Lola grabs the buzzing phone before Owen could stop her. She holds it to her ear with both chubby hands and her smeared yoghurt mustache. "Dada? No, baby!" she announces, clear as a bell, into the receiver.
Owen freezes. Across the table, Kieran's eyebrows seemed to disappear completely into his hairline and only the sounds of the cars outside and the delightful babbling of Lola interrupted the silence of the penthouse.
From the speaker, a woman's voice came sounding sharp and tinny. "Owen? Is that a child?
Owen lunges, gently collecting back the phone from Lola's sticky grip. "Lena. Don't."
"Mine!" Lola protests, reaching for the shiny object now held far above her head.
"Who was that?" Lena's voice is no longer seductive. It's pure, undiluted curiosity edged with something harder. "I didn't take you for the family man type, Evans, You've been holding out on me."
"Why hide this from me, huh?" She smiled and spoke in a playful way. Owen merely stared out the window as light of the morning sun was coming in through it.
He shook his head slowly, his voice lie, "It's not what you think."
And behind him, he could hear Kieran's telling something to Lola in an exaggerated manner. "And the plot thickens, kiddo. Your Uncle Owen is a man of mystery."
Lena laughs, a low, knowing sound. "It never is with you. Look, about last night. I left my earrings. Cartier. White gold and diamond. You remember them."
He remembers. The way they'd caught the light in the hotel bar. How she'd taken one off slowly, teasingly, over a third martini. How they'd ended up in the back of his car, her mouth on his, and how sharp the prong of her earring pressed into his neck. "I'll have them couriered to your apartment."
"I could come get them. Save you the trouble."
He sees his own reflection through the glass, his tired eyes and uncombed hair, a man clutching a mobile phone as if it were a ticking bomb. He also sees Kieran's reflection, who is now expertly spooning yogurt into Lola's mouth and at the same time is giving him a thumbs, down signal. "Thats not a good idea, " says Kieran.
"Because of the baby?" She fired back from the other end.
The challenge is back.
"Because it's over, Lena. It was fun. It's done." He keeps his voice even. Firm. The voice he uses in boardrooms to shut down idiots proposing vanity projects.
Silence on the line. Then a soft, icy sigh. "The earrings. By noon. Or I'll assume you want to keep a souvenir. And I'll come find it." The call disconnects.
Owen lowers the phone. His knuckles are white. He sets it facedown on a sleek, cold side table.
"Politely? Firmly?" Kieran asks, wiping Lola's chin.
"She wants her earrings." Owen sinks back into the chair with the coffee in his mug which has gone cold. He drinks it anyway, the bitterness a kind of waking system.
"Of course she does. They're just the excuse. You left before sunrise, didn't you?" Kieran doesn't wait for an answer. "Classic Owen. Conquer and retreat. You create the mystery, then you're annoyed when people try to solve it."
"It was a mutual understanding."
Kieran barks a laugh. "Sure. Right up until it wasn't. You need a system, man. One that doesn't involve potentially heartbroken women and lost jewelry."
Lola holds out to Owen a soggy Cheerio from her hand. He takes it, puts it in his mouth without thinking.
"A system." Owen says it like it's a foreign word. His life is deal flow, acquisitions, firefighting corporate blazes. His personal life is the interstitial chaos between those structured events. A system implies order. Predictability.
"Or a secretary," Kieran says, suddenly serious and leans forward with his forearms on the table. "A real one. Not just to guard the helicopter. To guard… this." He gestures at the phone, at the penthouse, at the invisible but palpable mess lingering in the air.
Owen looks at Lola. She's trying to stick a blueberry to her forehead. He thinks of Lena's voice. The calculating curiosity. The potential for a scene, for a story in the tabloids. 'Billionaire Playfather's Love Child Mystery.' He feels a familiar, cold tighten in his gut. Containment. It's always about containment.
The phone lying on the side table starts buzzing, its vibration against the marble audible. A single short pulse. A text message.
Owen doesn't budge.
Kieran, on the other hand, rises from his seat and goes over to see what the screen shows. He whistles softly and says, "It's a picture . Of the earrings. On what appears to be your pillow." He looks at Owen. "She's in your apartment, man."
Owen's hand was already reaching for the phone. His movements were calm, precise. The cold marble under his fingertips, the warm glass of the screen. He didn't look at the picture. He tapped to reply, his thumb moving with the same detached efficiency he used to approve a hostile takeover.
'Leave now or I call security.'
He sent it. No emoji. No punctuation beyond the period. A statement of fact.
Kieran watched him, silent for once. Lola banged her spoon against the table. The buzz of the phone, a reply, was almost instant.
'Security knows me, Owen dear. They let me up. I just wanted to return your… things.'
Owen's jaw tightened. Owen dear? He hadn't given her permission for that. It was a claim, a familiarity she'd fabricated in the dark. He typed again, his gaze flat.
'The things are on the dresser. You are in my bed. The math is simple. You have sixty seconds.'
He set the phone down, screen up, so he could see her surrender message while taking a slow sip of his now-cold coffee. The bitterness grounded him.
"She's not leaving, is she?" Kieran murmured.
"She will."
The phone lit up. Not a text. An incoming call. The screen flashed 'Lena' against the granite. Owen let it ring. Once. Twice. He stooped and got it on the third, lifting it silently to his ear without a word.
Her voice was a quiet seductive whisper, absolutely no apology in it. "I can feel you everywhere, Owen dear, yet I can't touch you. You're not really here, and that is a cruelty I won't forgive."
"You're surrounded by my property," Owen told her with a calm and quiet voice. He walked towards the glass window once again, giving his back to the dinner chaos. The city lay before him, neatly and calm now. And for a second it seemed even the world had stopped moving.
"Which you are trespassing on. The countdown is at forty seconds."
He heard the rustle of sheets. Then her long, deliberate sigh. "You were less rigid last night. I liked that version of you. The one who whispered promises against my neck."
Owen shut his eyes tight. He thought of the champagne he had last night, the blurred faces of too many people at the gala. He did not remember whispers. He remembered his strategic retreat to a dark corner, an exchange of heat for oblivion. Promises were currency he never spent. "That version clocked out at 4 AM. You're dealing with the CEO now. Twenty seconds."
Silence on the line. Then a different sound came through, the soft, unmistakable creak of his mattress. She was getting up.
He could picture it… the silk of his sheets falling away, her silhouette against his stark, gray bedding. The performance he is sure she is putting on right now.
"Fine." The purr was gone, replaced by a clipped coolness. "The earrings are on the pillow. A souvenir for you. Think of me."
"I won't."
He ended the call. He stood at the window, the phone burning hot in his hand while silently counting to sixty in his head, visualizing her path out of his bedroom, across the living room's cold travertine, then finally getting into the private elevator. The security log would confirm it. He'd check it later.
"Damage assessment?" Kieran asked from behind him.
Owen turned. Lola had yogurt in her hair. Max was now under the table, building a fort with napkins. The domestic wreckage was somehow more real than the woman in his bed had been. "Contained."
"For now." Kieran picked up his own phone, scrolling. "You know she's probably texting five friends about this. The 'I fucked Owen Evans and he threatened to call security on me' story is primo brunch material."
"Let them talk." Owen walked back to the table, righted Lola's spilled cup. But Kieran's earlier words echoed. 'A system. Or a secretary.' The idea was a foreign knot in his stomach. A person hired to manage the fallout of his own life. To be a human firewall between him and the consequences of being him.