The Question Priya Could Not Answer
The rooftop did not explode into chaos.
That almost made it worse.
People froze first, because high society trains panic to wait for permission.
The helicopter's rotors kept turning, wind hammering silk against stone and pushing Theo's muddy shirt flat to his ribs.
Alistair slowly removed his foot from the step.
Priya turned toward him with a laugh that arrived too late.
“Alistair, this is absurd.”
Theo wiped sweat from his upper lip with the back of his wrist.
His hand came away gray with dust.
“Ask her,” he said.
Priya's black eyes flashed.
“You filthy little liar.”
Alistair looked at his wife.
Then at the helicopter.
Then back at Theo.
The boy's entire body trembled, but his finger stayed pointed.
That detail pierced him.
A child performing a lie usually looks toward the crowd to see whether the lie is working.
Theo looked only at the danger.
“Priya,” Alistair said.
She smiled at him.
Soft now.
Wife-like.
A voice for closed rooms.
“You cannot seriously entertain this.”
“Get in with me.”
The words were quiet.
Rotor wind almost took them.
It did not take their meaning.
Priya blinked.
A donor behind the rope whispered, “Oh my God.”
Alistair held his wife's gaze.
“If there is nothing wrong, get in with me.”
Priya's face rearranged itself too quickly.
Offense.
Pain.
Disbelief.
All the costumes she had practiced.
None stayed long enough.
Theo saw the first true thing beneath them.
Calculation.
“I have to address the terrace guests,” she said.
“They can wait.”
“I cannot climb in this gown.”
“You climbed out of it at the marina fundraiser when you wanted photographers to see courage.”
The sentence landed with the intimacy of a marital knife turned outward.
Priya's mouth tightened.
The guests behind the glass began shifting farther from her without knowing they were doing it.
Alistair turned to his private security chief, a former officer named Sloane, standing near the elevator pavilion.
“Shut down the aircraft.”
The pilot, visible through the doorway, lifted both hands away from the controls and looked toward the ground crew.
No one moved quickly enough for Alistair.
“Now.”
Sloane signaled the crew to begin safe shutdown procedures under supervision.
Theo stayed planted where he was.
Priya stared at him with such hatred that he almost stepped back.
Then Alistair moved between them.
Not dramatically.
May you like
Just enough.
A tycoon in a black tuxedo creating a wall with his body because he had finally understood the boy had come through mud to save him.
