He hung up and handed her back the phone.
“How’s the Kiwi?” she asked.
“Craigie shot him full of a sedative so he’s sleeping like a baby.”
“I’m sorry, Jonny,” she said for the fourth or fifth time.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll sort it.”
“You know Synnie,” he said, “is a tough little bugger. What he don’t have in size, he makes up in attitude. You get on his bad side and you’re likely there for life, you know? There’ve been a few blokes who found that out the hard way. But if you are one of his, he’d lay down his life for you without a second thought. That’s the way he’s built.
“When he took over the reins of MI, he did it with single-minded intent, you know? He wanted to prove to the old man—in whatever heaven or hell the bastard was in by that time—that the faith placed in him had been warranted. There were days on end there in the beginning when he didn’t just burn the midnight oil. He set multiple fires with it. He burned away all the excess shit, burned out all the non-productive hangers-on, and fried to a crisp anyone he found out who had been fleecing, bilking or undermining the company. He took charge and he took names. Those who had the company’s best interest at heart were kept. Those who did not were swept out quickly and efficiently like ashes in a hearth. He meant to see the company double in revenue in ten years but he missed the mark. It doubled in three.
“Fast forward a few years and here me and Spike come to work for him. He gives us shit jobs to begin with—didn’t start us where we are now—so he could see how we’d do. When we showed him we were up to snuff, he advanced us up the ladder. In a few years she was his executive assistant and I became his main go-to guy. He brought another Kiwi, Anderson Holt, up to be Chief Financial and Acquisitions Officer. Hired Kit as head of security. He surrounded himself with people he liked and could trust.”
She looked over at him. If anything, his face was colder than it had been when they started their drive. “Was all this my fault, Jonny?”
“No,” he said. He glanced at her. “Well, maybe. I guess it would have happened sooner or later if Synnie got serious about a woman. No one really thought he ever would—especially Jake—because of Olivia. She spoiled women for him for a long, long time and then there was Anne Sheridan.”
“Who was she?”
“She was a TV presenter in Atlanta. Had a show called StarTalk. She interviewed him, got the hots for him and they had a fling for about two months. He always thought she was dating him for the publicity and the clout it gave her.”
“Was she?”
“Who knows? The woman was a bitch and when he stopped calling her, she got mean and wrote some pretty nasty stuff about him on her blog. She labeled him the Kiwi Kutie and basically made him out to be a callous, heartless, Lothario out to wax his punga with every chickie he saw.”
“Sounds like wounded pride,” she commented.
“Oh, it was more than that. She keyed his car. Slashed his tires. Broke out his taillights. Went over to his house and used grass killer to write ‘Synjyn McGregor is a flaming queer’ across the front lawn.”
“Nice lady,” she said and could only imagine how angry the Kiwi must have been.
“She is a lot of things, love, but lady ain’t one of them,” he said.
“What did he do about her?” she asked. “I know he did something.”
“He got her fired from her job and made sure she couldn’t get another presenter job in Atlanta. Last I heard, she was in L.A. doing some cheesy tabloid show.”
“I wager she doesn’t say anything about the Kiwi.”
Jonny laughed. “You’d win that bet. Like I said, get on his bad side and you’ve fucked up for good.”
She looked away. “And I’m on that bad side big-time. I still think this is a mistake, Jonny. This could very well be a train wreck in the making.”
“We’ll sort it,” he said and flicked on his turn signal, glancing in the rearview mirror as he did. “Think of it as a judder bar, love.”
“Did he ever tell you about totaling the Lamborghini?”
She shook her head.
“I guessed not. He doesn’t like to talk about it but it bears telling ‘cause it relates to what Jake did. Just don’t tell him I told you.”
“Okay.”
“It was after the whole thing with Sheridan and he’d been in a foul mood for weeks. So he was cruising around—looking for trouble if you ask me—when he sees this Lamborghini dealership. He buys one. Day he took delivery of it, he decides to take it for a test drive. Trouble is, he gets on I-75 and just keeps on going. Drove all the way down to Tifton before he gets off, heads over to Albany. Why is anyone’s guess. He gets over there and first thing right off the bat gets a speeding ticket. Now, he’s really pissed and he’s tooling around the town and comes up on this driving course out in the back of beyond.”
“Where?”
“Boondocks,” he explained. “It was a homemade course for redneck driver’s training or some shit like that. The course is wibbly-wobbly—you know curving—and he gets it in his pig shit for brains head that he’s going to drive the course as fast as he can. Stupid shit. He gets going flat out on that thing and all of a sudden there are a series of judder bars in the road.”
“Roadblocks?”
He shook his head. “You call ‘em speed bumps over here and these weren’t just the garden variety judder bars. These were homemade and they were too tall and had too sharp an angle. They sure as shit weren’t designed for sports cars with low ground clearance even at very slow speeds. Now instead of swerving around these things—which the cops later told us a driver was meant to do—pig brains drove right over them. He lost control of the car, it flipped over about five times and came to rest upside down in a fucking creek bed six-hundred yards from the track.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Lucky for Synnie, there were some hunters out looking for quail who heard the noise and came running out of the woods. If they hadn’t been there, Synnie would have drowned. He had a concussion, a broken arm, a broken pelvis and both legs were broken. He was in a coma for six days then spent weeks in the hospital down there and was in a wheelchair for six more weeks.”
“He’s lucky to be alive.”
“True that, but it served as a wakeup call for him in more ways than one. He had a lot of time to lay there and think and when he got back to Atlanta, he called Jake in to draw him up a will.”
The sign read WindLass Estates. A security hut was situated in the middle of two winding red-brick-paved lanes that were blocked by rolling gates closing off each. Eight-foot-tall closed-perimeter brick walls fanned out from the rolling gates. Atop the walls were tri-wing aluminum vanes that were no doubt razor sharp.
“Rotating anti-climbing spikes,” Jonny said.
“That’s some serious security,” she said.
“There are some seriously wealthy people who live here,” Jonny said, pulling up to the guard booth. He rolled down his window. “Morning, Alton.”
“Morning, Mr. Taunoa,” the very fit-looking guard replied. He held out a portable palm-print scanner that looked like a small computer pad.
Jonny extended his right hand outside the window and placed his palm on the screen. “The lady with me has her print on file as well.”
“Very good. Would you pass this over to her?”
Jonny took the pad, held it for her to place her palm on the screen. The pad beeped as it did when Jonny used it and she pulled her hand back. Glancing down as she did, she saw her name on the screen with a large green check beside it.
“Welcome to WindLass, Miss Wynth,” the guard said, putting his hand to his cap.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of her, I imagine,” Jonny said. “She’s the boss’s missus.”
She stared at Jonny as the heavy wrought iron gate began to slide back slowly. “Why did you tell him that?”
&
nbsp; “‘Cause it’s true,” he said.
“He may disagree,” she told him. “Beside which, I am not his missus.”
“You don’t need to be married to be his missus, love,” he replied. “And stop borrowing trouble. You’re overthinking this thing. I told you we’d sort it so stop worrying.”
“He was worried about what would happen to the company if something should happen to him. He might be a chop short a barbie at times but he’s not a fool. He realized if he’d been left paralyzed or brain dead because of that stupid shit he pulled in South Georgia, there would have been one helluva power play by a whole bunch of people. Visions of corporate raiders stepping in to fuck up his company scared the hell out of him. Thus the will.
“What he did was this—he divided up everything he owned between the four of us. Me, Craigie, Spike and Jake. Each of us would get twenty-five percent of the company but only one of us would run it. Be the chief operating officer. The others would be on the board and have equal voting rights. In case of a tie—you know, two of us vote one way and the other two vote another—Kit would have the deciding vote. He is named in the will but I don’t know what provisions Synnie made for him or any of the other employees. At that time, MI was worth about five bil. Today, it’s worth a helluva lot more than that.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” she said. “He provided for those he cared about. I take it his mother isn’t in the will.”
“She was but she isn’t now,” he said. “He had it changed about a week or so ago and that’s when the shit hit the fan.”
The serpentine lane that wound its way through the beautiful setting had her rubbernecking from one side of the road to the other. Through the towering pines and spreading live oaks and amidst the bare branches of what looked to be Japanese magnolia, forsythia and numerous other flowering trees, she caught glimpses of stately homes. The houses were situated well back from the road and each they passed had a gate denying access up the driveway. There were no clear views of the homes, only fleeting impressions of immense wealth.
“Gorgeous subdivision,” she commented.
“If you were to look at it from the chopper, the whole shebang looks like a giant golf ball on a tee. The houses circle the golf ball and the ball itself is a man-made lake. All but one of the seven homes is situated on three acres of land that backs up to the man-made lake.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “That other house is his and its sitting on twice as much land.”
“Four times as much,” he replied. “Imagine the top part of the golf ball and that’s him.”
“He owns the subdivision, doesn’t he?”
He just looked at her and grinned.
“That way he can control who lives out here.”
He nodded.
“Do any of you?”
“Fuck no!” he said. “We couldn’t afford a doorknob on the dunny out here, love! There is a state senator, one big-wig judge, the CEO of a major land-development company, an A-list movie star, a country music superstar, and a race car driver. Shit, none of us would feel comfortable living out here with nabobs like that. We be simple folk and shit. Besides, Synnie bought mine and Jake’s condos and houses for Craigie and Spike and Kit.”
“He has this habit of buying people houses, doesn’t he?” she asked with a sad smile.
“He sees to business,” he told her.
“He called Jake in and told him he wanted to change his will. Jake wasn’t happy about it. Matter of fact, he was irate,” he said. “They had one helluva row that day. The worst argument they’ve ever had. Kit and a couple of his men got involved to separate them. He said he thought they were going to start clocking one another.”
“They didn’t?”
“No, Kit never let it get that far but they didn’t speak to one another for a few days there. Then it just seemed to blow over. I should have known Jake wouldn’t leave it alone. He’s got a mean streak wider than Synnie’s when he gets his back to a wall. Guess that’s what makes him such a great corporate lawyer.”
“What changed in the will that made Jake so angry? Why…?”
“He called a meeting that morning with those of us he considers family—me, Spike, Craigie, Jake and now Kit,” he said, cutting her off. “He told Jake he wanted to change the division of property to give him, Spike, Craigie, Kit and me each ten percent of the company. Then he changed who he wanted to run the company. That person would get fifty precent of the company plus all other assets that belong privately to Synnie. We’re talking the choppers, the jet, the yacht, all the businesses like Cedar Oak and that place where you worked. All of that was originally supposed to be divided equally between the original four of us. That’s when Jake went ballistic and demanded they speak in private. The four of us left them to it but stayed close by because they were shouting and calling one another names I hadn’t heard since we were kids.”
“From twenty-five to ten is quite a drop. I can see why Jake was so upset,” she said.
“Ten percent of eighty-five billion is still a helluva lot of money, Lina, but it wasn’t the money Jake was so angry about. It was the change in the person who would be running MI if something happened to Synnie.”
“It was originally supposed to be him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Who did Synnie want it changed to?”
He gave her a steady look. “You.”
The Kiwi’s gate was spectacular. The scrollwork was a beach scene complete with seagulls and a lone pelican sitting on a pier.
“We all grew up in the water,” Jonny said as he reached to push a button on the dashboard of his Lexus. “Synnie is as at home on a wave as he is on land. He skis and surfs and I don’t know anyone in our circle of acquaintances who is as good as he is on a boogie board.” The gate began to roll back. “And he’s that way on a skateboard, snowboard, or snow skis. He’s a very athletic man.”
“It’s obvious he works out,” she said.
“Just about every morning,” he said. “You gotta see him work the salmon ladder. It will fucking blow your mind.”
She had no idea what that was but it sounded hard.
By the time he drove onto the property, down a twisting lane overhung with spreading oaks, the rain had stopped. The glistening brick driveway had wide curves that wound around stands of magnificent trees bare now of leaves but she knew they would be impressive in spring and summer and into autumn. Each tree was surrounded by azalea bushes. Clumps of graceful dogwoods—denuded of foliage—and myriad varieties of shrubs and bushes had been planted in tasteful islands all along the twisting, turning lane. As they rounded the last curve, she sucked in a breath.
Ahead of them was Synnie’s home.
“Holy moly,” she whispered.
“He designed it himself,” Jonny said and there was pride in his voice. “He’s got a thing for coastal architecture. He named it. He calls it Lagniappe. Don’t know what the hell that means.”
She did. The word meant something given unexpectedly. To the Kiwi, the house was an indirect benefit of the opportunity his father had given him.
“It is a little over eight-thousand square feet with five bedrooms and six-and-a-half baths.” He turned the engine off but made no move to exit the car.
“He had a bedroom built for each of you,” she said softly.
“Yeah, he did. He always has this fucking big Christmas party here every year and none of us are able to drive home,” he said with a laugh. “Has one on New Year’s Eve too. There’s a basement and that’s where his gym is.”
It was a magnificent mansion that looked as though it belonged on the coast of South Carolina rather than in North Georgia. There were two garages on either side of the sprawling ground floor. Between them was the stairway—the landing of which divided into two sets of stairs bracketing a bubbling fountain. Those stairs led onto another landing from which a third set of five stairs spilled onto a second landing. From that landing a single flight of six stairs carried
a visitor to the front porch where two huge ceiling-to-floor, black etched-glass doors dominated the area.
Connected on both sides of the main house via breezeways were identical two-stall garages.
“You each have your own garage,” she said. She tore her attention from the house. “He built this for all of you, not just him.”
Jonny nodded. “We are his family, Lina. We are the brothers and the sister he never had. He rarely stays here unless one of us is with him, though. He can’t stand the loneliness.”
She looked back at the house. The second story had a stunningly beautiful veranda that wrapped around the front and sides. When she asked, Jonny told her it carried around to the back where there was a large patio with an infinity pool and hot tub.
“There’s hammocks and swings and lounges on the patio. You step off the patio onto a teak walkway that carries you down to the dock and the sailboat and pontoon he has docked there. It’s party central in the summertime.”
“I can imagine,” she said.
“You’ll see,” he told her. “You’re going to love it.”
They were silent for a moment then he twisted around in the seat, his face completely devoid of expression.
“Lina, he loves you with all his heart. When you left him down there, he went completely berkers. He drank a whole bottle of scotch and half a bottle of tequila before we broke down the door. He was so shit-faced drunk he didn’t even know he’d cut the bottom of his feet to shreds on the broken glass.”
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I really thought…”
“I know what you thought and I can’t fault you for it. Like I said, Jake played you. He knew what buttons to push and he pushed them. I think he realized what he’d done and that it was going to come back on him like sheep shit from a catapult and that’s why he’s not answering his phone. He has to know he’s done for. There’s no coming back from what he set into motion. Not for him anyway. Synnie will never forgive him. I don’t think he realized just how much Synnie loves you and that was his first mistake. His second was thinking he could send you packing and Synnie would just shrug and accept it.”
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