A pile of mail on the kitchen counter grows higher every day. Bills, of course. Bills we can’t pay, so I leave them unopened. We don’t have any money left.
Not until we finish the Cornerstone development.
My mother’s out in her observatory off the kitchen, surrounded by roses. Pruning and pruning with a furrowed brow, like there’s nothing to worry about but the roses. My mother pauses in her pruning and looks up at the glassed-in roof of the observatory. The rain’s getting louder.
She was raised to be a society wife, to host parties and sit on the board of charities. Now that we’re broke, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
That’s why this meeting is so important.
We need an infusion of cash to finish the Cornerstone development. We need an investor, because we ran out of money halfway through. Without walls and ceilings and finishes, the development is just steel and concrete. It was my father’s last deal. He poured our money into the land, into the demolition of the old buildings, into the foundation. He believed in the Cornerstone development. Then construction went over budget. Our foreign investor backed out. Everything came to a standstill. And my father never recovered. His drinking habit took over his life.
There’s a covered walkway to the garage, but rain hits me sideways. I push through the door along with a gust of wind. There’s a black town car inside. It’s all alone in a space big enough for eight vehicles. This is the last one standing. The last one that wasn’t worth enough to sell. I open the driver’s side door and toss my purse inside.
The town car rattles when I start it up, but the engine settles quickly enough. I go slow down the drive to make sure it won’t shake itself to death on the way to the city.
Our house was a mansion once. Technically, it still is.
Two big pillars flank the front doors, surrounded by windows and brick. When I was growing up, a crew with a white truck came and men washed the windows once a week. That doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s not the only thing that’s fallen by the wayside. The whole house is crumbling. Shingles have come off the roof, leaving holes like missing teeth. Cobblestones have cracked in the drive—another reason to creep around the drive at four miles an hour. If we don’t repair the drive, the potholes will be vicious by next year.
It was easy enough to brush things off at the beginning. What difference did it make if the fountain in front broke and had to be wrapped in industrial-strength plastic? We’d get the roof fixed when Van Kempt Industries was thriving again. Have someone repave the drive as soon as the credit cards were paid off. Replace the faltering bricks in the front of the facade as soon as the Cornerstone development was done.
Something more urgent always came along. My dad took us off the company health insurance to save money on the premiums. I didn’t find out until my mom got sick last winter. The ER visit cost twelve hundred dollars. I didn’t know the credit cards were maxed out until Christmas, when the envelopes with FINAL NOTICE printed in red started coming.
I didn’t realize I’d be the only one with the will to figure it out.
Which is tougher than I thought.
I’ve had to negotiate with credit card companies and debt collectors. It’s almost impossible to talk to the same person twice, and all of them use a different set of rules. I’ve prioritized the phone bill because that’s the only way I can get anywhere—by being the last one to blink in the game of hold-music chicken. I’ve tried my best to make friends with everybody I talk to on the off chance they’ll give me a break. It’s worked a few times.
It’s not enough.
The balances owed are too high to manage with minimum payments. And that’s not including the new bills coming in. The business is a house of cards ready to come down.
Stop thinking like that.
I’m going to the meeting that will change everything. The Cornerstone development will get the cash it needs to be completed. Once we sell that, the company will be solvent again.
And our family can rebuild.
A gentle push on the gas takes me past the broken fountain. The plastic wrapping has come undone and slipped down, and in the rain, it almost looks like it did when it worked. I’ll fix the fountain, along with everything else. Whatever it takes.
2
Mason
I don’t get excited for meetings. Some CEOs get hard for them. They get off on the attention and the ass-kissing. I like a good display of power. I like a signed deal. But the meetings themselves don’t do it for me.
Except this one.
The anticipation of this meeting is so fucking delicious I can’t pay attention to my phone conversation.
“—intercepted from an estate sale in Northern California. Once it arrives on the mountain, I’ll confirm the provenance.” Cyrus Van Kempt is going to be here any minute, and everything I’ve planned will be in motion. “I gave a man at Sotheby’s a heart attack for you, Mason, and you’re not paying attention.”
“You love terrorizing people. Consider it a gift.”
“I’m wounded.”
“Bullshit.” I’m almost certain it’s impossible for him to have hurt feelings about anything. I met Hades after he outbid me at an estate auction. I’d traced a few pieces of my mother’s jewelry to that particular sale. After she and my father died and everything fell apart, we lost everything, including her jewelry.
I’m in a position to get it back. More than a few of those pieces have ended up with Hades, on the mountain where he lives and where his diamond mine is located. I gave him shit about it early on—the fact that he lives on a mountain, even though he’s filthy rich.
And then he sent the pictures.
It’s not some survivalist cave with steel-framed bunk beds. It’s like my penthouse, if the penthouse were the size of a small city and literally carved out of black rock and gold.
He laughs. His laugh gave me shivers the first time I heard it. I’m used to it now, mostly. “You’re distracted.”
“I have a meeting.”
“Is it more important than the fact that I’ve located another impossible-to-find piece? More important than a ten-carat emerald nestled in diamonds?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, tell her I said hello.”
He hangs up without waiting for an answer, and I’m left with my folio full of documents and several minutes to savor the black words on crisp white pages.
The intercom on my desk beeps. “Mr. Hill, your four o’clock is here.”
I stand up from my seat, the ache in my knee barely registering. “Show him in.”
It took fourteen years to build my fortune to this level, for this deal, for this day.
Fourteen years.
Now it’s here.
I cannot fucking wait for this.
Except it’s not an older man who walks into my office. It’s a woman.
It only takes a second for me to understand who came instead. His daughter.
I have a few vague memories of Charlotte Van Kempt. Pigtails. Blue eyes. She should be the image of her mother now. Pretentious and fake, the way society women are supposed to be. Bred to be. Instructed to be.
My throat goes dry.
She’s come from the rain, that much is clear, and droplets cling to the perfect twist of her hair like diamonds. The reality of her batters me like rain batters the windows of my office. Flushed cheeks. A delicate jawline. The pretty shape of her lips as she murmurs a quick thank-you to my secretary.