On her desk, her phone’s red light blinked, telling her she had voice mail. She dialed the mailbox and found two messages. First Terri asked if she wanted to have lunch. “No news, so we can commiserate while you’re waiting for your little scientist to come save us all.” Terri laughed cheerfully. “Call me,” she sang and hung up.
After her, a monotone voice delivered her a message so deadpan it made her laugh. “This is Barry Brownstone, calling at the behest of that Eddie Bloodworth boy. I do recall the book. I never read it. It was left here by a friend who’s since moved away.” A pause, as if deciding then: “His name is Remington Rendor. Yes, really. I made him show me his birth certificate. I can have him contact you. I guess. If you want.”
He left three phone numbers but Daci didn’t write them down. She knew now where the NOx credits had originated from. Remington Rendor was second generation Hungarian. He was Sydney’s cousin, and right-hand man. He was also Survivanoia’s old company president.
Terri would have to take a rain check for lunch. Daci picked up the phone and called her not-quite-ex husband.
* * *
All his money and that vast ocean, yet Sydney chose to live in the hills, not on the beach. Kanan Dume Road wound its way up and over the Santa Monica Mountains, connecting the pricey southwestern edge of the Valley to the Pacific Ocean. At the peak of the mountain, the ocean sprawled out in front of a driver like infinite opportunity.
Sydney lived in a tucked away Spanish Colonial, whose red roof and white walls appeared out of place against the surrounding greenery. The quaint house seemed antithetical to his Eastern-European sensibilities, but consideration made the differences superficial; tile abounded on the staircases, kitchen, and bathroom, in place of the marble gracing Sydney’s New York mansion. Instead of rich velvet, heavy canvas draperies hung from ornate metal rods, blocking light from the round-arched windows. And the round tower of the asymmetrical Colonial certainly called to mind castles and turrets.
Like his New York home, the little house quietly displayed enormous wealth. Unlike his New York home, the grounds here offered a sprawling, untamed garden. Sydney’s trees grew dates, pomegranates, blood oranges, and of course plums. He’d agreed to meet her but here and only here, in his garden, among the shade of his fruit trees.
When she arrived the quiet of the garden made the place feel empty, abandoned. Peculiar, it had always been so inviting.
Daci gave the wooden windchime a gentle shove to announce herself. She wandered to the dining table by the side of the house, a round, marble monstrosity with mosaic inlay. On it she found a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a decanter. A huge, hand carved wooden bowl lay in the center, filed with fruits both from the garden and purchased; mangoes and kiwis shared space with the plums.
The wine turned out to be one of her father’s. Believing that the best wines have the simplest labels, her father kept things traditional, used his initials. A thin, scrolling font (that thickened at the bottom and didn’t quite remind drinkers of Dracula) read DVG. Where customarily a drawing of rolling hills or an estate would act as the background, her father’s wine displayed a sketch of the Carpathian Mountains.
She sat in one of the six wrought iron chairs flanking the marble table and peeled the metal wrapper from the green glass. As she screwed the waiters’ pull into the cork, Sydney appeared, carrying a cheese tray.
“You never have my father’s wine.”
“During your phone call you suggested that this was a…significant occasion.”
Daci handed him a glass, took one for herself, and raised it in a toast. “To you!” she proclaimed, clinking her glass against his.
Something felt unfinished and she realized she was waiting for a hug. Odd; they hadn’t shared physicality in greetings since she’d been assigned head of the company. Even goodbyes were generally limited to smiles. Daci recognized where this put her emotionally, this need for grounding. A rare want that Sydney used to fill. Would he today?
He took a slow sip, savoring the wine, bold and jammy without the cloying sweetness of so many Romanian wines. “To me,” he repeated her sentiment. “What is it you need?”
Daci smiled, sampled a piece of tangy cheese, smooth textured like mozzarella, but sharp on the palate like a cheddar. “Things have gone a bit sideways.”
“Imagine.”
“You were right, Sydney, it’s hard. Harder than I believed. I don’t know what to do.”
“What to do about what?” He ran one thumb through the belt loop on his opposite hip, held the wine glass in the other like a shield.
“The Flower Flu treatment.”
Sydney cocked his head at her and Daci felt something foreign, some distance she’d never had to cross before.
“The vaccine and the NOx credits, alright? I don’t know what to do.”
Sydney took a deep swallow of wine, swirled the remaining bit around the bottom of his globe glass. “You certainly seemed to know when you had your mutiny.”
“Sydney, please. I’ve searched for a loophole, some way I can use my new presidency, the fact of it, the naiveté and newness, to set the situation straight but I’m…overlooking something?”
Syd blew breath through his nose like a dragon. “You’re assuming I have an answer to this conundrum. Which mandates that I myself consider the situation something in need of correction. An abhorrence.”
Daci gazed at him, scrutinizing. She could not find it in herself to believe that he would let people die in order to make a profit, and she told him so. Sydney smiled and Daci caught a glimpse of the man she knew.
“Look,” she said, “maybe there are things you couldn’t do because of your status, or certain alliances to other companies, whatever. I’m fresh and new and relentless. I can get away with anything. But I can’t figure out what it is I need to get away with! Excepting the case of a buy out, the contract holds. There seems to be no option that doesn’t break it. Short of black marketing the stuff.”
“And would you do it? Sell it illegally?”
Daci hesitated. She’d considered it. The logistics gave her pause but she was acquainted with enough people who hustled for a living that she knew she could put the necessary pieces together. The consequences of getting caught—that was the unknown variable.
“It’s a last resort.”
“Ah. So your altruism has a limit.”
“Did I ever claim it didn’t? I’m no saint, Syd.”
“No. Of this much at least we have proof and can agree.” The sudden razor in his voice combined with his insinuation made her mentally flinch. Her bewilderment read in her face apparently, since Sydney responded with his toothy grin.
“You tell me you don’t think I would allow people to die in order to profit. You say with the intention of flattering me. But I don’t care. I suppose it’s not a choice I would consciously make. But a committee made this choice, this decision to bind our companies together, and a board at someone else’s company approved it. By the time it got to me, saying no would be useless and confusing.”
Not too many months ago Daci would have protested, accused him of corporate negligence or old-fashioned lying. But today she understood.
“Am I to recognize that there is no legal way out of this arrangement?”
“As I expressed to you a long time ago.”
So what was it to be? Manufacture the treatment and sell it on the streets? And what of the NOx credits; Syd hadn’t made mention of them. His silence and his strange, uneven keel struck her, suddenly and subtly, like when she’d mentioned the Flower Flu cure and he’d cocked his head at her. And he’d corrected her when said she didn’t believe he’d let people die to make money.
All of this forced through her head cyclonically and conveyed itself before she could select the words in a precise statement spoken without animosity or veheme
nce.
“You’re lying,” the cyclone concluded.
Sydney didn’t quite smile. “Good to see your bold candor hasn’t abandoned you.”
When she didn’t respond, but held his gaze, Sydney moved to the table, finally joining her.
“I am going to tell you some things,” he said. “And when I’ve finished, if you still want my help, I’ll give it to you. With just a few conditions.”
Daci gazed at him, her husband of nearly two decades who at one time worshipped her, maybe still did. What could he be about to tell her? Her father had researched him completely before they were married, and afterward he’d been transparent to her.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“The NOx credits were misplaced by Remington, who is a brilliant man but a foolish drunk. He stole them for exactly the reasons you suspected, so that we—he and I—could start our own side business. Which we have.”
“Making what?”
“Flower Flu. The treatment was developed before there was a disease to treat. A lot of drugs are developed from simple curiosity about a biological mechanism. Such was the case with the Flower Flu treatment. But nothing in nature had yet crossed the line between plants and humans. We had to give Mother Nature a little shove. The Flu—”
“Wait, who all is pay—”
“They’re all paying us. All three pharmacy companies pay Synergistic Retro Tech—our company—to keep Flower Flu in circulation. Don’t interrupt. Plants share—”
“Plants share 40-60% of their genetic material with humans, enabling the spread of Flower Flu, and don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
Sydney looked amused. Not baffled, not angry. This frightened Daci.
“Who told you that? One of your pet scientists?”
“Someone who is going to deconstruct your cure and find his own. He’s a genius, Syd. Smarter even than you, and in my employ.”
“That’s not completely true. You had a man you were looking to hire and he went missing.”
“If you say so.”
“I still know what goes on inside the walls of my company. And it is still my company. Where things like nepotism make for certain obligations.”
Daci called his bluff. “You barely spoke to your son the entire time we were married—”
“We are still married.”
“We have a piece of paper with our names on it. And if you’re so interested in staying married to me, why are you sabotaging what you perceive as your last chance to keep us together? Why don’t you just tell me? How to launch the treatment. And stop making the Flu for fuck’s sake!”
“If you have someone in your employ who is capable of designing his own cure, why are you here pleading for my assistance?”
They glared at each other for a heavy, silent moment. Stalemated. Sydney finally offered a mild shrug and reached for the wine, refilled both their glasses.
It was Daci who broke the silence. “Why didn’t you just say no to letting me be the president? You needed to see me fail?”
Syd displayed his nasty smile, the one that frightened people. Daci hid a grin. William Congreve believed Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Congreve never met a Romanian.
“If I set you up for failure,” he said, “it’s because you let me. But why would you not? It’s how you were raised. Your whole family has set you up to fail or to be used for the entirety of your life.”
Daci shook her head. “I’ve never been set up for failure by anyone, at least before now, and I’ve certainly never been used.”
Syd nodded, took a slow, savoring drink of her father’s wine. His nasty smile stayed. He rested his elbow on the table, gently twirling the ruby liquid at the same level as his dark eyes.
“You seek shelter from me in the bed of a man you pay. Ostensibly to make a movie, though by all accounts there is no start date set for this project, let alone a completion time. You don’t believe this man uses you for your money?”
Daci opened her mouth to respond but paused. Zane’s motives for being with her had buzzed through her consciousness on occasion but she never got that sense from him, so the thought never lingered. As to what Sydney knew or should know? “That’s not really your business,” she said.
“It is absolutely my business what my wife is doing.”
“Also, you’ve never met Zane. Anything you think you know about him is hearsay.” She recognized she was protesting too much, wondered what Sydney had tapped into, wasn’t sure she wanted the whole truth.
“I know you,” Syd asserted. “I know you better than you know yourself because we have been together more years than you were alone.”
Daci laughed gently at Sydney and his strange tactic. “This psychoanalysis you’re doing doesn’t cast you in a particularly flattering light. If Zane has possible hidden motives, then you’ve probably got some yourself.”
“I never veiled my motives for wanting to marry you. Yes, I found you intriguing and beautiful. But your bloodline couldn’t be ignored. Would I have been as vehement if you’d been more of a mixed breed? A more truly American girl? No. And if you believe anything differently, then you’re even more naive than I’ve been taking you for a these years.”
A quick, sharp intake of breath and Daci cleared the sting of Syd’s statement. “Let’s get back on topic. I asked you a straight forward question, and you’ve strayed completely.”
“You made an accusation. Which I am not denying. I’m explaining. Demonstrating a pattern—your pattern. How your decisions get you into situations, and how the root cause of these poor decisions on your part is traceable back to your upbringing.”
“That’s ridiculous.” But it wasn’t, and Daci knew it, and Daci knew just where Syd was going with his argument.
“Recall that trip your father took with you. Supposedly a graduation gift for you, in actuality a business trip for him. Who brings their daughter on a business trip to a politically unstable country full of men with guns? He didn’t care enough about you to leave you at home. Because he knew what would make Radu happy. He had the perfect distraction for that filthy war lord. The perfect bribe.”
Her throat constricted further and this time she did hesitate, fearing that if she spoke she’d cry. The truth, if that’s what he was telling her, was uglier still than she even knew. If…. She took a deep breath, said without quavering, “What makes you think any of this is true? You weren’t there. Again, it’s hearsay.”
“I don’t think, I know it all to be fact.” His face was blank as he watched her, but his eyes, deep and serious with the slightest hint of regret, told her that his words were fact. He did know. He’d always known.
She looked away. “If you knew all this why’d you want to marry me?” Water brimmed her eyes now, unstoppable.
Sydney put his hand to her face, wiped the tear from her cheek with his thumb. “No, darling, you have it backward. It’s because I wanted to marry you that I know all this. Your father wanted something, and I knew the people he needed to get it. I sent Dragomire to Radu. And I told him to take you.”
Daci put a hand to her head and the other to her gut. She felt ill, sick like with a significant hangover, all jittery and drained, rolling stomach, pounding head.
She felt Syd’s hand on her shoulder. She lurched away from him. But his touch broke something deep down inside, and when she moved an animal cry escaped her followed by relentless sobbing, the depth of her sorrow racking her body. Merciless like she’d never believed. More corrupt than she’d ever admitted. A stupid pawn in a game of men, used as a plaything, and worse: Willingly.
Hadn’t she suspected it? That her father had brought her on purpose, that some dark deal worked on in the shadows while she cavorted around like some gruesome princess. No, actually. She’d never believed that her father purposefully aligned hims
elf with suspected warlords, no. And she’s absolutely never inferred that he’d brought her along to prostitute her.
Likewise, she’d been aware of Syd’s fervor regarding her Dacian background, but it had never occurred to her that this fact alone comprised his main motive in his desire to wed her. More naive than he’d believed. All these years.
She took a deep, shuddery breath. Where did all this leave her? Really? Most people’s childhoods didn’t lend themselves to any idyllic delusion. It equated to believing in Santa Clause. Her husband was a selfish schmuck? That made her normal, not unique.
She thought of Chloe; she knew from conversing with Vonnie that Chloe’s mother had died at birth (and the unspoken details seemed to be sinister) knew too that the father and stepmother had died recently and within a year of each other. Nothing about Chloe suggested any of that. Funny and smart girl. Happy and brave. Sweet and vicious.
And Vonnie, whose husband had privately and publicly abused and humiliated her. She’d flipped the script on him. Funny. Brave. No wonder her and Chloe were best friends. And these friends faced their responsibilities without the luxury of resources Daci had been privy to.
So where did Daci’s shattered illusions leave her? In exactly the same position as when she’d entered the garden, so full of the absurd hope that Syd would help her. She still sat in the helm of a powerful, corrupt company, people were still dying needlessly, some scientist had intentionally developed a horrible virus and Daci still felt an overwhelming obligation to help.
And the difference between her and people like Chloe and Vonnie, Geo and Eddie, and even Zane or The Doctor was that Daci was in a position to help, make a change on a national if not global level. Shouldn’t that responsibility be the price of wealth and power? That’s why she took Survivanoia from Sydney! So what difference did it make, saint or slut, so long as she charged ahead and made her difference? If people were rescued?
Daci wiped her eyes. She was still Dacianna Von Worthington, and her dubious, absurd name still made her smile, at least internally. She blew her nose into a cocktail napkin and fanned her face while she got her breathing back to normal.
Baroness Von Smith Page 30
