by Kyra Davis
“How illegal is this?” I ask.
“Very illegal.”
“Illegal enough to bring down a bank?”
Lander barks out a dry laugh. “Nothing brings down a bank. Haven’t you been paying attention over the last several years?”
“Is it enough to send someone to jail, then?” I ask, not bothering to acknowledge his rhetorical question.
Lander hesitates, and the bed shifts beneath me as he turns onto his back.
“Two years ago I would have told you no. But the Justice Department is getting tougher. People have had it with bankers and their disregard for the law. If I’m right about this—and I might not be, Bell—but if I am, the Justice Department might demand their pound of flesh just to show people they’re doing something. A figurehead to take down.”
“And you think Travis is behind this?”
No answer.
“Lander, are we talking about Travis or not?”
“I don’t know,” Lander says quietly. “Like I said, I don’t even know for sure that HGVB is involved in this whole thing or if anything’s actually happening. I’ve just noticed some coincidences that look very suspicious to me. That’s all. If something is going on, I have not been brought into that loop. But I have my reasons for being concerned.”
“But what if it is Travis? What will you do?”
“I’ll handle it,” he says firmly. “I promise you that much, but you have to let me handle it. I appreciate your spying on him for me, but no matter what you find out, you can’t go reporting it to the authorities and you certainly can’t confront or question Travis. Just give the information to me.”
“You don’t want my help?”
“I want your help getting some wheels moving, that’s all. You’re a brilliant woman, but you don’t have the specific expertise to know exactly what to look for or how to approach all this. If you went to the Treasury Department with this now, with no evidence, they’d dismiss it out of hand . . . and you would also tip off the wrong people.”
“But if you get the evidence that proves that Travis is involved in this kind of illegal activity, what are you going to do?” I press.
He pauses long enough to take a deep, cleansing breath, and then in a slow, steady voice he simply says, “I’ll stop him.”
Relief floods through me with the force of a raging river. The man I thought Lander was, the one I set out to destroy, would have protected Travis out of family loyalty, or maybe just for the sake of convenience and profit. But Lander is not the man I thought he was.
Which means I can be with him . . . even work with him.
It’s perfect.
I reach out and touch his arm, connecting myself to him, feeling what it’s like to be with someone I can both trust and respect.
“Lander—” I begin.
“I’ll stop him without anyone having to go to jail.”
I freeze. “How?” I whisper.
“I’ll be able to sideline him or, if I need to, push him out of HGVB entirely. We’ll quietly correct things at HGVB and make sure nothing like this happens again.”
“That’s it?” I can barely get the words out. He’s telling me that he’ll simply cover up the crime and move on. All those people and smaller companies that Travis has hurt in his quest for profits, nothing will change for them. Lander will deny them their justice.
“Trust me, it’s enough,” Lander says. “Without HGVB, Travis is nothing. And there’s no point in his doing time. It won’t fix anything and it will hurt his wife and kids as well as the family name. Plus it will damage the reputation of HGVB, and there will be fines, of course. Best to handle the whole thing in-house.”
There will be fines. Companies have folded. People have lost their jobs, been blacklisted from careers they’ve spent their whole lives building. But Lander will sweep the whole thing under the rug so that HGVB doesn’t have to pay a fine.
And so that the Gable name stays clean.
I pull back my hand and subtly shift away from him.
“So you’ll help me plant a few seeds in Travis’s head and then let me handle the rest?” he asks, oblivious to my change in mood.
“Of course, Lander,” I say, working hard to keep the cold out of my voice. “I’ll leave it all up to you.”
Of all the lies I’ve told him since we met, that one is probably the biggest.
chapter eleven
The morning is difficult for me. Not in a pragmatic way; for once I actually had the foresight to bring my clothes to Lander’s so I can leave for work directly from there rather than have to stop at my apartment. But I’m suffering from a hard-core emotional hangover.
I think he senses that something’s wrong, but I don’t volunteer my thoughts and he doesn’t have much time to question me. He has to get to work himself and he has to be there by nine. I don’t have to be at Jessica’s until ten.
He agrees to leave me in the penthouse by myself.
Actually, it’s not like he agrees to it exactly, he just does it. He seems to trust me.
Yesterday that trust was justified. Reciprocated. But now?
Sitting alone in his office, my hands pressed flat against the smooth surface of his mahogany desk, I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to organize my thoughts.
“What do I do?” I whisper aloud.
And then as the obvious answer comes to me I open my eyes and walk over to Lander’s file cabinet and start looking through his papers, trying to find something incriminating.
Because the obvious answer is simply this: stick to the plan.
I should be relieved. Everything is exactly as I originally thought it was. Travis is a criminal, Lander is a profit-hungry enabler—who cares less about innocents being hurt than about the status of his corporation—and their father is the asshole who unleashed them on the world.
It shouldn’t surprise me that Lander wants to use his girlfriend to help his brother and HGVB get away with breaking the law. Sure, he’s trying to stop them, but there’s no justice in his plan, and they’ll keep all their profits from Travis’s dirty acts. Just last night Lander told me he was a bad person. He said he was worse than me, and God knows that’s saying something.
So everything that’s happening . . . it’s good. Lander has literally spelled out what I need to be looking for. I just need to make it look like Jessica knows all about the espionage and that she’s threatening to go public, and I’d better do it quickly because that woman could accidentally overdose at any time. Despite harboring some pity, I have absolutely no love for Jessica. And if she does commit suicide or overdose, I won’t hesitate to find a way to make it look like a murder and pin it on Travis. But if she lives, that works for me too.
Travis is the kind of guy who would put a hit out on his wife if he thought she was going to betray him. Jessica knows that; after all, she was party to what happened to Nick Foley. So it shouldn’t be too hard to convince her that she’s going to be the next to go. I have to tell her that if she doesn’t stage her own death she will actually die.
It amuses me to think about Jessica on the run, always looking over her shoulder, moving from one cheap motel to another, forced to use cash and take under-the-table odd jobs. That’s the fate she deserves for her testimony against my mom. And who knows, maybe she’ll actually sober up; maybe it’ll help her in the long run. She certainly won’t have the means for the drugs she’s taking now.
As for her kids, well, as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m actually with Travis on this one. Jessica’s not fit to raise a ferret, let alone a child. And if Travis raises them they’ll turn into horrible little fascist monsters, and that’s bad for everybody. No, Mercedes and Braden will be better off once their parents are out of the picture.
If I choose not to bring Lander down perhaps he’ll be the one to raise them.
But I have to bring him down. He’s one of the bad guys. He just told me as much.
It’s simpler this way. I really need to be happy a
bout this.
I pull out a copy of Lander’s phone bill and study the numbers. I’m happy about this. Of course I am. This is great.
I take the bill and put it down on the desk. I should make a copy with Lander’s printer and give it to Travis. I don’t know if there’s anything incriminating in here, but if I show it to Travis and he tells me to follow up on something, then I will know. And I can just keep fueling the flame between the brothers. It will be a betrayal of Lander’s trust, but that’s what I’m here for, right? He’s the bad guy and I’m the necessary evil. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
But I don’t want to give this to Travis.
I lean back on the desk and put my head in my hands. There have been times in my life when I’ve felt stupid and self-destructive and all sorts of other things, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt weak.
How have I come to this? I made assumptions about who these people are, and across the board I’ve been completely accurate in my predictions. I got it all right. I’m right. How can I be having a hard time accepting that?
Again I take a deep breath and force myself to remember. I remember my mother crying. I remember her protestations of innocence that no one listened to. I remember what she looked like when I called her a killer and a whore.
I don’t deserve a happy life. I can’t forget that.
But I also have to remember that the Gables don’t deserve happy lives either. They’re the ones who started this. They literally got away with murder. I owe my mother justice. I can’t have a real relationship with Lander. I probably can’t have a real relationship with anyone. That’s just the way it is. But if I let my mother down again, if I fail, my life is completely worthless.
There has to be justice.
I pick up the phone record and walk over to the printer, slip it under the lid, and press copy.
There has to be justice.
chapter twelve
When I get to Jessica and Travis’s penthouse, Jessica answers the door before I even have a chance to finish knocking. Her eyes are red and I wonder what unique horror Travis has put her through this time.
“Shall we go shopping?” she asks, stepping out before I can step in.
“But I thought we were going to do that when I wasn’t scheduled to work.”
“You work,” Jessica says between tightly clenched teeth, “for me. You’re my personal assistant. Do you remember that? Or have you forgotten?”
“No, I . . .”
“For me, for me, for me!”
I take a small step back. It would seem that today’s meds aren’t sitting well.
“I want to go to brunch,” Jessica says as she carefully locks the door behind her. “That’s where we’re going, to brunch. And then we’re going shopping because you work for me.”
“You’re right,” I say slowly. “I work for you.”
A small but victorious smile plays on Jessica’s lips. “Good girl.”
She actually pats me on the head . . . like a dog.
I take a deep breath. It’s fine. All of this is fine. In the end Jessica will be the one with her tail between her legs.
For the first half of brunch, Jessica and I sit in silence, mostly because she can’t stop drinking long enough to get more than a few words out. On the plus side, she sips her Bloody Mary very slowly. It would really be fine if she would only give herself more than a few seconds off between each leisurely sip. And in combination with the drugs . . . well, it’s not good.
My phone vibrates in my purse and I glance down at it to see a text from Lander.
How is my beautiful spy?
I look up quickly at Jessica as if she might have been able to read from my expression the context of the message. But of course her eyes remain on her glass. It was so careless of Lander to text me something like that while I’m working.
My mind flashes back to what it felt like to be on his table, his fingers inside me as he fed me my mission. You will be my little spy, stealing secrets and exploiting them for my entertainment. I had relished that moment. The very idea that we could work together to undermine Travis had been seductive.
But that was just a game. We were role-playing, as couples are wont to do in those circumstances. Lander doesn’t want to work with me. He wants to use me. And I can never be his spy . . . only his traitor.
And that is the tragedy of us.
As Jessica continues to ignore me, I reach into my purse and answer back, Shh! Quiet, lover, I have work to do.
“Who are you texting?” Jessica snaps, as if she just noticed that I was still on the other side of the table.
“Just my neighbor. She wants me to watch her dog when she—”
“Fine,” Jessica says, already bored with my lie. I sigh and zip up my purse, futilely trying to push Lander from my head.
It’s only about forty minutes into brunch before Jessica’s starting her third Bloody Mary. And she’s getting sloppy.
“You lied to me,” she slurs with a smile.
“What? Jessica, I’ve never—”
“Oh yes you did!” She laughs and wags a finger at me. “You said you weren’t sleeping with my husband.”
“I’m not,” I say coolly. “Would you like to go to his office right now and ask him? We can do that. I don’t think he’ll lie to you.”
“Yes, why hurt me with lies when the truth will do?”
I sigh and glance around the restaurant. I’m pretty sure this isn’t Jessica’s normal lunch spot. It’s about as close to a dive as you can get in this part of town. The exposed brick walls are nice, but the place is dark despite it being late in the morning.
“You choose to stay with him and he chooses to stay with you,” I say impatiently. “Obviously there’s something still there between the two of you. Why don’t we go back to his office and you can talk—”
“I stay because if I don’t he’ll take my children,” she snaps, before adding, “my children and . . . and other things.”
By other things I assume she means her Bergdorf card and her happy pills. She barely knows her children so I can’t imagine she’s too broken up over the possibility of losing them.
My eyes wander to the door. I should be back at Jessica and Travis’s penthouse writing more incriminating posts. Plus I need to find evidence that Travis is working with this Talebi guy—and I really need to figure out what his connection is to Micah and Javier. There’s no legal reason that I can think of that would prevent HGVB from doing business with Mexican or Russian banks, so there’s got to be something else that I’m missing.
When I started this thing I assumed that I was going to have lots and lots of time. Time to build Jessica’s paranoia, time to plant the right information in the right places, time to set Travis up for murder, time to orchestrate Jessica’s disappearance . . . But if Lander is already onto the crimes Travis is committing and if he finds a way to sufficiently cover them up, all my plans will fall apart.
Time is now of the essence.
What I don’t need to be doing is sitting here, twiddling my thumbs while Jessica gets wasted.
“And,” Jessica continues as if she hadn’t taken a full two-minute break from our conversation, “Travis stays because I know too much.”
My eyes snap back to her. “What did you say?”
Jessica shakes her head, staring into her drink. “I’m so good with secrets. And I’m not a bad actress. Without me, where would they be?”
I lean forward, my focus now completely on her, my smile sympathetic. “Where would they be, Jessica?”
“I’ve stood up for this family,” Jessica says, shaking her head a little too hard. “The Gables.” She says the name as if it’s the most ridiculous word in the world. “To listen to Travis’s father you’d think he was the pope! Completely infallible! Walking on water and turning water into wine.”
“Okay, I don’t think it was the pope who did those things, but let’s get back to you. You were telling me how you stood up for the f
amily.”
“Liars,” she says, taking another sip of her drink. “They’re liars. When Travis and I met he told me it was love at first sight, but he didn’t love me. He loved that other bitch, the one who dumped him. But never me!”
“Wait, who did Travis love?”
“Not me!” Jessica practically screams. “That’s the only important part. He’s never loved me! The Gables lie! Liars, every one of them.”
“But at some point, you loved Travis,” I say gently.
“I did.” She puts her glass down a little too hard, causing the waiter, who is across the room, to give us a worried look. But he doesn’t come over. He’s probably worried she’ll try to order a fourth Bloody Mary and he’ll have to refuse her service.
“I loved him,” Jessica continues. “I didn’t used to be a liar . . . he turned me into one. They all did.”
“How’d they do that, Jessica?”
“By getting me to help them stay above the law, that’s how! Do you know how many shattered lives paved the way to the Gables’ success? You have no idea what these people have gotten away with! Travis, Lander, Edmund, not one of them is innocent! Their money is dirty, all of it! The only laws they care about are Darwinian! They—” She freezes, her mouth still open as if waiting for the next sound to come out. Her eyes clear and I can see she’s having a brief moment of lucidity within the ocean of intoxication. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” she says, her tone suddenly fearful. Then she gets ahold of herself, pushes her drink a little farther away. “You shouldn’t listen to me. I’m drunk. I shouldn’t be drinking this early.”
“It’s okay, Jessica, you can talk to me.”
Her bloodshot eyes narrow. “You will call me Mrs. Gable, and no, I can’t talk to you,” she slurs. “You fucked my husband.”
I take a deep breath. Why would anyone sleep with her husband when her brother-in-law is single and so intensely enticing? Any woman who dared to be with Travis must know that she would be expected to please him, not the other way around. But Lander? When he kisses my shoulder, when he slides his hand along the inside of my thigh, that’s for my pleasure. When he sucks gently on my neck, even when he whispers requests into my ear, it’s all designed to enhance the delectation of the moment, not for him, but for us.
