Vanessa tightened her grip on her purse and took a step back, fighting the rising tide of heat and anger that burned in her stomach, trying to keep herself calm. Unaffected. At least in appearance. “Do you think we could talk?”
“Not here to socialize?” he asked, one black eyebrow quirked.
“I’m here to talk to you, and it’s not a social call.”
A small smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. “I’m certain you donated to the charity on your way in. Or was that not on your list of priorities tonight?”
Vanessa bit the inside of her cheek, fighting to maintain composure. Taking the glass of champagne out of Lazaro’s human cup-holder’s hand and throwing the contents of it onto his very expensive suit might be satisfying, but it wasn’t what she was here for.
Still, there was no way she was going to allow him to pretend that he was somehow a philanthropic marvel and she was a snobby rich bimbo who walked into a charity event for the company and the liquor and didn’t bother to leave a dime.
“I wrote a check as I walked in. You can ask up front if you like.”
“Generous of you.”
“We need to talk. Without an audience.” She flicked a glance at the group he was with. A lot of beautiful socialites, some of whom she recognized, not the sort of women she’d ever been permitted to associate with. Money did not mean class, as her father had always said, and that meant certain people had always been patently off limits to her.
Lazaro among them. Although, for one, heady week, she had defied that command.
“This way, querida.” He put his hand on her lower back and she cursed the low cut of the gown she was wearing as his palm made contact with her skin. His fingers were calloused, rough from labor still, even after years of white-collar work.
She remembered how those hands had caressed her face, her body. They had been rough then, strong and hot. So very hot. She shivered slightly, thankful that her body chose the moment they stepped out into the chill, Boston air before the reaction hit. At least this way she could blame it on the weather.
The art museum’s grand terrace was lit up by paper lanterns strung overhead. A few couples were secluded in dark corners, talking with their heads pressed together, or not talking, enjoying the feeling of seclusion.
Of course, there was no seclusion. There were reporters, there were other people. This was the sort of event her father wouldn’t want her to come within a mile of. Discretion was the cornerstone of her father’s value system. And of hers.
But she was here. She had to be. She had to talk to Lazaro. As far as Pickett Industries was concerned it was possibly a matter of life and death. She couldn’t imagine he had any kind of altruistic motive for purchasing Pickett’s shares. In fact, she was certain he didn’t.
“You had a question for me?” he asked, leaning against the stone railing.
She turned to him, her face schooled into a neutral expression. “Why are you buying up all of my stocks?”
The corner of his mouth curved upward. “I’m surprised that you realized it so soon.”
“Suddenly all of my shareholders are selling to three different corporations, all of whom have one name in common—Marino. I’m not stupid, Lazaro.”
“Perhaps I underestimated you.” He looked at her, as if waiting for her to be angry or indignant or something. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
She pushed down a surge of anger. “I don’t care whether you underestimated me. I don’t care what you think about me. I care about Pickett and it is in my best interest to try and understand why someone is trying to get to a point where they own equal shares with me and my family.”
He paused for a moment, his smile widening, a cruel smile, void of humor, but just as devastating as it had always been. “Do you not appreciate the irony?”
“What irony is that?”
“That I can own my share of Pickett Industries. That a storied icon of a company can be passed into the hands of new money with such ease. The American dream, isn’t it?”
She looked at his eyes, the glitter in them filled with emotion so dark and deep that she felt it reach into her and pull the air from her lungs. And that was when she realized that it was very likely she’d wandered into a trap. In that moment she wanted, more than anything, to turn and walk away. To leave Lazaro as nothing more than a vivid, unsatisfied memory.
But she couldn’t. This was her responsibility. Her mess to clean up. There was no one else.
It’s up to you now, Vanessa. Without you, everything crumbles.
Her father’s words echoed in her head, filled her, pushed her forward.
“So … this is for your own amusement, then? Something to satisfy your twisted sense of irony?” she asked.
He chuckled, a dark sound laced with bitter undertones. “I don’t have time to do things simply to amuse myself, Vanessa. I didn’t get where I am by operating that way. My business was not handed to me on a silver platter.”
And there was no doubt he found himself superior to her because of that. Fine, he could disdain her for having it easy if he wanted. Pickett wasn’t really a silver platter to her. More like silver handcuffs with keys she couldn’t access. But she’d willingly accepted the burden. Had done it for her family. For her father, and most of all for Thomas. Because her brother would have carried on Pickett’s legacy gladly. He would have made it a success. He would have done it with dignity and kindness, as he had done everything else.
“Then why?” she asked.
“Pickett is dying, Vanessa, I know you know that. Your profits have dropped off in the past three years, so much so that you’re now firmly in the red.”
Her standard response, the one she’d been placating the shareholders with, rolled off her tongue with ease. “These things happen. It goes in cycles. Production has slowed with the economy as it is, and a lot of our clients are now getting their auto parts manufactured out of the country.”
“The problem isn’t simply the economy. You are stuck in the past. Times have changed and Pickett Industries has not.”
“If Pickett really is dying some kind of slow, painful corporate death, why are you interested in investing your money in it?”
“The opportunity presented itself. I am a man who makes the most of all available opportunities.”
Vanessa’s stomach tightened as his eyes locked on hers, the meaning of his words seeming layered in the dim light, almost erotic.
She needed to get out more. She really did. As it was, the four walls of her office were so familiar, her situation was beginning to seem desperate. But that was how it was when one was at the helm of a dying corporation. Lucky, lucky her.
And Lazaro Marino saw it as an opportunity. Heaven help her.
“And what do you intend to do with this opportunity?”
“I could put pressure on the board to vote you out of your position.”
Vanessa felt as though a bucket of icy water had been thrown in her face. Shock froze her in place, keeping her expression unaltered despite the rolling wave of fear that was surging through her. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you are in over your head, Vanessa. The company has been in decline ever since you were appointed. It is in the best interest of the shareholders to have someone in charge who knows what they’re doing.”
“I’ve been working on my game plan.”
“For three years? I’m surprised your father hasn’t stepped back in and taken control again.”
She stiffened. “He can’t. When I was appointed CEO he signed an agreement, something the board wanted done to prevent … problems.” When her father was in a good mood, he was happy with what she was doing and when he wasn’t … well, she wouldn’t put it past him to try to oust her himself. No one on the board had wanted the employees, or the shareholders, living with that kind of instability.
Of course, if she didn’t turn things around soon that would be the least of anyone’s problems.
Vaness
a had a degree in business, but a prodigy she was not. She knew it. But she stuck with Pickett out of duty, loyalty to her family, the driving need to make her father happy. How could she do anything else?
Thomas had lived and breathed Pickett, even in high school. Thomas, her handsome brother with the easy smile who had always had time for her, who had shown her warmth and affection, who had remembered her birthday. Who had been the only one able to make their father smile.
And with him gone, she was all her father had left to make sure the company, the family, continued. She couldn’t let Thomas’s dream die. She couldn’t force her father to lose the only thing in the world that truly mattered to him. She couldn’t stand to fail at the only thing that made her matter in his eyes.
She couldn’t be the one to see it all end, couldn’t be the cause of that. She’d let go of vague, half-imagined dreams in order to keep Pickett alive already. She couldn’t lose it now. She couldn’t see someone else in the position her father had always wanted reserved for someone in their family.
Her great-grandfather had built the business up using family money, and it had been passed down to Vanessa’s grandfather, and then to her father. It would have gone on to Thomas next.
The memory of that day was always there, sharp and vivid down to the way the rug in her father’s office had made her bare feet itch, to the way her stomach had ached, so intensely she’d been convinced she would die too. Just like her brother.
It’s up to you now, Vanessa. Without you, everything crumbles. Everything I’ve worked for, everything Thomas dreamed of.
She’d been thirteen. All of her brother’s responsibilities had been passed on to her that night, the weight of her family’s legacy. She’d be damned if she failed.
“It’s difficult to compete now that the market has changed. So many things are being done overseas now because there’s cheaper labor and lower taxes. It’s a hard position for us to be in, but we’re committed to keeping the factory here, to keeping the jobs here.”
“Idealistic. Not necessarily practical.”
He was right, and the worst thing was, she knew it. Had known it from the moment she’d taken her position in the big corporate office. She was fighting a losing battle, and she had been for three long years.
But she didn’t want to move the factory, didn’t want to eliminate all those jobs. Most of the employees had been with the company for more than twenty years and she couldn’t fathom taking that from them. They were her friends in some ways. Her responsibility.
Of course, if the company ceased to exist, the point was moot.
“Maybe not, but I don’t have any better ideas right now.” It galled to have to say that to him. To be put in the position of having to admit to deficiencies she was far too familiar with.
“As your principal shareholder, I’m not very pleased to hear that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want from me, Lazaro?”
“From you? Nothing. But I very much enjoy the fact that the fate of Pickett is now resting with me.”
“Maybe a better question for you is whether this is business or personal.”
“It is business. But it is also an interesting quirk of fate, isn’t it? Your father once held my future, my mother’s future, in his hands. He paid her miserable wages to do work that was so beneath any of you. To keep house and be treated very much as the help. And now I could buy your father ten times over. I have bought the portions of the business that were available.”
“So you just intend to lord over us with all that newfound power?”
“As your father has done to others?”
Vanessa bit the inside of her cheek. She knew her father, knew he was difficult at best. But he was all she had, her only family. The most important things to him were their family name, the tradition of the company and their standing in the community. He needed to know that he would always have his place as a pillar of the city, his favorite chair and cigars in his country club.
She wouldn’t be the one to lose that for him. Not now.
“I won’t say he’s been perfect, but he’s an old man, he … Pickett means the world to him.” And he—they—had lost too much already: Thomas, Vanessa’s mother. They couldn’t lose any more. It was up to her to make sure that they didn’t.
Lazaro looked at Vanessa, her dark brown eyes cool and unreadable, her full lips settled into a slight frown, a berry gloss adding shine to her sexy mouth. She looked every bit what she was. Rich and upper-class, her silver gown hugging her curves without being over the top, the neckline high, the only skin on display the elegant line of her back. Restraint, dignity. That was how the Picketts were. In public at least.
He’d seen a different side to Vanessa Pickett twelve years ago. A side of her that was branded into him, under his skin.
He redirected his thoughts. “What’s more important, Vanessa? The bottom line or tradition?”
To Michael Pickett, it was probably tradition. The blood in his veins was as blue as it came. He’d married old money and his daughter was the perfect aristocratic specimen, designed to keep the family name in a position of honor, to keep the family legacy going strong. Likely meant to marry a man of equal stock. That was what mattered to men like him. Not hard work, certainly not any sort of integrity. Just the preservation of an image and a way of life that was as outdated as his business practices.
When the opportunity to buy the shares had come up, Lazaro hadn’t been able to turn it down. He hadn’t been seeking any kind of poetic justice, but passing the chance up had been impossible when it had landed in his lap.
“I … Of course profit is the most important thing but we—my family—is Pickett Industries. We’re the soul of the company, the reason it’s lasted as long as it has. Without us, it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Of course it wouldn’t be the same. It would be new, modern. Which your father is most definitely not. And you are running things based on systems put into place by him some thirty years ago. It’s outdated in the extreme.”
Her throat convulsed and a muscle ticked in her cheek. Her delicate hands clung tightly to her purse, the tendons standing out, the effort it took to maintain composure evident. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said, her voice flat.
He could see the admission cost her. He wasn’t surprised by it, though. Vanessa had never seemed the CEO type. At sixteen she’d been sweet—at least he had seen her that way at first. She’d liked to swim in the pool in her family home’s massive backyard. The image of her lying in a lounge chair in her electric-pink bikini was burned into his brain, a watermark that colored his view of things more often than he cared to admit.
She’d been intrigued by him from the start, the kid who mowed her daddy’s lawn. He’d sensed her attraction right away, her hungry looks open, obvious. He imagined it had been some form of rebellion for her. To be attracted to not just a poor boy, but an immigrant, one who was so far removed from the long, storied lineage of the Pickett family it was nearly laughable.
The fact that she’d managed to burrow beneath his skin, that the thought of her had made his heart race faster, that he’d looked forward to weeding the flower beds so that he could catch sight of the princess in her tower was even more laughable.
He’d been a fool. That air of sweetness and light had been the perfect way to capture his attention, the kindness she’d shown to him so rare he’d lapped it up like a man dying of thirst. But she’d only been toying with him. And she’d made that clear the evening she rejected him. Later that same night, as a bonus prize to go with the rejection, he’d woken up facedown in an alley, his nose broken along with any of his naive notions of a romance between him and Vanessa, as one of Pickett’s hired henchmen warned him to keep away from the precious heiress.
It had been the beginning of rock bottom, both for him and his mother. He at least had crawled his way to the top. His mother had never had the chance. He curled his hands into fists, fought against the blinding r
age that always came when he thought of his mother. Of how needlessly she’d suffered.
He chose instead to focus on how far he’d come, how much power he held. Of course, even now, with all of his billions in the bank, he wouldn’t be considered good enough for the hallowed Vanessa Pickett. He could have any woman he desired, and had spent many years doing exactly that with women whose names and faces he could no longer remember. But Vanessa was burned into his consciousness. A face he couldn’t forget. Kisses he could still remember in explicit detail when far more recent, far more erotic events had faded from his memory.
All the events surrounding her were forever in his mind, etched so deeply, they would never fade. It had shown him that as long as he stayed where he was in life he could be made a victim—a victim of those with money and power, who could hire a group of men to beat up an eighteen-year-old boy, who could get a single mother evicted from her small apartment, get her thrown out onto the streets with no job and no hope of getting a job. He’d vowed never to be a victim again. Never allow anyone to have power over him.
The money he had earned—more than he had ever imagined when he’d started out. But the power, the absolute power that came with admittance into the highest echelons of society—that eluded him. He could not purchase it. It wasn’t that simple.
To most on the outside, it would seem he had reached the top, but that was an illusion. What escaped him still was what Vanessa had, what her father had and what they would continue to have even if Pickett Industries went completely bankrupt. A blue bloodline. Family connections that could be traced back to America’s first settlers. Not a lineage that began in a hovel in Argentina with an unwed mother and a father whose true identity was a mystery.
He clenched his teeth, fighting against the onslaught of memories brought on by Vanessa’s appearance. “Pickett is fixable. And I know exactly what to do to fix it.”
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