Rise of the Notorious (5 page)

Her eyes narrowed, though it was the only sign of irritation she showed. “The day I start running my life based on op-ed pieces will be the day I grow a beard and join the circus, Duke. It isn’t going to happen.”

Grant cleared his throat, eyeing his sister. “Can we move on, Mads?”

“Gladly.” She pulled out copies of the list of instructions from her grandfather and passed them to Linc and Grant to hand down the table. “This is the list I mentioned before that Cyrus gave to me. I want you to have it so we can all be on the same page. My first step is going to be the first thing on that list.”

“Corporatize?” Marshall gaped, brows furrowed as he turned to look at her. “Surely you aren’t serious?”

“We will need the additional capital and investments that will come from incorporation if we are to implement the second item on the list,” Madison informed him, looking at Linc as he pored over the list. “Your idea wasn’t so awful, after all.”

Linc let out a slow, disbelieving breath before glancing up at her with a quick grin. “Well, damn, there it is. Expand into the middle-class market with three- and four-star hotels. Revamp the company image to be inclusive of this market. I already have all of this figured out, Mads. I can show you.”

“You don’t need to,” she replied, a spark of pride shining in her eyes. “I want you to take charge of this. I’m trusting you with it.”

He nodded, looking more excited than she had seen him in weeks. “Great, I won’t let you down.”

“I know.” She looked down the table at the other men, noting the agitation in their expressions as they read over the rest of the list. When Cy let out a sharp, bitter laugh, she knew he’d read the worst of it.

“Trim the fat?” he asked, shooting her a nasty look. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says,” she replied smoothly, not missing a beat. “From here on out, any member of the Vasser family not directly involved in managing or running the hotels will be bought out of their interest in the company. We will no longer put up with leeches like my father draining our company of money.”

“And who gets to decide who gets bought out,
your
highness
?” Cy demanded, his hands clenching into fists on the table.

“I do.” Madison held his gaze, matching his intensity with cool reason. “The fact that you gentlemen are here means you will not be on that list.”

“And Walter and Lyndon? They will not be bought out,” Marshall declared stubbornly, looking to his brothers for confirmation.

“Your other brothers will not be included in the list either, Uncle Marshall. But some of their children, and their children’s children, will be.”

“This is
bullshit!
” Cy shouted, nearly jumping out of his seat. If Duke hadn’t grabbed his arm to hold him back, he might have crawled over the table to throttle Madison then and there.

“Stop it, Cy. It’s done,” Duke growled, forcing his cousin back into the chair. He glared over at Madison himself when Cy managed to calm down. “You understand,
honey
, that this is all just a bit more than we can handle right now. Cyrus is barely cold in the ground and here you are barking orders at all of us about trimming the fat and corporatizing. I hope you know that you’re going to be making more than a few enemies if you follow this list.”

“Then so be it,” Madison declared coldly, earning a concerned look from both of her brothers. “Unlike you, I do not wish to dwell on the past and fail when we have the ability to triumph over this. The list will be implemented, and the company will be saved.”

Duke slammed his fist down upon the table in a rush of sudden violence. “Says who? A dead man? A murderer?” When she said nothing and only watched him with thinly veiled disinterest, he sucked in a deep breath and fought to compose himself. “I for one think we need to discuss this issue of turning the company upside down further before we make any brash decisions.”

“We don’t have the time for that,” Grant put in, pulling out the sheet of reservation numbers from the stack before him. He slid it across the table toward his cousin. “Take a look for yourself; we’re still lower than we should be. We need to act.”

Duke scowled as he grabbed the sheet and glanced at it through narrowed, suspicious eyes. Across from him, his father turned to Marshall worriedly.

“I just don’t know about all of this…how about you boys?” Doc confessed.

Clark nodded in agreement and looked at Marshall, who inhaled deeply, unsure what to say.

“I will admit that this…list…worries me,” he admitted, eyeing his niece warily. “I know you have the best of intentions, dear, but maybe this is too much change all at once.”

Madison accepted his words, understanding the hesitation her uncles felt. They were of an older generation, one that clung to its traditions tighter than a vise. Of course it would be hard for them to accept. But that didn’t mean she was going to back down.

“I understand. However, we are going to proceed.” Madison watched the anger flash over her cousins’ faces and the distress befall her uncles, and she steeled herself against it.

“So just what in the hell have all of you been doing up here in New York, huh?” Cy barked out suddenly. “You let this scandal fall on our family and you let things spiral out of control. I wanna know why none of you did anything! Who's responsible for letting it get so bad?”

“Our father is responsible—” Clark began, only to have Marshall interrupt him.

“None of this would have come out had Win just kept his goddamn mouth shut.”

“Win was a weak man; we all know that,” Doc reasoned.

“Well if the Brady Bunch over here had better control of their daddy, maybe he wouldn’t have blabbed to the press,” Cy put in, earning an appreciative snicker from Duke and angry glares from Grant and Linc.

“What could we have done to control our father?” Grant asked. “He was a grown man.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like we knew his secret. We had no idea!” Linc argued, fire in his eyes. “You’re passing the blame pretty easy for someone who hasn’t been here dealing with this shit first hand.”

“Well the entire family is crumbling and I find most of the fault with those of you here in New York,” Cy continued, waving off Linc’s comment mockingly. “Someone should have known about this; you people talked with Cyrus all of the time! How in the hell—”

“I knew,” Madison interrupted, causing the room to fall into instant silence as they all turned to her in shock. She watched them for a moment, part of her amused at how easy it was to get them to shut up with that one, simple admission. “I’ve known since I was nine years old that Cyrus killed his father. That was when he trusted me with all of his secrets…well, almost all of them.”

“I don’t understand,” Grant managed, eyeing his sister as though she had sprouted horns from her forehead. His heart faltered as the meaning behind her words began to sink in. “You knew?”

“Cyrus told me about the murder when I was a child. He took me under his wing, made me his confidant and his prodigy. I am who I am as a result of his instruction and guidance. But, despite knowing that Winston had been murdered, I was not told the truth behind the reason for it. I was led to believe that Cyrus had killed his father because of the affair, because of Rosalie. I knew nothing of his brothers, nor that it was the real reason behind the murder.”

“He
told
you?” Duke snarled. “And yet you did nothing?”

“What should I have done?” she asked defiantly, determined to stand her ground. She still mourned her grandfather, and at that moment desperately wished for his guidance. The tattoo on her wrist burned dark and violent with his memory, with the memory of the deeds she had done for him. Even though she hated to admit it to herself, part of her was afraid of the backlash that might come from this announcement.

When they said nothing, she rose to her feet and planted her hands upon the conference table, her expression filling with power and the same ruthlessness that had made Cyrus a feared and respected man. From the way the men watched her, she could tell they were thinking the same thing she was at that moment. She had, in many ways, become the man himself. She was his legacy.

“You can either accept the truth of our situation or you can bury your heads in the sand. I honestly don’t give a damn,” she began, righteousness coursing through her veins. She pulled every last bit of Cyrus that was within her and let it fuel her, let it give her strength and purpose. “Either way, I'm going to salvage our reputation and protect the family and the company, with or without your help. You can choose to stand against me, but consider that betrayal carefully before you act on it. I will not forget.”

Marshall cleared his throat, blinking at the sudden illusion of seeing his father standing before him instead of his niece. It alarmed him to see her speak just as he would have spoken, to threaten just as he would have threatened. The resemblance was chillingly uncanny. “Dear, if we could just have a few weeks time to adjust. You understand…this is a hard time for all of us. First we lose Cyrus, then Win…let us have time to grieve and accept before we make any drastic decisions.”

Madison met her uncle’s eyes, hating that her love for him made it difficult to deny him time to grieve the man they had both treasured. Despite everything, she was not cold enough to refuse.

With a deep, measured breath, she continued. “I’m going to allow you a few weeks to grieve and to explore our options regarding this company. But know that I do intend to follow through with this list. You are welcome to stay here at the hotel as long as you like, and I think in time you will see that our options are much more limited than you may believe.”

She took her seat and turned to Grant, all business. “I believe we're ready to discuss our fiscal outlook now, darling.”

He blinked, still fighting back the shock he’d received from her admission. He shuffled through his papers and unearthed the financial statements, his mind still racing with questions and concerns. Had she really known the truth for all these years?

Despite being deeply disturbed by the idea, he tried to focus on the task at hand and began to explain the numbers to his still shell-shocked family. But at the back of his mind, all he could picture was Madison standing with Cyrus, laughing over his great-grandfather’s dead body.

Unable to focus
on work after the meeting, Grant made his way down to the hotel’s kitchen, seeking comfort. He gave Quinn a few hours leave from answering his phones to assist Raoul, though he hadn’t realized just how much he would need her that day. But now, with his sister’s words echoing in his mind and the vicious fighting he had witnessed between his family, he knew nothing could chase away his stress better than simply seeing her.

Only, his anxiousness to see his secretary was instantly replaced with alarm as he heard a loud crash beyond the stainless steel kitchen doors in
Cherir
.

“You’re doing it all wrong!” Raoul growled heatedly, the heavy steel pan he violently threw down upon the stove shivering from the abrupt assault.

“Actually, I’m not,” Quinn argued stubbornly, fisting her hands on her hips. “I know how to properly mince a damn onion, Raoul. I’m not an idiot.”

He scowled at her. “You are in
my
kitchen. You will mince how I tell you to mince!”

“That’s fine, but you don’t have to yell at me.” She sighed, still getting used to his rapid-fire mood swings. She wasn’t sure if he had always been this way or if it was heightened lately due to stress. Regardless, she was amazed any of the kitchen staff put up with him. “Just show me how you would like me to do it.”

“I don’t have time for this bullshit!” he barked, his hands itching to reach for another pot to throw. “Why Madison burdens me with this useless girl in my kitchen, I do not know.”

“Quinn is here at my request, Raoul,” Grant said suddenly from the doorway, his eyes dark and furious despite his level voice. “You do not have free reign to terrorize the staff.”

“It’s alright, Grant,” Quinn began, huffing out an annoyed breath and eyeing Raoul. “He’s just having a bad day.”

Raoul snorted, running his hands through his dark hair before rounding on Grant, his finger jabbing into the younger man’s chest. “Either she learns to take instructions or I kick her out.” He stalked from the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone.