Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (29 page)

I did this a dozen times when I was a kid. The back of the house is a huge terrace, with a roof supported by massive columns of real marble. They’re so worn from age and acid rain that it’s easy to shimmy right up. The pockmarks are like handholds, like the stippling and grippy spots on a climbing wall.

I was twelve when I did this the last time, but I’m in the best of shape of my life. Lots of weight lifting and constant body weight exercises in my cell, you see. It’s easy to get up to the terrace roof, though I go on all fours where I used to run when I was a kid. Work my way across to the wall. A ledge runs all the way across the house, and these brick buttresses jut out from the sides. They’re slick from the rain, so I take it easy, and work my way down the ledge, using the brick handholds. My old room is four windows down. The light is on inside. I stop by the window and lean over.

Evelyn walks out of the en-suite, wrapped in a towel. It’s a creamy white towel, but it’s darker than her skin, as pale as milk. When I first met her I thought she was an albino, but she’s not. Real platinum blonde hair cascades to her hips in a perfectly straight fall. The water turns it green when she gets wet. I remember seeing that the first time, first time I ever saw her go swimming. She loves to swim.

She sits on the bed and takes a blow dryer to her hair, never once glancing at the window. She’s more delicate than slender. I remember holding her wrists in my hands, feeling her long fingers lace through mine. I could stay here for hours and just watch. After running the hair dryer she starts brushing out her hair. I’ve never seen a shade quite like hers. It’s what they call platinum blonde but it’s almost silver, only a hint of gold in the right light. The only color is in her eyes, a striking blue. There’s power in those eyes.

Eve is my stepsister. Her father married my mother when I was nineteen years old.

Then he sent me to prison and stole my life.

Now she sleeps in my bed.

I edge away from the window, carefully make my way across the roof and down the column. She’s up early, but then, she was always an early riser. The light is still on, but the sun is coming up, bruising the eastern sky. I’ve been here too long, took too much of a risk.

I had to see her. It’s been five years.

She stole my life, along with her rat bastard father. She eats my food, lives in my house, sleeps in my bed.

…Still.

I’m here for the car. That’s my opening play. I sprint over to the garage. There’s ten bays, the car is in bay four. It was always in bay four. My father treasured this automobile, did all the work on it himself and taught me everything he could; he died when I was twelve, so it wasn’t much but I built on it as much as I could. I have more interest in being a mechanic than running a multinational business, but a man once wrote that what men want does not matter. Or women, I guess. The bay doors aren’t locked. I roll up the door, and there she is.

They knew how to build ‘em back then, Dad always said. She’s a ’70 Pontiac Firebird. She was born stock, but Dad did a load of work on her himself. All new running gear, topped off with a twin-turbo on a big block crate motor, four hundred cubic inches. State of the art disk brakes, all new steering, ivory pearl paint and a massive, multicolored screaming chicken decal on the hood. She’s a beauty. Just touching the cool metal of the fender brings me back. I remember screaming my head off when Dad drove me in this car. Once I even overhead Mom joking with him when I wasn’t supposed to be awake.

Yeah, that’s right. I was
conceived
in the back seat of this car. It’s as much my home as the house, if not more so, and it is mine.

Nobody bothered to lock the doors. Or drive her for a long time, from the dust in the interior. I flip open the glove compartment and pull out the registration.

Yup, VICTOR AMSEL. The address is wrong, but it’s my fucking name. This is my car, legally, free and clear.

A quick trip over to the key box and I perform the only breaking of this breaking and entering operation, shearing off the rusted old padlock with some bolt cutter I find lying around. I take the key and the spare and slip back inside. The seat still fits me like a glove. They must have just dumped her here. Gas tank is empty, of course. Fortunately the garage has its own supply. I twiddle my thumbs until the tank is full, then finally get back in for the third time.

I turn the key. The motor chugs.

Oh, come
on
.

Another twist, and the
rrr—rrrr-rrrrrr
turns into a throaty note from the exhaust, but she doesn’t turn over for me. Come on. One more time. Fuck that Toyota. No disrespect to the Japanese, but I want my car back. I want my house, my
life
.

Third time’s the charm.

The roar of the exhaust sounds like an old airplane, thunderously loud in the confined space. The engine smoothes out almost immediately and I feel a surge of joy as I let out the clutch and ease in the gas. The car rumbles forward out of the garage and I whip around the turn, open the throttle and stab the button taped to the roof with my thumb. I hope the batteries aren’t dead.

They’re not, somehow. The wrought iron gates swing open. I roll the windows down. The rain has stopped and the air smells damp and musty. Mists cling to the ground.

I jam my hand out the window and give the security camera the finger before I whip out onto the road and two long black stripes of burnt rubber on the asphalt.

Vic is back, assholes.

Chapter Two

Evelyn

I wake up at four thirty in the morning, each and every day. My morning routine is absolutely the same, down to the minute. First I brush my teeth, then I floss, then I shower, dry and brush out my hair. My hair is, in my own opinion, my best feature. My skin is too pale and lined with blue and red veins. When I get out of the shower, I look like a roadmap from the scalding heat of the water and the freezing chill of a November morning in this ancient house.

My clothes for the day are already laid out. A dark blue pencil skirt, blazer and black blouse, dark stockings and sensible shoes. I wind my hair into a simple bun and lock it in place with a pair of chopsticks, black. As I said, my hair is my best feature, so I keep it plain, to match the rest of me. Otherwise I am far from remarkable, at least in a good way. My nose is too big, my face too narrow. I don’t get much sleep and it shows on my face.

Breakfast is waiting for me downstairs. Father fired the Amsels’ cook after Victor’s mother passed away. He replaced most of the staff, in fact. I eat in the kitchen, skipping the overly ostentatious dining room. The cook, a round woman with a thick French accent, has little to say to me. Father keeps her around to impress clients. I eat a bowl of oatmeal and drink a glass of orange juice. The cook must love me. I eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every day.

 
My assistant will be awake soon. After I’ve been served, the cook goes back to the servant’s quarters, back to bed, leaving me alone in the kitchen. Every sound rings heavily off endless expanses of stainless steel. I hate this place; I feel like I’m coming here to be dissected every morning. I put my own dishes in the sink and walk upstairs to the office.

Peter Amsel -Victor’s father- had a lovely Olde World office, in the very center of the house. I don’t use that. My office was once a bedroom. The house has sixteen bedrooms, though I think the largest brood that ever lived here was a total of eight children. In the old old
old
days, the Amsels used to house their entire brood here, generations living under the same roof. When Father married Victor’s mother and I moved in here, they lived alone. The house felt cavernous, and it still does. It feels angry. I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t believe in ghosts or any such foolishness. I don’t care how old the house is, it’s just brick and mortar, plaster and paint and wood.
 

It hates me anyway. I don’t belong here.

One day I will approach father about disposing of the estate, but not yet.

I’ve broached the idea before. The problem is legitimacy. Through a series of rather unfortunate events, I have come to be the heir to the Amsel fortune. My own portfolio is modest, inheritance from my mother. The Amsel holdings make me a billionaire, the ninth richest woman on the planet.

Peter Amsel’s will left everything to Victor, on certain conditions. When he went to prison, he was disinherited and it all reverted to his mother. His mother’s will passed everything to me. When we lost her to cancer shortly after Victor’s imprisonment, it all became mine. I’d give it all back if I could. I never wanted this.

I can still hear her breathy whisper. It was a terrible ordeal for her to speak with the cancer ravaging her lungs. Her last words were a throaty rasp.

Promise
, was the last thing she said. Promise me.

I’m better at keeping my schedule than I am keeping promises.

Assistants are a pain. I go through them like a dog chewing bones. The latest is Alicia. She’s the first one that hasn’t complained about my hours. I let her sleep in- I don’t expect her to meet me in the office until seven in the morning. She arrives without comment and sits down in the guest chair in front of my desk and spreads out my agenda on her lap. I prefer to keep everything on paper. Electronics are not secure. Alicia is a middle aged woman, a mother of three who needs my patronage. If I were a cruel person I would exploit that. I don’t, I only ask for competence and
 
that she refrain from wasting my time with pointless nonsense. I listen vaguely as she reads out my agenda for the day. I already know all of it. I need to be on a private jet in four hours, meaning we must leave in three. Before that I sit back and listen to her briefing for an hour as she goes over the news.

That damned feature story on me is causing no end of trouble. One of the financial rags interviewed me last month. They wanted me to show up in a cocktail dress and sprawl out on a desk, like a model in some kind of skin mag layout. I showed up in my usual conservative attire and stared into the camera. The magazine now sits on my desk, my own face staring back at me. I think they Photoshopped it, tried to make me prettier. I think I look like a weasel. Maybe a fox, if you’re being charitable, but not in the vulgar sense. The screaming bold headline proclaims me the Ice Queen of Wall Street. I haven’t read the article. I don’t need to. If I was a man I’d be celebrated. I dare to do this and be a woman, so I must be lambasted for my arrogance.

 
As Alicia finishes the morning briefing I finger the edges of the paper. I have a distinct urge to ruin the career of everyone involved in printing this thing, from the editor all the way down to the copy boys in their mailroom. I could, if the urge struck me.

Amsel is a holding company. Long, long ago, the family got its start manufacturing explosives. Gunpowder, to be precise. The family estate borders a sloping quick running river that used to be lined with mills for miles, fueling the Union war machine while, ironically, some cousins fought on the confederate side. There was never a direct threat to these holdings, but there was a time when this house was strategically important. That ended a long time ago. Gunpowder became chemicals, chemicals became a dozen other products from solvents to adhesives to demolition explosives. Amsel helped in wars, put men on the Moon and create the Internet. Everyone talks about the innovations of this or that computer company but their devices would be useless without fifteen patents that belong to the family for the next sixty years, and in perpetuity if our lobbyists do their job. I can meet with Senators on a whim. Billionaires look busy when they see I’m coming.

None of this makes me feel anything.

I suppose that’s my advantage.

Alicia has a file for me, my latest target.

They sell biscuits. Actually, powder that comes in boxes that mixes with milk and eggs to make biscuits. That’s the flagship product. Thorpe Biscuit has expanded over the last twenty years into a food and food services empire. Ninety-five percent of the biscuits served in restaurants and eaten in homes are Thorpe and they have a good chunk of the food service industry and manufactured food markets under their control. Walk into a grocery store and something like ninety percent of the goods are produced by one of three companies, if you follow the ownership back up the chain. Thorpe is one of those, with the smallest market share of the big three. They do six billion dollars a year in revenue.

Yes, I yawn while I’m reading it.

They’re screwed. The company is going under, due to total mismanagement. Thorpe is run by old money, Jim Thorpe III, great-grandson of the founder. I know more about him than he does. The dossier open on my desk reads like something an assassin would use to study a target. I know all of his habits, his movements. I know what he had for breakfast three weeks ago, what he gave his wife for Mother’s Day and his mistress for Secretary’s Day, which Ninja Turtle each of his children prefer (the youngest favors Donatello), the names of his boats. I even know about the funds he has squirreled away in Switzerland for when it all goes belly up under him.

I am not without mercy. I will allow him to remain on in some capacity at the company. He will continue to own stock. Today he will agree to a merger or I will launch my hostile takeover campaign. One word to Alicia and one of the six Amsel conglomerates will put in the maximum allowed bid on the open market for shares of Thorpe stock, as permitted by the Williams Act. At the same time, I will contact the large shareholders I’ve been meeting with for what’s known as a
proxy fight
. They will vote for me. I don’t even need them all. I already indirectly own twenty percent of the common stock through a pension fund group under Amsel control. Jim Thorpe is, to put it colloquially, screwed. I scratch at the papers with my close-cut fingernails. It feels like sharpening my claws. Once the company is mine the challenge of fixing it might at least make me feel something.

Six years. That’s the last time I felt something, I think.