They cut Harlan loose three days later.
The Pierce family burns through every favor they have to detach him, temporarily, from the criminal indictment. His reputation is gone. PVP is being audited through the foundation slab. He should be locked in a conference room with his father and the firm's best counsel from this hour until the trial.
He comes to the Marchetti house instead.
I am sitting with my mother at the kitchen island helping her count out her morning meds when Olivia, the houseman, comes in.
Ms. Marchetti. A Mr. Pierce at the gate, asking to see you.
My mother's hand jerks. A small white pill skitters across the marble counter and rolls onto the floor.
My father pushes his chair back. He is going to get up. I put my hand on his sleeve.
I'll go.
Outside, the air smells like wet stone. The nor'easter from yesterday has slowed but not stopped. Harlan is standing on the sidewalk beside a black town car. The driver has not gotten out.
He has lost ten pounds in three days. He has shadows under his eyes the color of old bruises. He has also, somehow, put on a Tom Ford suit and a clean shirt to come here. The grooming is the last thing left of him.
He sees me through the gate and his throat moves.
Tally.
I stop on the inside of the wrought iron.
You have the wrong name.
His Adam's apple jumps.
Lenore.
The name in his mouth makes me feel like washing my face.
He brings up a small Harry Winston box from his coat pocket. The lacquer is rain-spotted.
Inside is the emerald-cut three-stone, the one he commissioned three years ago and told me he would give me when PVP's biologics arm went public.
I saw the same ring on Sloane's hand once. On a private Instagram story she posted from Mustique. Tasteful, blurred, the caption read the real gift is never late. She gave me the screenshot.
He is holding it up now in the rain like a tithe.
I will admit, he says, the first reason I went out with you was the HER2 program.
And the second reason.
His eyes redden.
The second reason came later. Tally, I did feel something. You blocked shots for me at industry dinners. You sat up with me through the FDA letter. You sent me ginger tea when I had stomach flu in February. I am not pretending I didn't notice any of that.
I laugh.
He flinches like I have hit him in the mouth.
*Tally. Lenore. It's true. When I said those things at the chapel — I wasn't thinking. I had just lost you. I didn't know how to — *
So you kissed Sloane Rivers in front of my mother.
His face goes gray.
*I was angry. You were dead. You were dead and I had not been allowed to — *
There are footsteps behind me.
My mother has come out of the house. She is in slippers and a navy cashmere robe. Her eyes are still red but her voice is even.
Mr. Pierce. My daughter is alive. That is because she is very, very lucky. It is not because you deserve forgiveness.
Harlan goes down on one knee.
Limestone steps. Rain. Page Six's freelancer is already at the corner with a long lens.
Mrs. Marchetti.
My mother looks at him for a long moment.
Don't call me Mrs. Marchetti, she says. You haven't earned the right.
Harlan kneels on the limestone for four hours.
The rain stops and starts and stops again. By the second hour Page Six has a photographer at the corner with a long lens and a New York Post stringer at the deli across the street. By the third hour the photo is already running. By the fourth hour the trending tag on X is #PierceOnHisKnees and someone has set it to a piano cover of Hallelujah.
The hashtags break the way hashtags always break.
#PierceOnHisKnees, half a million reposts.
#TallyMarchettiAlive, two hundred thousand.
#SheppardHeiress, climbing.
And then, slowly, more quietly, the other tag.
At least he knows what he did.
Look, what he said was unforgivable but she also faked her death. That's not nothing.
Men do stupid things in grief. She's piling on.
Yuna calls me in a fury.
I want to climb through my phone and staple their mouths shut. You almost actually died, and they're spinning it like he's the one who got tricked.
I scroll the replies. There is no heat in me about it.
Wesley is across the room at the kitchen island, working through a stack of M&A memos. He turns the iPad and slides it across to me.
Harlan bought placements, he says.
The screen is full of fresh op-eds, each more carefully written than the last.
She Faked Her Own Death. Why Aren't We Asking Who Was Really Cold-Blooded.
Pharma's New Power Couple: Lenore Sheppard and Wesley Hartwell Were Engaged Before Harlan Pierce Ever Met Her. So What Was He.
A Manipulator In White Lilies: The Sheppard Heiress Long Con.
Yuna is yelling through the phone. He's flipping the script. He's the victim now.
I open the third article. At the bottom is a long-lens photograph: me in Wesley's arms in the corridor of Lenox Hill at three in the morning on the night I "died," his jacket around my shoulders, his hand at the small of my back. The angle has been chosen carefully. It looks like a couple coming out of a hotel.
Harlan understands the press the way a fish understands water.
When you cannot wash the blood off, you splash it on someone else.
I open WhatsApp. Sloane is already a thread.
Release the fourth file, I type.
She is typing within seconds.
You sure? The fourth one drags his mother in.
I look up at the bay window. The town car is gone. The wet petals of the bouquet Harlan left at the gate are dissolving on the limestone like wet tissue.
Yes.
Thirty minutes later, an audio clip drops to the same anonymous account.
The voice on the recording is not Harlan's.
It is Margot Vance Pierce. MET trustee. Past president of the Society. The woman who put me beside Eleanor Sackler at the gala four years ago and called me darling across the gilt-edged dessert plates.
That Marchetti girl's life is worthless. Honestly, she is better off dead. Harlan, while her parents are still in shock, get the oncology pipeline. As for the funeral — bring Sloane. Cut the rest of those women off at the knees at the same time.
The Internet stops for a beat.
When it starts again, the Pierce-Vance corporate site has crashed.
The night they take Margot Vance Pierce in for questioning, Harlan finally breaks.
He gets past the door staff at the Hartwell late-summer gala in East Hampton by being someone they have been letting in for ten years.
The crowd is on the lawn, a string quartet playing under a tented chandelier, the August humidity pressed close to the Atlantic. I am in a long dark-green silk dress beside Wesley, who is talking to a senior partner from Cravath about something I am pretending to follow.
The crowd parts in front of him the way crowds do when somebody no longer belongs.
His eyes are bloodshot. The collar of his tuxedo shirt is wet under the jaw.
Lenore Sheppard, he says.
I set my Champagne flute down on a passing tray.
Until it is finished.
He laughs. It is an awful sound.
My mother is sixty-four years old. She said one thing in a temper. You are sending her to prison.
Wesley's eyebrow ticks up. I lift two fingers off my hip and he holds.
Your mother authorized the destruction of fentanyl-precursor shipping records, I say. Your mother signed off on the forged authorization for Marchetti. Your mother told you to take the oncology pipeline while my parents were in shock. Which of those was temper.
His teeth set.
Then come at me. Leave her out of this.
I have been coming at the Pierces the whole time.
He drops his voice. There are people pretending not to listen ten feet in every direction.
Don't forget. You lied to me for five years.
A faint hum of conversation goes up around us.
I nod.
Yes. I did.
His eyes flicker. He thinks for a half-second that he has found a corner of me to hold.
I lied to you, I say, to put names to seventeen graves. You lied to me for a drug pipeline, my parents' shares, and a clean line on your father's PR.
The hum stops dead.
I pick a flute of Champagne off a passing tray. I walk three steps to him.
He looks down at me. Are you going to throw that in my face.
I put the glass into his hand and close his fingers around the stem.
To you, I say. Hand-delivering Sloane Rivers to my boardroom. Hand-delivering the cufflink to the vault. Hand-delivering Pierce-Vance to the guillotine.
His knuckles go white. The Champagne sloshes onto his cuff.
I step in one more inch. My voice is low enough that only he hears it.
Harlan. The single most useful thing you ever did with your life was believing your charm had no ceiling.
His face goes the color of paper.
Wesley appears at my elbow. He drapes my wrap around my shoulders.
Cold?
I shake my head.
Harlan's eyes catch on the curve of Wesley's hand at my collarbone. He laughs — a short, broken, recognizing laugh.
You were already with him, he says.
Wesley looks at him.
His voice is level. The way he speaks in deposition rooms.
Longer than you've known her.