She crossed her arms. “You have questions. Like what, pray tell, Mr. Zola?”
I hated the crisp formality. It reminded me of a judge on her last case of the day. Or the headmistress at the parish school where I had lasted exactly two years before being kicked out. The only time I ever wanted to hear Nina address me that way was on her knees before I taught her some fuckin’ respect. Right before she begged for more…discipline.
“Like…like…” I was gesturing wildly by this point. Fuckin’ Christ, the woman flustered me with just a name.
As she folded her arms again, the light from a streetlamp caught one of the facets of her diamond.
“Like that,” I said, pointing at it.
She looked down at the stone, then back up at me. “That’s an engagement ring. And a wedding ring.”
“I know that.”
“I told you I was married.”
“I know that too.”
“I fail to hear a question, Matthew.”
I stomped my foot. Like a fuckin’ child, I stomped my foot right there on the bridge. I already knew Nina could make me crazy, but I didn’t realize she could be like this. Full of stubbornness. Intransigence. Using her ability to reduce a man to rubble out of spite.
Okay, so she was part of one of the oldest, richest families in New York. Okay, so she was suddenly back in my life after months. I was a lawyer in the greatest city in the world. I went in front of judges, reporters, jury members every damn day. I wasn’t going to let one spoiled little girl get the best of me.
And this time, I wasn’t going to take it easy on her.
“Your name,” I said. “What’s your name?”
She rolled her eyes, looking for a moment like I imagined she must have at about sixteen. All pretention and privilege. No fuckin’ respect.
“You know my name.”
“I know your first name, Nina. But that night in the bar, you told me point blank you weren’t a de Vries. Ms. Astor, is it?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I—okay, yes. Fine. My surname is not de Vries. But I told you that because it’s the truth.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“You gave me a fake name.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” I snapped. “I’m an investigative prosecutor for the Brooklyn DA, Nina. I didn’t lie to you about that. Or anything else, for that matter. First thing I did Monday morning was run your name through the system. Again. And again. Nothing. Astor isn’t real, is it?”
“It’s my father’s name!” she finally broke. “And if you recall, we don’t exactly have the best relationship. I didn’t lie about that either.”
“My father is gone too,” Nina said at last.
“I’m sorry to hear that. When did he pass?”
“Oh, he’s not dead. He simply left the country when I was a little girl. He lives in London now, I believe. My mother was never particularly parental, so I was largely raised by my grandmother too, as it happens.”
Her voice was low, almost as if it was the first time she had ever admitted any of this. In just a few words, Nina established that she and I had more in common than I thought. Fucked-up childhoods.
Absent parents. What had she gone through since? Had she wondered through the years if there was anything else she could have done? Had she chased her father’s memory as I’d chased mine, with as much hate as desire for his approval?
And yet, as questions flurried, only one lingered: who in their right mind could leave a woman like this?
How the fuck could he?
I’d probably never meet Nina’s father. But if I did, I knew I’d hate him.
“So, what?” I said. “People don’t just abandon their parents’ names because they skip town.”
“If you must know, when he left, I requested to have my name legally changed to de Vries because I was so angry. My mother never changed hers, and I wanted to be a part of the family who actually raised me. It was a girl’s naive quest for belonging. And, as it happens, an absolute waste, considering I wasn’t allowed to keep it when I married.”
I remembered the story about her dad now. I could easily imagine Nina, a beautiful girl of sixteen or so demanding her birthright, even if it was just in the form of a name.
The grandmother too. The great Celeste de Vries. The matriarch of New York who had ruled this city with a diamond-encrusted fist until her death last fall.
By the time she was done, Nina had turned away in a huff, facing east toward the side of the city where she belonged. She clutched at her coat, pulling it tight.
“So?” I asked, forcing myself back to the here and now. “What is it?”
Nina turned back with a frown. “What’s what?”
“Your name. Your real name.”
“Oh. It’s…Gardner.”
Was it my imagination, or did she sound almost reluctant to admit it? Like she wished she didn’t have to say it? Like she wished it didn’t exist?
But it did. It was the same name Eric had used before she’d walked in. The one I’d been turning in my head over and over again for the last hour. I knew what it was. I just needed to hear her say it.
Nina stared at the ground like the black pavement might reveal something else important. When she looked up again, her eyes shone with frustration. “My husband’s name is Gardner. So, yes. I was a bit misleading. But considering you and I barely knew each other, I hardly thought the complications surrounding my surname were any of your business.”
“Misleading? I asked you point blank that night if you were part of the de Vries family. You said no.”
I didn’t know why I was so angry. Actually, that wasn’t true. When I really thought about it, I knew exactly why.
Like so many people who grew up in this city, I understood the con of New York. Everyone had an angle. Everyone had a story. I knew you couldn’t always trust people to tell you the truth because I didn’t always do it either.
How many times had I given women wrong numbers when I didn’t want them to call? Made up excuses so I wouldn’t have to see them again? I sugarcoated the worst parts of my character, brushed off my excesses like they were nothing. And I told these stories, lived these falsehoods because everyone in this city did. Putting on an act was as natural to New Yorkers as catching a cab.
But for one night, with one woman, I’d dropped it all. At that bar, in that restaurant, in that hotel room—Zola disappeared. Mattie was gone. All the things I’d ever said and done ceased to exist.
With her, I was only Matthew. The Americanized name given for my grandfather, per old Italian custom. I’d split open my chest, my heart, everything I was for this beautiful woman I had only just met, for one critical reason:
I believed she had done it too.
“I said I wasn’t a de Vries,” Nina cut back in a voice that shook. “And I’m not. Or have you forgotten the rest of that conversation too?”
“So you’re an heiress,” I said, again trying not to be too impressed. It seemed like a word out of one of my sister’s crappy romance novels, not a real thing.