“Cole, doyouwant to invest a half million dollars in a failing business that we may or may not still have a year from now?” Hannah asked.
Cole looked down at the table. “I would love to. If I had the money. Which…I don’t,” he admitted, not looking up.
Miriam blinked at him, and Noelle felt her shock in the lines of her body. “You don’t…what?”
“I don’t have access to my trust fund until I’m forty,” Cole said, carefully, seeming to choose his words with a great deal more care than he normally did. “There was an incident when I was seventeen, and the terms were changed. My parents also refused to pay for any of my college expenses, and I hadn’t saved anything, because, you know, outrageously rich.” He squirmed under the stares of everyone at the table. “I lived off student loans, and now my income mostly goes toward paying just enough of them to stay afloat.”
“So this whole rich boy brand you have going on is…?” Miriam prompted.
“My parents financing just enough of my lifestyle that I don’t embarrass them in front of Charleston society.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Miriam whispered.
Cole’s face fell into complete seriousness for maybe the first time since Noelle met him. “Sometimes we’re too ashamed of our secrets to tell them to the people we most want to love us.”
Miriam wrapped her arms around herself, nodding a little. Noelle could tell she was starting to fall apart at the seams, and she didn’t know how to fix it.
From the end of the banquette, Hannah asked, “You havenomoney? How are you buying plane tickets at the drop of a hat?”
“My parents aren’t super great at checking specifics of the AmEx Black. They don’t have a strong idea of what’s normal business travel, so I push that to the absolute outer limit.” He continued, “I could take out a loan contingent on my getting my full trust fund in five years, or…put it on credit. I mean, eventually Iamgoing to be outrageously rich, I just might not have a credit score left by then.”
“I’m not putting you in that position,” Miriam said stubbornly.
“Alternately,” Cole offered, “I could divert Richard’s bank accounts to ACT UP NY, and then he couldn’t buy the farm.”
“Why haven’t you already done that?” Noelle demanded. If Cole, Miriam, and Ziva had all known Richard was still a threat, why hadn’t they already dealt with him? Why was everyone just sitting around waiting for him to ruin their lives?
“Miriam told me not to. Something about it being ‘illegal.’” Cole did finger quotes. He looked unconvinced by this argument and, at the moment, Noelle was, too.
“As your lawyer, I advise against it,” Elijah chimed in.
“Caveat,” said Cole, “you’re notmylawyer.”
Elijah glared at him. “My point stands.”
“Can we go back to the part where there was an ‘incident’ that led to your trust fund terms being rewritten and your parents refusing to pay for your college?” Hannah said, and Noelle could hear the frustration she was trying to keep out of her voice.
Why were they still talking about this? If it wasn’t a solution, Cole’s antics were just a distraction. They needed to fixthisproblem.
Cole scooted his chair back and crossed his arms defensively over his chest. “There was lighter fluid, and a golf course, and then there wasn’t a golf course. Anymore.”
The stares around the table intensified.
He cleared his throat. “Tara and I tried to writeEat the Rich, in fire, on the ninth hole. It didn’t go as planned.”
“Tara…Chadwick? Our Tara?” Miriam asked, her eyes glassy with shock.
Noelle was flabbergasted, her rising panic temporarily interrupted. “Tightly Wound Tara? Lit a golf course on fire?”
“More like, burned it entirely to the ground,” he said. “Also the country club next to it. There was no one in it, thank God. That’s how she got so tightly wound, by the way. She went all the way in the other direction. Anyway, there’s a lot more to the story, but I am probably not your plan B on this one. I wish I could be.”
He looked at Miriam for a long moment, moving a curl off her face before blowing out a breath. “You could sell the paintings. Undiscovered Mimi Roz paintings would bring in a hell of a lot of interest.”
The color drained from Ziva’s face. “There are paintings left?” she choked out.
“In the attic,” Miriam confirmed, as if in a daze. “I found them a couple of days ago.”
“You can’t make them public,” Ziva said, her knuckles white where she was clasping her hands. “He’ll retaliate. You know that, Miriam.”