“
I quit,” the words passed
her lips, and then her eyes snapped open with surprise. “I quit!”
Those words seemed to shimmer like silver, and then sparkle and
shine like a really good, really expensive diamond. The kind she’d
hinted about to her father for a graduation present. In her mind,
Lucy could see that diamond hanging on a sleek platinum chain,
twinkling like a star against her skin. Not her skin now, but the
radiant, creamy flesh she used to have.
And the diamond’s fiery gleam pulsed
with the two words that throbbed in her head.
I quit... I quit... I
quit...
The weight that had been on her
shoulders for the last six months, the pressure that had almost
snuffed her out completely only a few hours ago, lifted like...
like magic. Lucy breathed in the sweet, warm air of the shower. She
raised her hot-water-soothed arms up in the air as she took
another, and then another deep, wondrous breath. Lucy
screamed—screamed long and loud, a joyous, powerful scream. And
then she felt the corner of her mouth catch in an unfamiliar
twinge.
She was smiling.
She was also thinking. Thinking very
hard and very fast. She turned and grabbed the shampoo bottle from
the rack and started lathering her hair in earnest. The faster she
thought, the easier those thoughts seemed to weave together,
thoughts latching onto other thoughts, memories of seemingly
incidental snippets of information entwining with her long
abandoned hopes and dreams.
If she wanted her old life back, then
she’d have to take it back herself.
All of this spun itself into a plan.
And the plan, if she did say so herself, was pretty damn
good.
Chapter 4
LUCY’S HAIR was still wet, and though
she was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and a pair of sweats, she felt
like a million bucks. She’d washed and scrubbed herself until not a
trace of McDonald’s—or its special sauce—was on her. Also the hot
water finally ran cold.
She’d gone into her mother’s room and
rifled through her drawers until she found what she was looking
for: a business card.
Gram was at church, but she’d left her
presents neatly stacked on the kitchen table, right next to her
birthday cake. A spotless glass dome sat atop the pedestal holding
the cake.
A piece of paper had her grandmother’s
handwriting on it.
Lucybean,
Called you off from work
today.
Rest!
Love, Gram
Cool… I can
QUIT
tomorrow.
She was suddenly starved. Her stomach
growled as memories of her grandmother’s divine cake floated
through her mind. So she fetched a plate, a knife and a fork, then
hacked herself off a very large piece of cake. Even the next day
the thing smelled like heaven, and as she took a bite it tasted
just as good... no, better than it had the night before. Now it
tasted like freedom. Now it tasted like having her old life back,
and getting back her dreams.
Having money again. Regaining her
dimmed yet still abundant beauty. And going to a good university,
and from there having the life she’d always envisioned for herself.
To own her own multimillion dollar cosmetics line. Maybe even
branch out to movies, music and TV. She, Lucy Hart, would be queen
of her own, huge, fabulous world.
The image of her in a gorgeous Dior
gown, on the arm of some handsome A-List movie-stud, gliding across
the red carpet of the Grammys, the Oscars, and fashion week in
Paris, glowed and sparkled in her head.
It’s going to be...
spectacular.
She licked the last of the
miraculous lemon cream icing from the tines of her fork.
But do I know what I’m
doing?
She glanced down at the business card
she’d filched from her mother’s room. Frank C Luvici. “The C stands
for Crook,” her father used to say about his lawyer.
Lucy remembered that when he’d come to
the house, he always wore expensive though tacky suits, and smelled
of Brut cologne. His hair was always slicked straight back, and
when he smiled at her it always seemed he was undressing her with
his eyes.
He had really rancid breath
too.
He was scum. And she hadn’t seen him
since her father’s sentencing hearing. He’d gotten her father a
cushy stint in a minimal security prison—practically a holiday
resort with armed guards. So scum or not, he had to be good. And a
good attorney, especially a dirty, greasy weasel like Luvici,
would’ve not only gotten a sweetheart of a deal for his client, but
he would’ve hidden some of his client’s assets, so he would at
least get paid while his client rotted in jail.
Lucy had watched a
Law & Order
or two,
and since her father had been a high class lawyer, the five hundred
dollars an hour kind, she’d picked up a thing or two just being
around him.
She grasped the business
card in her hand and flicked it around with her fingers, noting the
“Home Phone” scrawled on the back.
Sure, if
Daddy—
she cringed just thinking the
word.
If Daddy has any money at all
hidden—for like when he gets out and starts his new life without
us!—then his snake of a lawyer would know what rock—or Cayman
Island, or Swiss bank account—it would be hidden under.
“
But why would he help me?”
Lucy mumbled as she sifted through everything she could remember
about one Frank C. Luvici. A dirty piece-of-crap lawyer like
that... well, any lawyer, crooked or respectable, would only help
you for three reasons. If you can pay, if it’ll make great PR for
him (which equals more clients and billable hours),
or...
Lucy pinned the card down to her
grandmother’s weathered kitchen table with her index finger,
digging her uneven, dull nail into the C as her mind snapped on the
little nugget of memory she was looking for.
They only help for money,
good press... or blackmail.
Lucy smiled as
her plan formed in her head.
She wouldn’t be calling him at home.
No. She remembered her father used to say that Luvici was so greedy
he went into the office even on Sundays. That, and he liked to bang
his weekend secretary—the one his wife had never seen—after putting
in his billable hours, and before trekking out to the golf course
for a quick nine holes.
Lucy knew something very interesting
about Frank C. Luvici. A couple very interesting
“somethings.”
Leverage over your opponent
can be as easy as the element of surprise,
her father had told her often, and Lucy had used that strategy
against upstart wannabees, teachers who were trying to take her
down a peg—which never worked out well for them—and against
embittered ex-boyfriends. So Lucy knew it worked, and she’d already
practiced it in a real life setting.
He’d also said,
Always have a back-up plan for negotiations. A
nice, fat killer of a second surprise.
Lucy tapped her finger against the
business card until there was a notch under that stupid
C.
She knew what her first piece of
leverage would be. And she knew the schtupping your secretary thing
would make a pretty good plan B. But this was a lawyer. He
breathed, ate, and slept slippery, weasely moves. She needed
something that would knock him flat. Something that would put him
in the way of not only legal detriment, but bodily harm.
Something candy-apple red shimmered in
her mind, a memory that she’d all but forgotten. And she smiled as
she ran upstairs to get dressed. She’d have to get moving if she
was going to get the jump on her prey.
~*~
Gabriel was on edge. Delia didn’t
understand what was taking so long finding a suitable fake fiancée.
Uncle Dante was being aloof about Cousin Francis’s progress on said
subject. And his mother was sniffing around him like a freaking
bloodhound. He was staying later at the office to steer clear of
her.
All this was making him start to feel
like a caged animal. Or at the very least, like one being hunted,
hunted slowly by a predator that knew it didn’t need to hurry, that
its prey would be all the more appetizing after a long
chase.
And what was worse, Dante wasn’t
answering his calls, which was a first. Dante was punctual, never
absent, and always at his beck and call. So why was he suddenly not
returning his phone calls? It had only been a few hours, yet his
imagination had started running hard and fast. He imagined his
mother chaining Dante to the wall of her kitchen, and torturing him
with a red hot poker.
The thought alone made him want to
claw his eyes out, yet there it was. Only a few hours out of touch
and he was already contemplating the worst. He breathed in harshly,
and then tried to push all thoughts out of his head. He needed to
center himself. Being undone by his fear would help nothing. He
needed to stay calm and together. There would be a perfectly
simple, banal explanation for his uncle’s absence.
When Dante pushed through Gabriel’s
office door, looking not only tired but rumpled, Gabriel jumped to
his feet and went to the older man. “What’s happened?”
“
Your mother,” Dante said,
pulling out a linen handkerchief and blotting the beads of sweat on
his brow. Gabriel had never seen his uncle sweat before, not even
on the few occasions where he joined the family for the
hunt.
“
Shit! What did she do to
you? Does she know?”
Dante gracefully lowered himself into
the chair in front of Gabriel’s desk, but the sudden jerk of his
head to face Gabriel was the only thing that seemed startled about
Dante.
“
What are you talking about?
She knows absolutely nothing of our dealings.” His tone was cold,
and Gabriel got the distinct impression that he was affronted by
the mere idea he’d been rolled by anyone, let alone Gabriel’s
mother. “She had me held captive in her kitchen—” Gabriel shook his
head, trying not to picture his uncle chained to the wall again.
“She’s really lost it when it comes to your father’s
retirement.”
“
Retirement?” Gabriel felt
his body relax as the tension melted from his muscles.
“
Yes, Vivian thinks your
father is still spending far too much time at the company, and she
wants to know why.”
“
Why?”
“
With a Masters in finance
from Columbia and another in business, I’d hoped you’d have better
questions to ask me.” Dante sounded pissy.
“
Oh, I just…”
“
She wants to know, is the
time he’s spending here warranted, or just superfluous? If he’s
needed, then what are we—as in you and I—doing wrong? And if he’s
not needed, then is it simply habit or over protective behavior, or
is he hiding something more covert and lecherous, or…” The look on
Dante’s face was lugubrious.
“
There’s a possibility worse
than Father having an affair?”
Dante nodded. “She’s afraid he’s tired
of her.”
“
What?” Gabriel jumped back
out of the chair he’d finally just sat in. “She thinks he’s tired
of her?”
“
She thinks he’s using the
company as a way to avoid her. She’s as human as the rest of us.
She has her own inner demons.”
Gabriel had never considered his
mother to be insecure in the least. She’d always been as strong as…
well, she was a force onto herself. It never seemed to faze her
that her husband spent laborious hours at work. And she was never
weeping, or even moping around the house, waiting for him to come
home. She was always busy with the country club, or arranging her
family’s futures. She didn’t even seem ruffled when either of her
sons had gone off to college for four years or more.
And now she was being anxious about
her marriage?
“
What gives?”
Dante raised his eyebrows. “What gives
is that she obviously had plans for when your father retired, and
those plans have fallen far short of what she’d expected.” Which
made sense. Vivian Enoch had planned everything out for the family
so well, that she even planned on giving his brother Micah a few
years to sow his wild oats before he fell in line.
“
How bad is it?”
Dante finally looked flustered. “My
phone rang too many times while I was with her. She fed it down the
trash compactor.”
That alone made him wince. His mother
was stern and unflappable. To do something so out of character
meant she was at the end of her rope. And the thought of that made
Gabriel cringe.
“
We have to get your father
to spend more time with her,” Dante said. “Before she has a
meltdown.”
“
You really think Mom would
lose it?”
Dante’s expression was stone cold
serious. “I think we don’t want to find out.”
Gabriel gulped, but then a smile
spread across his face. “At least, with her paranoid about Dad’s
free time, she won’t be scrutinizing me and my love life so
much.”
“
No.” Dante shook his head.
“She’s still brow beating me about this secret paramour of
yours.”