He took the message. Folded it. Put it in his jacket pocket.
"Clear my two o'clock," he said.
"Sir?"
"I need the afternoon."
✦ ✦ ✦
He drove himself again. He had been doing this more — taking the car without the driver, which his security team found professionally alarming and which he found necessary in ways he couldn't adequately explain to people whose job was to explain things.
He did not drive to Senter Street. He drove, instead, to the office of his family's lawyer, a man named Gerald who had handled Cole affairs for thirty years and who received Lucien's unscheduled appearances with the equanimity of someone who had long since accepted that the Cole family operated on their own timetable.
"The divorce papers," Lucien said, sitting down across from Gerald's desk without removing his coat.
Gerald's expression did not change. "Yes?"
"Walk me through what happens if they're never filed."
