He was at the table, waiting for her.
Lexi sat down. “Have all the transfers been made?”
“As agreed. Seventy percent for you, thirty for me. A bit harsh really, considering I did all the work,” he joked.
Lexi laughed. “Yeah, and I took all the risk. I staked every penny I have on borrowing the additional stock we needed. I broke my own company-begged, borrowed and stole.” She pushed the thought of Gabe from her mind. “If the market hadn’t panicked, I’d have been wiped out.”
“But they did, though, didn’t they?” Carl Kolepp grinned. “How do you feel?”
Lexi grinned back. “Rich.”
“Good. The spaghetti’s on you.”
They ate and celebrated. What they’d done was completely illegal. Short selling was one thing. But manipulating a company’s stock price through an orchestrated campaign of misinformation? That was something else. Lexi had used her inside knowledge to defraud shareholders. If she and Carl were caught, they were both looking at a long stretch of prison time.
But we won’t be caught.
This time Lexi had covered her tracks completely. All threads linking her to Carl Kolepp had been meticulously destroyed. Unless one or the other of them confessed, they were home free.
Carl asked Lexi: “So what’ll you do now? Buy yourself an island somewhere peaceful? Fill your swimming pool with Cristal?”
The suggestion seemed to amuse her.
“Of course not. This is where the real work begins.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to rebuild the company, of course. Buy back all the decent businesses. Get rid of all the dross Max acquired in the last ten years. I’ve halved my own score. Now I’m going to double my opponents’.”
“Excuse me?”
Lexi laughed. “Forget about it. Private joke.”
“Let me get this straight.” Carl Kolepp looked puzzled. “You bankrupted your own company just so you could rebuild it?”
“Uh-huh. I lost so I could win.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a little bit nuts?”
Lexi smiled. “A few people. Apparently it runs in my family.”
TWENTY-SIX
FELICITY TENNANT WAS DEPRESSED. SHUFFLING OUT TO the mailbox in her pajamas, she did not return her neighbors’ cheery waves on this glorious, sunny September morning. Behind Felicity stood the idyllic white clapboard house where she and her husband, David, had lived happily and harmoniously throughout twenty years of marriage. Until last month.
First rule of a happy marriage: Get Your Husband Out of the House.
Ever since David quit his job at Templeton, he’d been moping around at home like a bear with a sore head, getting under Felicity’s feet. For reasons Felicity did not understand, they had apparently lost a lot of money. David was even talking about selling the house and moving somewhere more modest. Perhaps even leaving Westchester County.
Over my dead body.
The morning mail did not lift Felicity’s spirits. Bills, bills and more bills. There was only one white envelope among the brown and red. (Red bills! The shame of it!) Felicity would have liked to open it, but David got terribly prickly when she opened his mail. Then again, David got terribly prickly about everything at the moment.
“Here.” Back in the kitchen, she handed him the letter, along with the bills. “For you.”
David Tennant opened the envelope without interest. Since Templeton folded, it was as if a black cloud had descended over his life. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Inside the envelope was a note and a check. David Tennant read both. Twice. Felicity noticed that his hands had started to shake.
“What? What is it?”
He handed her the note.
Dear David, I am sorry this has taken so long. And I’m sorry I was not able to be more open with you. I hope this check will go some way toward restoring your faith in me. Your friend, Lexi
“Humph.” Felicity Tennant was unimpressed. “Guilty conscience got the better of her, has it? It’s about time. Your friend, indeed! After the way Her Ladyship has treated us.”
Silently, David Tennant passed his wife the check.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Felicity Tennant clutched the kitchen table for support.
The check was for $15 million.
It was going to be a good day after all.
Yasmin Ross smiled at her boss when he walked into the office.
“Morning Mr. M. The mail’s on your desk, next to the latte and skinny blueberry muffin. I moved the morning meeting to a quarter after so you’d have time to eat something.”
Gabe smiled back gratefully
“Yaz, you’re an angel.”
Poor man. Yasmin watched him go into his office, shoulders slumped, head down. Gabe’s smiles didn’t fool her, or anybody else at the charity offices. Ever since he’d broken things off with Lexi Templeton, the joy seemed to have drained out of him like air from a punctured tire. Lexi must be crazy, letting him slip through her fingers. I wouldn’t kick Gabe McGregor out of my bed, not for any money.
Sitting at his desk, Gabe picked at his muffin. He knew his assistant was worried about him, and her concern touched him. He hadn’t been eating well lately. Or sleeping, for that matter. Sighing, he turned his attention to the mail. Every day Gabe received scores of begging letters, asking for gifts from his foundation. Saying no was the part of his work he liked least, but it had to be done. If they spread themselves too thin, they’d achieve nothing. There was still so much work to be done.
Recently Gabe had been saying no even more than usual, thanks to the hole in the charity’s funds made by Lexi. Legally, Gabe was obliged to report the theft to the police. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. Not yet, anyway.
When he saw the handwriting on the plain white envelope, he choked on his coffee, spraying brown liquid right across the desk. Gabe hadn’t heard a word from Lexi since that awful day in the Hamptons.
What could she want? A reconciliation?
Is that what I want, too?
He opened the letter. Except there was no letter. Only a check.
It was for exactly three times the amount Lexi had stolen.
August Sandford was suspicious.
“I don’t know, Jim. Who else is going?”
Jim Barnet was the head-ex-head-of Kruger-Brent’s manufacturing division. Along with a select group of other divisional heads, Jim had been summoned to a meeting by the firm’s receivers. Apparently, a potential cash buyer had come forward, interested in bidding for some of Kruger-Brent’s more profitable businesses.
“Me, Mickey. Alan Dawes, I think. Tabitha Crewe.”
“Tabitha? They want mining?”
“Apparently. And real estate.”
“And nobody has any idea who this mystery benefactor is?”
“Nope. But come on, man. It’s not like we’re exactly inundated with offers. Most of the market still seems to think we’re toxic.”
August hung up the phone.
“Who was that, darling?” Leticia, his mistress, rolled over in bed, pressing her soft breasts against his chest. Since Kruger-Brent went bust, August’s performance as a lover had dropped off a cliff. It was like there was an invisible thread connecting his dick to his net worth. When one shriveled, so did the other.
“Jim Barnet. Some cash-rich buyer wants to talk to us apparently.”
“That’s good, right?”
Reaching beneath the Frette sheets, Leticia gently ran her fingers over August’s balls. He used to love that in the old days.
“Maybe.” August felt the first stirrings of an erection. A good sign? “I hope so.”
Mandrake & Connors was one of the largest, most respected accounting firms on Wall Street. In Kruger-Brent’s glory days, it’d made a fortune acting for the firm. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, it found itself handling its bankruptcy. Unraveling the accounts of such a vastly complex network of businesses was expected to take months, if not years.