The apartment is finally quiet now that all occupants, including one dog, are fast asleep in their rooms. I now understand what people mean when they say the silence is deafening. After all that excitement earlier, it’s taken me a while to decompress.

Since I no longer have a home office, I’ve been using the dining room table to finalize contracts, review potential clients and take care of other business.

After a few hours of this, I sigh and decide to call it a night. I look at my watch to see what time it is. It’s well past eleven o’clock, and I’m not especially tired yet. I can’t sit here looking at paperwork anymore and my bed has yet to call to me. Instead, I seek out the liquor bar—only to find it gone.

What the hell have they done with my whiskey? I think about the thousand dollar bottle that was not even half empty and feel my anger begin to rise. If I’d known there would be a hundred tiny little irritations like this, I might have reconsidered placing a ring on Simone’s damn finger. I calm myself by reminding myself that there is the blessed light of a divorce at the end of this hellish tunnel.

“It can’t come fast enough,” I whisper through gritted teeth as I head to the kitchen to start the treasure hunt. I open and close once-empty cabinets that are now filled with an odd mix of kiddie snacks and organic, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free (no doubt taste-free) crap. I finally find my liquor bottles stored in one of the upper cabinets. I grab a crystal tumbler and poor a bit more than necessary into it. Tonight of all nights, I think it’s called for. Just for good measure, I decide to take the bottle with me.

I push the paperwork out of the way and place the bottle and glass on the table. The dining room has floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and I flick off the lights to get a better view as I sip. My apartment is pretty much too high to see into other buildings nearby, which is just the way I like it. The empty night sky will do just fine. It gives me a chance to think.

Just as I’ve settled in for the first sip, the lights to the nearby kitchen snap on and I blink in irritation. My glass is still resting in mid-air as I turn my head to see Simone bobbing her head to some internal tune she’s humming as she grabs a glass. She’s got some pink scarf thing wrapped around her hair, which makes her look like some kind of housewife from the 50s—a sexy housewife.

I wait for her to notice me while she opens the refrigerator door and pulls out a Brita water pitcher to pour herself a glass. When she’s done she takes a long sip and that’s when she finally sees me in the shadows of the dining room.

“Oh my God!” she yelps, the water flying out of her mouth. Her hand flies up to try and wipe some from her chin. “I didn’t even see you there.”

“Apparently.”

She laughs as she grabs a paper towel to wipe up her mess. Then, much to my horror, makes her way over toward me.

“Hmm,” she muses, twisting her lips at the glass in my hand that is still in midair. “Drinking alone in the dark? That’s not good.”

“Well, thankfully I have you here to intrude.”

She frowns at me then, even more to my horror, settles down in one of the chairs next to me.

“That wasn’t an invitation,” I point out.

“And yet, here I am,” she says smartly. “Besides, we need to talk.”

“That sounds ominous,” I say, finally bringing the glass to my lips as I eye her over the rim.

“It’s about Stuart.”

“If you’re considering getting him a dog, you can forget about it.”

“No, not that. Heaven forbid you actually bring a little joy into his life. On that note….”

I set the glass and look at her, waiting.

“When I said you had to be home by eight, that didn’t mean basically bringing your office home with you. You’re supposed to be an involved parent. Maybe give him a bath, join us for dinner, read him a bedtime story, something…anything.”

“First of all, I’m not his parent, I’m his guardian. Second of all, my work,” I wave my hand at the paperwork still on the table, “is what is helping secure his future. That is my part in all of this, and the one obligation that I have.”

She stares at me for a few moments. “It’s statements like that which make me think you don’t care about your nephew at all. Maybe he is better off with Miranda in charge of your part of the guardianship.”

That sets off warning bells in my head. This marriage is still new, still early enough for an annulment, which puts the ball right back in my mother’s court. I haven’t heard from her since that farce of a wedding took place, but I have no doubt her attorneys are just lying in wait for some small crack in the dam to exploit.

I exhale and set my glass down. “Okay, fine. Would it make you feel better if I read him a bedtime story every night?” That should take, at most, half an hour out of my busy schedule, hopefully less.

She stares at me for a moment, then gives me a small, cynical smile. “I suppose that’s the best we can do with you.”

I don’t respond, hoping this is all there is to it. She just looks out the window as she sips her water. I feel my irritation grow, but for some reason don’t speak up.

“Nice view,” she muses.

“It is,” I say curtly. Why isn’t she leaving?

Her eyes fall idly to the paperwork before us. “Refraction Cosmetics?” she says, her eyes lighting up with acute interest. She reaches out to grab the prospectus for the company Bennett Financial is considering investing one of our wealthier clients’ money in. I grab it before she can take it. It does nothing to dim her sudden excitement.

“Do you invest with them?” she asks me, looking at me with something other than her usual disdain.

“What do you know about the company?” I ask with mild curiosity. I personally know nothing about it, or the cosmetics business at all for that matter, except that it’s a shiny, new rising star in a multi-billion dollar industry. Perfect for some angel investor to scoop up 51% of. From there, it’s just a matter of us taking hold of the financial reins and turning it into a cash-cow.

“Nadia is amazing!” Simone says, practically gushing. “She started on YouTube with these make-up tutorials. Then she singlehandedly turned it into a business, creating her own line of products for all types of women. You have no idea how one-dimensional the make-up industry is. She completely upped the game, Archer, creating make-up for women of all shades and—”

“Okay, okay—” I say with a sigh, suddenly losing interest. At the very least, I’ve learned that the company is worth considering. It has at least one happy fan.

Simone falls back in her chair with a smug smile on her lips. “You just tapped me for information didn’t you?”

I sip my whiskey and shrug. “You’ve been mildly helpful.”

“So are you going to invest in her company?” She asks wiggling her shoulders excitedly.

“That’s not exactly how my business works, Simone.”

“Hmm, you know, I don’t even know what it is you do.”

“I…” I swirl my whiskey around as I ponder how to put it, “I make rich people richer.”

“Sounds like a noble calling.”

I raise one eyebrow at her cynical tone. “Well, it isn’t dressing up and having my photo taken, but it pays the bills.”

She sighs and huffs out a sardonic laugh. “I see you have just as much of an understanding about my profession as I do of yours.”

“Feel free not to enlighten me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“So now that we’ve come to an understanding….” I wait for her to pick up on the hint in my voice that I’d like to be alone.

Instead, she digs her heels in, leaning in to face me. “You know, even though this marriage isn’t real, it doesn’t mean Stuart and I aren’t family. You’re stuck with us, whether you like it or not. Maybe, just maybe, you could try to come to terms with that and—oh, I don’t know—perhaps try to embrace it.”

She falls back into her chair and grabs her glass, staring down into her water, her face softening in thought. “One day you’ll realize that family is important. You don’t want to wait until everyone is gone before you finally begin to appreciate what you had.”

I know she’s thinking not just about Bette and Kevin, but her own parents. I don’t even need to ask to know that they were much closer to each other than my hollow shell of a family tree. The one saving grace was Kevin.

And now he’s gone.

I consider what she’s just said. I won’t deny that these past few weeks have…softened my feelings somewhat about my nephew, if not his aunt.

But the bottom line is still everything, and I have no intention of straying from my original plan of action. The business comes first. In the end, it’s really what’s best for everyone.