Flawless (34 page)

B
ROGAN
O’D
ONNELL SURVEYED
the eleven nervous, sycophantic faces around the boardroom table with a feeling of immense well-being.

He had friends—successful, shrewd businessmen—who’d seen their authority over their own companies eroded over the years at the hands of a difficult, headstrong board and determined never to make the same mistake himself. Unlike other CEOs, he wasn’t necessarily looking for the brightest and best at O’Donnell Industries. Why shell out millions of dollars in options and incentives trying to poach some whiz kid with a Harvard MBA out of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley just to have them turn around and try to knife you in the back the second you gave them a chance? Headhunters were always going on about hiring guys who were entrepreneurial and hungry. But Brogan knew how easily a board of eleven hungry guys could turn him into lunch. There was only room for one entrepreneur at O’Donnell, and he was it. Give him a bunch of solid, reliable yes-men any day.

Not that any of them had much to complain about. It was November now, which meant year-end bonuses were around the corner, and everyone at the table knew that they’d enjoyed a stellar year. The Yakutia mines were now more profitable than
ever, far outstripping the volatile African holdings of most of O’Donnell’s major rivals, and the international diamond markets were as buoyant as Pamela Anderson’s breasts in the Dead Sea.

Without consulting any of them, Brogan had committed 5 percent of the year’s profits—a big chunk of change—to high-profile charity causes in both Africa and Siberia. But if anyone had nursed private doubts over the move, they felt a whole lot better now. In a matter of months, they’d seen the firm’s image shift from that of heartless Yankee plunderer to concerned, responsible global player. And it was all thanks to a few well-placed magazine features and one hugely sympathetic Fox News interview, depicting Brogan as the new caring face of capitalism.

Not only had the shift gone down well with shareholders, but it had bolstered Brogan’s image in the divorce courts too. With Diana unwilling to use pictures of her beaten face as evidence—“I’m sorry,” she told Danny, “but it’s below the belt. He’d never done anything like that before, and that isn’t why I left him”—there was nothing to stop Brogan’s excellent divorce attorney from painting his client as the wronged, innocent party. Anyone attending the hearings would have thought him the most devoted husband on earth, showering his young wife with every conceivable material comfort, undergoing humiliating and painful fertility treatment to provide her with the child she so craved, only to have it thrown back in his face when she ran off into the sunset with a handsome business rival.

That was the part Danny liked most—hearing himself described as Brogan’s rival, when he could barely afford laces for his shoes. It was right up there with Brogan’s claim that he’d never been “physically or emotionally” unfaithful to Diana. But again, without proof (Diana had no pictures or written evidence of his many affairs, and the girls involved had all been paid handsomely for their silence) there wasn’t a lot they could do to stop
the PR roller coaster from rebranding the former monster as a latter-day saint.

In fact, of all the things that had gone right this year—O’Donnell’s results, Premiere being named newcomer of the year for their newly opened Cape Town office, the amazing sex he was having with his latest twenty-three-year-old Slovakian girlfriend—it was crushing Diana and Danny in court, and financially, that had given him the most pleasure.

After Diana left him he’d spent a week locked away in Telluride, refusing to speak to anyone, not even Aidan Leach. Winded with shock and grief, terrified by how keenly he felt her loss, for the first time in his adult life he wasn’t sure what to do. Diana had had years to say good-bye to the marriage, watching it unravel like a snagged sweater from her lonely prison on Park Avenue with each endless passing day. But their problems, and her unhappiness, came as a bolt from the blue to Brogan. Every day, he waited for her to return, like a bewildered toddler lost in a supermarket aisle. When she didn’t, he felt the closest he’d ever come to panic, in equal parts frightened and embarrassed by his despair.

In the end Aidan had flown up to Colorado himself, forced his way into the chalet, and demanded that Brogan see him. It was the first and last time that Brogan would submit to another man’s demands. But he knew he needed help—a cool, rational, trustworthy head to do all the things he couldn’t. And Aidan was absolutely that guy. Standing there in his cheap suit, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down grotesquely as he exhorted his boss to get a grip, to get mad, then even, then vengeful against the son of a bitch who’d stolen his wife, instead of lying around in bed sniveling like Howard Hughes, Aidan’s physical ugliness struck Brogan as forcefully as if he’d never laid eyes on the guy before.

It seemed that had been his problem all along: not seeing things that were right in front of his face. But Aidan’s intervention was exactly the jolt he needed. Twenty-four hours later,
dressed, shaved, and rested, thanks to the prescription knockout pill Leach had insisted he take, Brogan was boarding his private jet for New York with a single thought on his mind: destroying Danny Meyer.

It had been almost too easy. He hadn’t had to go through any of the time-consuming intimidation he’d used on Scarlett Drummond Murray in London. Danny’s market was New York, Brogan’s backyard, a city where a quiet word from Aidan on his behalf had every jeweler, cutter, and dealer on the street jumping to heel, dropping Danny from their Rolodexes like a burning turd without a backward glance. Having cut his income supply off at the knees and effectively frozen Diana’s funds, Brogan could sit back and leave the rest to his divorce attorney, another contact of Aidan’s and a master at spinning out disputes for so long that the weaker, poorer party got priced out of the game. Last he heard, Danny and Diana were living in borderline penury somewhere in Brooklyn, contemplating decamping to England. That’d show the bitch what life was like without the security blanket of his money.

“Any other business? Or are we done here, gentlemen?”

Mickey O’Connor, the CFO, cast his pale, watery eyes nervously around the table. Once considered a dynamo in the diamond business, three years working for Brogan had transformed him into a nervous wreck, albeit a wealthy one. Pale and weak chinned, the shoulders of his suit jacket permanently dusted with dandruff like powdered sugar on a chocolate cake, Mickey was a mere shadow of his former vibrant self. Brogan’s management style—capriciously alternating praise and scalding public humiliation, the better to keep his execs on their toes—had reduced him to an almost childlike state, scared to open his mouth in his boss’s presence. Even something as simple as concluding a board meeting had the potential to turn into an excruciating, emasculating ordeal, and Brogan’s face today had given nothing away as to his ever-changing mood.

“Uh-uh.”

“Not from me.”

“Don’t think so.”

Happily his colleagues seemed as anxious as he was to bring this thing to a close and retreat to the safety of their big, glass-walled offices, where they could order their secretaries around for a few hours until their balls grew back.

“In that case,” said Mickey, risking a smile, “meeting adjourned.”

Brogan watched them all file out. He contemplated calling Mickey and a couple of the others back at the last minute to rake them over the coals for some invented misdemeanor. They’d all gotten off lightly this afternoon. But he had a date with Natalia tonight—to his own surprise as much as anyone’s, she’d morphed since Diana left him from casual fuck to bona-fide girlfriend—and he wanted time to work out before he saw her.

Outside it was a gray, nondescript winter’s day. The sky was already getting dark, and a stream of toxic drizzle pounded against the floor-to-ceiling windows with relentless monotony. For a flicker of an instant, Brogan felt his stomach churning with nerves at the prospect of returning home to the apartment. Natalia had steadfastly refused to move in with him. Her independence was probably the key factor still holding his interest—that and the naked envy in other men’s eyes when he walked into a restaurant with her on his arm—but her decision left him stuck in a space haunted with memories of Diana and his marriage.

It’d be OK tonight, though. Freddie, his trainer, would be waiting to distract him. And he’d bring Natalia back for sex after dinner, so he wouldn’t have to spend a miserable evening alone.

The last to leave the boardroom, as always, he strolled along the corridor to his own corner office. Outside, Rose, his PA, was taking a rare coffee break, but she hurriedly stuffed the gossip magazine she was reading into a drawer when he approached.

“It’s OK,” he laughed. “You don’t have to hide it. You’re the one person in this office who’s earned a little R & R.”

Nervously, she removed the magazine from the drawer.

“What is this shit, anyway?” Brogan teased her, turning over the copy of
Star
with amused curiosity. “Brangelina on the Rocks?” He frowned at the sensational headline. “Come on, Rosie! You’re smarter than that.”

“It’s just for fun,” she mumbled, wincing as he flicked through it. For a few pages his wry smile remained fixed. Then abruptly, it vanished, replaced by a knitted brow and a tightening of the lips that she knew spelled trouble.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded. He wasn’t teasing now.

“The newsstand downstairs, sir,” she replied meekly. “In the lobby.”

“I don’t want to see this publication anywhere else in this building. Do you understand me?” He was speaking loudly enough now for every head in the office to turn and stare.

Rose, who knew better than to speak when the boss was venting, merely nodded.

“And you can tell that little Mexican fucker, Rico or whatever the fuck his name is, that he just lost his franchise. If that newsstand isn’t gone by tomorrow morning, I’m calling immigration on his ass.”

Slamming the door of his office, Brogan drew the blinds so that no one could see in and opened the magazine again at the page that had so offended him. The picture itself was small, one shot among six or seven others in an “as seen” spread, where readers mail in their own snaps of celebrities out and about. Even the caption was harmless enough: “Celebrity designer and former model Scarlett Drummond Murray enjoys some down time with Diana O’Donnell and friends.”

The snap was of Scarlett at a beach café in Santa Monica, laughing alongside Diana. Also at the table, but with only their backs in shot, were Jake and Danny Meyer.

Brogan had seen plenty of pictures of Diana and Danny together. Both Aidan and his divorce attorney had insisted on continuing to have them followed and had gone to some lengths to harden Brogan emotionally, forcing him to look at the images and use them to feed his anger. He was also well aware that Scarlett and Jake were now in business together in LA, and that despite his best efforts, Flawless was continuing to thrive. Yet somehow, in all his fevered, jealous imaginings, he hadn’t pictured a scenario in which Diana made up a happy foursome with
both
the Meyer brothers and that bitch of a girl.

His own betrayals forgotten, he felt winded with righteous indignation. Wasn’t it enough for her to leave him, to run off with that British bastard, humiliating him in front of the entire industry? Did she have to rub salt into the wound as well by buddying up to a woman she knew was trying to ruin him, to undo everything he’d ever worked for?

But what irked him the most, though he couldn’t admit it, even to himself, was how happy Diana looked. Part of him, he now realized, had been nursing a small, desperate hope that if Danny became too poor to support her, she would eventually fall out of this infatuation and return to him. He’d tried to convince himself that he was happy with Natalia and his newfound freedom. But one glimpse of that picture, of Diana’s makeup-free, smiling, carefree face, exposed his so-called happiness for the fantasy that it was.

He wanted his wife back. Wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. But he couldn’t have her, and she knew it, and now she was laughing at him.

Unable to hurt Diana, he settled for the next best thing. He would destroy the livelihood of the man who’d sold Rose the magazine. He would fire anyone he caught reading it. Picking up the phone, he left a furious message for Aidan.

“Scarlett Drummond Murray. Why the fuck is she still alive?” he barked. “I’m tired of reading how her shit don’t stink,
all right? Find me some dirt. On her, her family, that motherfucker Meyer she works with. Don’t you fucking call me until you have something I can use.”

Slamming down the receiver, he picked up the magazine and looked at the offending picture one more time, photographing it for his memory. Then he ripped it out, tore it into shreds, and dropped it in the trash where soon, he hoped, all four of those smiling sons of bitches would be joining it.