think.

  The woman smiles, the crease of it as sharp as the ones on her trousers. She’s in black from head to toe. Trousers, thin cashmere sweater, and narrow silk scarf: all identical shades of darkness.

  You don’t get your blacks to match that perfectly unless you put a lot of effort into it. Her hair is the only splash of color, a deep, glossy brown. Sable, like the finest paintbrushes.

  “Miss Hanes? Calliope Hanes?” She holds out a hand, already expecting me to confirm it. “Minerva Dyne.”

  No one calls me Calliope anymore, not even my mom. I’m not sure what she was thinking when she named me that—maybe something about the Muses and the power of women, but maybe she also just thought it was pretty. Not that Mom would ever admit it.

  I give Minerva Dyne’s hand the briefest of squeezes, then brace myself against the door, blocking the entryway. “I’m sorry, what’s this about?”

  If she was expecting to be invited in, her expression doesn’t show it. “I represent Corvus.”

  She says it like I should know what it is. “Oh. And they do?”

  “Information security,” she says. “Mostly.”

  I have no idea what that means or why it would involve me. “If you’re looking for design work, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I retired when I got married.”

  That had been an agonizing decision. Logan of course insisted I should keep my job, but my bosses got weird about my upcoming marriage. There were hints about the work my association with Logan would bring in and then outright demands that I network on behalf of the firm with all the billionaires now in my social circle.

  I’m not a networker, and I thought my marriage ought to be private. Since they thought differently, I quit. I regretted it afterward when I suddenly had too much time on my hands, but I would have been in an unbearable position if I hadn’t.

  “I’m not here for design work.” Her mouth twitches with a hint of condescending amusement. “I’m here about your marriage. Or rather, the dissolution of it.”

  Chapter 5

  “What?” I rear back so fast I’m lucky I’ve got a firm hold on the door. Otherwise, I might have tripped over my own feet. “How did you hear about the divorce?”

  “TidBytes,” Minerva says, as if that’s where she gets all her news.

  “But… but that was only posted this morning.” I am very, very freaked out now. First Logan appearing yesterday, then the TidBytes post this morning, and now this woman appears on my doorstep. I’ve been hiding for so long from this world, and suddenly it’s crashing back into my life like a tsunami.

  “I took a helicopter up.” She lifts the leather bag in her hand. “I have an offer for you. From my boss, Arne Fuchs.”

  Arne Fuchs? But I hardly know him. We’ve met maybe once, said hello, and that was it. I think he had dark hair? Or maybe he’s going bald?

  “An offer for what?” Even as I say it, I feel like an idiot. Yesterday I had nothing of value, not a single thing a tech genius could want.

  Today I’ve potentially got shares in one of the most successful VC firms in the world.

  Minerva’s no dummy—she immediately catches my realization. She nods. “The Bastard Capital shares. All of them. For three hundred million.”

  Three hundred million is a joke, and we both know it. It’s an opening offer is what it is. But she thinks enough of me that she expects me to negotiate. I don’t think I’ve ever been taken so seriously, at least not as Logan’s wife.

  “I see.” I lean back, make her believe I’m considering it. I don’t even want the damn shares, and I certainly don’t know if I’m going to sell them. Something tells me not to trust this woman with that information though. “But I don’t even own the shares yet.”

  Fuchs must want them desperately if he’s sent his assistant all the way here this quickly. He’ll be only the first of the sharks looking to bite into those shares. God, I wish Logan never put them in the divorce offer. He’s thinking to spare me any financial instability, but instead I’ll have to deal with more offers like this.

  I don’t even want the damn things, I want to shout. I just want to mourn my marriage in private.

  “I understand.” Minerva puts so much sympathy in her voice it’s unnaturally smooth. “But we’d like to arrange things quickly.”

  The pause before quickly is so small I almost imagine it.

  “What if I don’t want to sell the shares?”

  I brace myself for the empty patter she’s already prepared, nonsense about how I must want the money now, how time consuming it will be to sit on the board, how awful it will be seeing my ex-husband so often…

  I mean, I was thinking along those same lines last night, trying to think how to give back the unwanted gift to Logan.

  Even though I already know what she’ll say, at least the outlines of it, I ask out of some instinct to stick to the script here. She’s expecting me to ask, so I will.

  But she doesn’t react beyond blinking like I’ve flicked water in her face. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

  She wasn’t expecting me to ask. I’ve thrown her off, which throws me off. The tense set of her jaw says she’s got some words she wants to say but can’t let herself.

  Realization prickles along my scalp. She thought I was going to say yes right away—that’s why she doesn’t have an answer ready. Someone told her I was more than ready to sell, that I was probably eager to sell, and I wouldn’t need any convincing.

  “I can’t imagine you would want to keep them,” she says finally. But something’s off in her voice, the tone not quite matching up with the words. “Not after we come to a mutually agreeable price.”

  As a graphic artist, it’s my job to make things people respond to on levels they can’t even detect. I’ve gotten good at watching people as they interact with things, how text and color and design make them feel. That skill is coming in handy now.

  This woman is here to sell me on something that she doesn’t think I should buy.

  After the weirdness of everything since yesterday, that doesn’t shock me as much as it might have. There’s something deeper happening here, and I don’t think Logan is in on it.

  Which means we’ll have to talk, seriously talk, before either of us does anything.

  “I don’t have the shares.” I keep my voice firm and chilly. “I can’t discuss anything. I hope that answers all your questions.”

  She knows she’s screwed up, that she’s lost me, but she keeps her panic confined to the muscles around her eyes. It’s impressive how well she controls her expression. “Mr. Fuchs would love to come to a deal soon so that you know your future is secure. Perhaps you might like to name your pr
eferred asking price?”

  Her voice is steady, but that last line gives away the depth of her desperation. She can’t go back empty-handed.

  I sympathize, because we’re both caught up in something bigger than ourselves here. But I also have to turn her down.

  “I can’t think about anything right now beyond contacting a lawyer.”

  Her nose flares, and I catch my mistake—no one knew I didn’t initiate the divorce. Great, that will be all over the Valley in about an hour I’m guessing.

  “Are you certain? Knowing your future—”

  I push the door toward her, closing it halfway. “Not today.”

  “My card.” It snaps between her fingers as if conjured by magic. “We’ll be in touch.”

  I take the card reluctantly, then shut the door without a farewell because I know she’s telling the truth: we are definitely not finished.

  Once I’m curled up on the couch, I study her card. It’s incredibly simple, like something my grandfather would have carried, on matte card stock in heather gray, done in a timeless serif font. Definitely not Silicon Valley style, which goes in for logos and glossy stock on their cards—when they do cards at all.

  It doesn’t say what her title is at Corvus, but there is a website address. I grab my laptop and Google the company.

  There are several articles about how they’re helping to hunt terrorists online, keeping Americans safe, and so on. Farther down, there are some conspiracy-theory-flavored articles on lesser-known sites about how Corvus is spying on all of us through our phones. I don’t know what to believe, but I suspect the truth about Corvus lies somewhere between the two extremes.

  A glance at the clock tells me it’s been twenty minutes since Minerva left. Plenty of time for her to get far enough away that she won’t overhear.

  But if Corvus is listening in through my phone, it won’t matter how far away she is.

  I tuck my chin deeper into my sweater cowl, shivers gusting through me. It’s ridiculous to imagine a company listening in to my ordinary calls, but I can’t convince myself it’s not true.