Chapter 67: Why Are You Calling Me?
The shower ran hot, the way Liam preferred it — not scalding, just the kind of sustained heat that worked through the shoulders and lower back and addressed every complaint the couch had left behind. He stood under it longer than necessary, letting the steam build, the morning coming into focus gradually rather than all at once.
Unemployed.
He let the word sit without panic. It was technically accurate — no firm, no salary, no desk to go back to. Most people in that position spent their mornings anxious about it. Liam spent his morning under a hot shower thinking about chess pieces.
He had leverage. He had capital — more than he’d had a couple of days ago by a considerable distance. He had a managing partner waiting on his response and a wrongful termination letter sitting in a folder that he hadn’t needed to use yet and might not need to use at all.
Unemployed wasn’t the word. Between engagements was closer.
He turned off the water, towelled off, and stood at the mirror applying his routine in the unhurried sequence of a man with somewhere to be eventually but not immediately. Cleanser, toner, and the moisturiser that Sophia had clearly helped herself to without apology, which he found he didn’t mind at all.
He dressed simply. Dark jeans, a clean navy shirt, no jacket.
He was standing at the kitchen counter with his second coffee when the Vanessa thought surfaced.
He’d been circling it since the Instagram notification — her follow, still sitting there, unaddressed. She hadn’t sent a message with it. The follow itself was the message, and they both knew it.
He picked up the phone, opened her contact, and held it for a moment.
The case for reaching out was straightforward. If she was going to be part of his firm, he needed to know sooner rather than later. She had the skills — he’d seen her work across the conference table enough times to know she wasn’t just decorative. And having someone inside Harlan and Associates who was loyal to him rather than to Arthur was worth more than her billable rate.
The case against was equally straightforward. Mrs. Harriet might be using her. Whatever Vanessa reported back could be filtered, redirected, weaponised in ways he couldn’t fully anticipate from the outside.
He thought about it for another ten seconds.
"If she wants to keep an eye on me," he decided, "she’s welcome to."
He knew what he was doing. He was comfortable being watched by someone who was already halfway to his side.
He put the phone down without texting her.
Bigger fish.
He opened his laptop instead and pulled up his contacts from the previous firm — not the firm’s directory, his personal list. Numbers and emails accumulated over three years of case work, the kind that clients give you directly, on business cards at dinners and through personal messages that said *reach out if you ever need anything.* He had fourteen of them.
He wasn’t going to contact them today. That wasn’t the move — not yet. The proposal he’d put to Mrs. Harriet included her endorsement, and approaching former clients before that endorsement was confirmed would look desperate and create a conflict of interest he didn’t need. But knowing they were there, knowing the list existed and had names on it that recognised his — that was a foundation.
He was studying the list when his phone rang.
[Unknown number.]
He looked at it. Something in the sequence — the prefix, the rhythm of the digits — tugged at the edge of his memory without fully surfacing. He couldn’t place it precisely but the familiarity was there, vague and insistent.
He picked up.
"Liam speaking."
A pause. Then a man’s voice — measured, deliberate, with the particular cadence of someone accustomed to rooms going quiet when they spoke.
["Liam. This is Arthur."]
Liam leaned back in his chair.
He knew exactly who Arthur Harlan was. Had known the moment the first syllable came through. The man who had signed the termination letter without legal review, who sat to Mrs. Harriet’s right in the boardroom and made decisions she had to manage the consequences of. The real power at the firm, which meant the man most threatened by the document currently sitting in Liam’s folder.
Liam let a beat pass.
"Arthur," he said. "Should that mean something to me?"
A short silence on the other end. ["I think you know who I am."]
"I meet a lot of people," Liam said pleasantly. "You’ll have to be more specific."
The temperature on the line shifted by a degree. ["I’m calling to ask whether you’ve been in contact with Mrs. Harriet recently."]
Liam looked at the ceiling briefly.
"Interesting question." Not "how are you," not "we should talk about what happened." Straight to the intelligence gathering. Which meant he already knew something had shifted and was trying to see just how much.
"No," Liam said. "Is that why you called?"
["I find that difficult to believe."]
"That’s a personal problem, Arthur."
Another pause — longer this time, and Liam could hear the recalibration happening in the silence. Arthur Harlan was not a man who got pushed back on by twenty-five year olds he had personally signed out of employment. The pause was the sound of someone deciding how to respond to an experience they weren’t accustomed to.
["Liam."] The warmth dropped. ["I’d encourage you not to forget your position here. I have significant influence in this industry. I could make things very difficult for you. Blacklisting isn’t something I’d do lightly, but I would do it."]
Liam was quiet for a moment.
When he spoke, his voice hadn’t changed temperature at all.
"You know, Arthur," he said, "they say if you live long enough, you see everything." He let one beat pass. "It’s a shame some people live long enough to become the fool instead."
Silence followed and Liam ended the call.
He set the phone on the counter and picked up his coffee. It had cooled slightly. He drank it anyway, looking out the window at the Seattle morning going about its business.
Arthur hadn’t called to threaten him.
Arthur had called because he was scared. Scared men reached for the biggest thing they could find and waved it around, and the biggest thing Arthur had found was the word blacklist, which told Liam two things cleanly.
One — Mrs. Harriet hadn’t told him about the meeting.
Two — he already knew something had changed.
Liam opened his laptop and went back to the list of fourteen names.