Chapter 3 - The Road to Newport
The car was a 1968 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage in deep silver birch.
It didn't rumble; it snarled. When Julian shifted into third on the open stretch of Interstate 95 north of New Haven, the machine leapt forward with a low, mechanical purr that pressed Harper back into the Connolly leather seats.
Outside, the October woods of southern New England were bleeding scarlet and burnt orange under an overcast sky.
Harper rested her elbow against the passenger door, watching the salt marshes begin to appear through the mist. She was wearing an ivory cashmere turtleneck Julian had left in a box outside her door that morning, accompanied by a small card that read simply: *Breathe.*
“You drive like someone who expects the bridge to collapse behind him,” Harper observed.
“Old habits,” Julian replied. His hands rested lightly on the wood-rimmed steering wheel. He drove with effortless, fluid competence, the kind that came from hundreds of hours behind high-performance wheels under conditions he probably didn't discuss in mixed company.
“Tell me about your family,” she said.
“No.”
Harper turned her head to look at him. “I’m supposed to be in love with you by seven o’clock tonight. Or at least sleeping with you convincingly enough that Madison Tierney wonders why Carter’s skin looks so dull. If someone asks me where your father went to school, what do I say?”
“My father died in a federal penitentiary in Otisville when I was twelve,” Julian said without a trace of emotion. “He didn't go to school. He ran the teamsters on the Red Hook piers. If anyone asks, tell them I made my money in supply-chain logistics out of Antwerp. It’s boring enough that people stop asking questions after three sentences.”
“And the scar?”
Julian’s finger tapped the steering wheel once. “A cousin who didn't want to divide the estate.”
“Did he?”
“He’s buried in an unmarked plot outside Secaucus.”
Harper stared at his profile. The line of his nose was straight, his jaw carved from granite. He spoke of murder with the same cool, bureaucratic detachment she used when discussing amortized depreciation.
“You’re trying to scare me,” she said.
Julian glanced at her. The grey eyes were steady. “If I wanted to scare you, Harper, you wouldn't be sitting in this seat. You’d be on a plane to Zurich with a new passport.”
“Is that an option?”
“Not if you want your name off those SEC filings.”
Silence filled the cabin, broken only by the rhythmic thumping of the tires over the expansion joints of the bridge over the Thames River.
“Why did you stay with him?” Julian asked suddenly.
The question caught Harper off balance. “With Carter?”
“He’s small,” Julian said. “I’ve read his files. I’ve seen his transcripts. He’s an average intellect with high-end hair and a gifted social instinct. You graduated top of your class at Stern. You spent five years holding his company together while he took the credit at dinner parties. Why?”
Harper looked out at the grey expanse of the Long Island Sound. The water was choppy, flecked with white foam.
“Because when you build something from scratch,” she said quietly, “you don't want to believe the foundation is rotten. You tell yourself that the cracks are just settling. You tell yourself that if you just patch the drywall one more time, the house will stand.” She pulled her knees up slightly against the leather. “And because Carter was very good at making me feel that without his shine, I was just… a calculator in a grey skirt.”
Julian’s hand moved from the gearshift.
He didn't touch her skin. He simply laid his palm flat on the leather console between them, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his wool coat.
“He didn't give you shine, Harper,” Julian said, his voice dropping into that dark, velvety register. “He stole your light and called it his own reflection.”
Harper turned to look at him, her chest aching with an unexpected, sharp intensity. Nobody had ever said that to her. Certainly not Carter, whose compliments were always shaped like criticisms (*You look so pretty when you actually brush your hair, Harper*).
“We’re arriving,” Julian said, nodding toward the horizon.
Ahead of them, the massive spans of the Claiborne Pell Bridge rose into the low-hanging Rhode Island fog. Beyond it lay Newport—a town built on nineteenth-century robber-baron plunder, where the lawns were measured in acres and the sins were buried under three generations of polo trophies.
“Remember the script,” Julian said as they hit the crest of the bridge, the grey ocean sprawling out hundreds of feet below.
“I know the script,” Harper said, sitting up straight and smoothing her coat.
May you like
“You don't just know it,” Julian said, glancing at her with a look so intense it made her pulse jump. “You own it.”
***
