by Wild, Nikki
By the time I made it to the sixteenth floor office, I was still ten minutes early. I handed my resume to a very sweet, bubbly receptionist and took a few moments to look around the lobby and get a little better acquainted with what the law firm was expecting.
They took up the whole floor, and they were clearly very expensive. From what I’d read on their website they dealt in criminal law, which seemed awfully exciting. I would’ve been excited for the job regardless, but knowing that I might spend my days involved with the kind of cases I saw on Law & Order sweetened the deal. It was better than resigning myself to something like worker’s comp and business law, anyway.
When Mr. Princeton emerged from his office, my jaw nearly hit the floor. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of a men’s magazine. He wore an impeccably tailored suit and shoes that probably cost more than my new car had, and he had one of those million-dollar smiles that lit up the room brighter than any fancy chandelier could. Not that he didn’t have those, too, but that smile was absolutely radiant.
His smile nearly touched his ears as he walked toward me, and I stood up, accepting his outstretched hand. “Madison Hearst, I presume?”
“You can call me Maddy,” I said, and for a moment, I was reminded of Preston Harvey and how he’d always called me that whenever we were together. No one else ever had. It had only ever been him.
Stop that, I told myself, pushing thoughts of my asshole of a stepbrother from my mind as I followed Mr. Princeton down the hall. You’ve moved on. He’s in your past. Mr. Princeton is your future, and you should count your lucky stars that he is.
I sat down in his office and watched as he closed the door and stepped around the opposite side of his desk. “I have to say,” he began, adjusting his perfectly form-fitting blazer, “I’m impressed. This is one hell of a resume, Madison—sorry. Maddy,” he corrected himself.
I beamed. Then Preston really hadn’t added insult to injury. I was relieved. “Thank you, Mr. Princeton,” I said. “This is one hell of a law firm, from what I hear.”
He laughed. It was a sweet, honeyed sound. “Let’s cut to the chase. Your qualifications are top-notch. And from just the few minutes I’ve spent with you, you seem like the kind of employee who would fit right in here at Princeton & Kline. All that coupled with the personal recommendation we received from Preston Harvey himself, I’m ready to offer you the job right here.”
I couldn’t help it. I had to ask. “Mr. Harvey contacted you directly?”
Mr. Princeton nodded. “Oh, yeah. He called this morning. Said he saw our ad on a jobs site and knew the perfect woman for the job.”
My heart skipped a beat. Preston had been trawling the job boards for me? Why? What the hell did he care?
A recommendation was one thing. The fact that my stepbrother had been actively interested in my employment was another. I knew for a fact that Preston had way better things to do than scour Craigslist ads on my behalf. Had he grown a conscience since I’d been away? Was he actually feeling guilty?
I tried not to think too hard on it, though it flustered me all the same. “Working for Preston Harvey was… a wonderful experience,” I said. And it had been—right up until the point that it wasn’t anymore. I didn’t count it as a lie. “I’m so thrilled that he was satisfied with my service enough to call you and get my foot in the door.”
Mr. Princeton grinned. “He spoke so highly of you that I was afraid someone else had snatched you up already. You seem to have it all, Maddy. Which brings us to your salary…”
I was on the edge of my seat now. I was sure a place like this paid handsomely. Visions of renting an actual house danced through my head, and Mr. Princeton was about to speak again when his receptionist burst through the door.
“Mr. Princeton,” she said breathlessly, “I’m so sorry to interrupt. But you have to see this.”
He frowned at her. “Can’t it wait, Amy?”
She shook her head so hard I was sure her earrings were going to fly right out of her ears. “No, sir. Come quick. It’s all over the news.”
Mr. Princeton raised his eyebrows at me. “I guess that means you should come too,” he said.
I stood up, my stomach flipping as I followed Amy and Mr. Princeton down another hall toward the break room. What the hell was going on?
As soon as I walked in, I saw it plain as day on the TV. Just outside Harvey Tower, several news crews had gathered around my stepbrother, each one of them shoving their microphones in his face, yet all standing so deathly still as he spoke. Someone turned it up and I gripped my clutch tightly as I listened to what he said.
“…in cooperating with state and Federal authorities, Harvey Enterprises has exposed Harold Verger’s intent to collude with government officials in order to shut down the 39th Street homeless shelter on fabricated charges of code violations. Mr. Verger then intended to demolish the shelter to make way for a person investment project: a luxury condo development that would cater to the wealthiest citizens of this fine city. Meanwhile, hundreds of homeless would be displaced, including battered women and children for whom there was no other place to turn.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Preston was actually admitting to God and country what Harvey Enterprises had intended to do just to retain a client—one with senatorial aspirations, no less. He was selling himself, Mr. Verger, his father, and his own company out to do it. But there he was, admitting everything on live television.
“Holy shit,” I murmured.
Mr. Princeton folded his arms. “You’re tellin’ me.”
Preston continued, “In light of this and other incidents which have come to light over the past few weeks, Harvey Enterprises will be restructuring. Mr. Harvey—my father—will step down from his position as the head of our company, and with the board of directors’ unanimous approval, I will take his place.”
My knees almost gave out from under me. This was huge. The only way it could have been more shocking was if a nuclear bomb had detonated in the heart of the city. But then Preston delivered one more surprise for me.
He looked into the camera and said, “There have been a lot of people who were hurt along the way, people who didn’t deserve it and who never should have been in the line of fire to begin with. As a company, we have often asked others to sacrifice for us instead of being willing to sacrifice anything ourselves. The future of Harvey Enterprises is simple: more ethics, more honesty. If that means less money, so be it.” He paused. I felt like he was staring right into my eyes. “If that means those that we’ve hurt can finally see some justice now, so be it.”
“I have to go,” I said, turning to Mr. Princeton. “I’m sorry. I really am. And thank you so much for everything. But I have to go.”
“Maddy—” he began.
I was already gone. How could I possibly stay here?
I raced through the parking garage. I didn’t even bother to get into my car. I kicked my heels off, tucked them under my arm, and made a beeline for the crowded sidewalk where people were lining up to gawk at Preston Harvey and the monumental decision he’d just made.
The reporters were all over him. They were screaming his name along with their questions, all of which was lost to the thrumming of my ears and the cacophony of the crowd. I didn’t care about any of it. All I wanted was to get to him.
In a sea of “Mr. Harvey, Mr. Harvey!”, I screamed, “Preston!”
He turned and looked right at me. The news crews did too. I didn’t say a word, and for an eternity, we just stared at each other like we were the only two people in the world.
Then Preston moved forward, shoving his way through the crowd still clamoring for a piece of him. When he got to me, he tucked me under his arm and pulled me away to the curb where Mr. Fletcher and a limousine were waiting.
“Miss Hearst,” he said, grinning wide. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You too, Gordon,” I told him, ducking into the backseat as Preston opened the door for
me before taking his place at my side.
As soon as Mr. Fletcher closed the door, silence reigned. I looked up at my stepbrother and shook my head, the tears coming before I could stop them from running down my face.
“Jesus, Preston. Why?”
“I have a lot to explain,” he said gently, “and a lot to make up for. I know that. Just give me the chance and I’ll tell you everything, Maddy. I promise.”
I nodded, and as Mr. Fletcher pulled away from the curb, I buckled my seatbelt and reached for the champagne cooler I knew only too well was in the limo.
“Good idea,” Preston said. “Let me get that for you.” And he poured us both a glass of champagne as we sat facing each other for the first time in almost a month.
“I take it you’ve figured out by now that everything I said to you that morning was bullshit,” he began. When I nodded, he continued. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to forgive me… I had to get you out of there, Maddy, but I couldn’t tell you why. They wouldn’t have let me, and even if I had, there’s no way in hell you would have left. Either way, the kind of vengeance they would have brought down upon your head would have been cataclysmic.”
“They?” I asked him. “Please tell me this wasn’t all our parents.”
“No,” he answered. “Well, not your mother, anyway.” Preston took a deep breath and loosened his tie. “No, it was my father and Jane, if you can believe it. She’s the reason he knew what happened between you and I. She’d been stalking us for a while, and that night we first made love, she snapped some pictures through the open balcony doors.”
“Jesus,” I breathed, shaking my head. “I don’t believe it. She was obsessed.”
“Yes,” Preston agreed. “But not for the reason you’re thinking. Hell, it wasn’t even for the reason I was thinking. It runs so much deeper than that.” He paused again and looked me over. “Christ, you look good, Maddy. You look incredible.”
I blushed. Preston looked good, too—great, in fact. Integrity had done him some good. There was a sparkle in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I could tell he was happier with himself than he’d been in a long time, and that made me happy too.
Knowing that what he’d said was a lie changed everything. But I still needed to know why he’d said it.
“Okay,” I said, “tell me more. What the hell was Jane up to? What was she trying to accomplish?”
Preston sighed and leaned back, spreading his arms over the seat behind him. “Money,” he said at last. “That particular goal goes back a ways. I acquired Jane as a sort of hand-me-down from my father. She’d been his personal assistant, once upon a time, and a little more than that too. Seems she’d been doing her damnedest to become my new stepmother, but my father wouldn’t have it. In his eyes, she was the kind of girl you fucked, but couldn’t turn into a housewife. He ‘gifted’ her to me, hoping she’d settle for ‘the next best thing.’_” He sipped his champagne and added bitterly, “As it were.”
I made a face. I couldn’t help it. It was just too weird. “She was fucking your father before she was fucking you?”
Preston winced. “Don’t remind me. Anyway, I guess she altered her goals to marry me instead of my father, but when it was clear that wasn’t working out, he hired her back out of pity. She began her game of seduction all over again, this time abandoning the whole marriage plot in favor of serving as his mistress. Maybe she’d never inherit his fortune, but in the meantime, she could benefit from countless secret vacations and gifts.”
“Wow.” It made so much sense. A strange, twisted kind of sense, but sense nonetheless. “How’d you figure it out?”
“Honestly?” Preston grinned. “I guessed. I figured if my father was cheating, it’d be with a younger woman. The one I caught him on the phone with at dinner sounded awfully insecure. He was constantly reassuring her that things were better this way, that she was still special to him despite his impending nuptials, yada, yada, yada. Jane had also gone to great lengths to get those pictures, and with the way my father was trying to push her back on me, I knew there had to be something going on there. So I went out on a limb and got hold of my father’s cell phone one day, and sure enough, there were plenty of late-night calls from Jane.”
“I can’t believe he let you get close enough to grab his cell phone,” I said. “I would’ve thought for sure that your father would have been keeping an eye on you.”
Preston laughed. “I had to play the part of the baby bird with the broken wing for a while, but my father’s a megalomaniac. At the end of the day, he was so sure he had bested me that he couldn’t help but flaunt it. He was convinced I was nothing to him, that I couldn’t possibly have anything up my sleeve. Honestly, it wasn’t a hard act to pull off. I was devastated about you, Maddy. You have to believe me about that. I understand if you can’t forgive me… I gave you a good recommendation at that law firm…”
There was still so much hurt swirling inside of me, and yet I could tell that Preston wasn’t lying. He had risked so much just to tell me the truth. Unlike the things he’d said to me that morning in his bedroom, this was all real.
“I do,” I whispered. “You tore me apart, Preston. But I believe you.”
He nodded somberly. “I know. And I know that apologizing doesn’t cut it. But I am sorry. Do you want to know the rest?”
“Yes,” I said, gulping down the rest of my champagne before pouring another glass. “Let’s hear it. I want to know exactly how you took them all down.”
Over the next several miles, Preston explained everything to me just as he’d promised. After he’d become certain that Jane and his father were involved, he’d spent the next several days “confiding” in her. He’d done everything short of getting intimate with her to convince her that he’d “seen the light,” and that he wanted her back. He spoke at length to her about her relationship with his father, all while wearing a recording device. And then, once he had what he needed, he’d presented that tape to my mother.
Predictably, she’d been furious—and, as Preston told it, a little heartbroken too. She’d taken the whole thing straight to his father, which had ensured Jane a security escort from Harvey Tower in front of all the friends she’d made, and more than that, she’d never work in the city again as long as the Harveys were around.
In an attempt to salvage things with my mother, Mr. Harvey had felt obliged to take her on a one-week “pre-honeymoon” to work things out. Preston took that opportunity to put in a few calls with state and Federal authorities concerning his father’s illicit and unethical dealings with a senate candidate—after he’d gone through his father’s files in his absence, of course.
Once the authorities had what they needed, they’d come down hard on Mr. Harvey and Mr. Verger while Preston had gained immunity—after all, his father had been blackmailing him, and thanks to Jane, he had the pictures to prove it—and as a result, the board of directors had no choice but to vote Mr. Harvey out of his position, as was in their best interests. Since he’d been groomed for the position since childhood—and since this stipulation was part of the corporate bylaws anyway—they’d unanimously agreed to put Preston in his place, and the rest of it I’d seen play out on the news conference on TV that afternoon.
It was an incredibly well-orchestrated plan, and frankly, I was in awe of just how perfectly it had gone. But I was also pissed, because it seemed pretty unnecessary for him to have said what he did before.
“They threatened to come after you, Maddy,” he finally explained. “They would have ruined your life… Or worse. And they’d frozen all my assets until I forced you to go, so our plan of running away together wouldn’t have worked. I needed you to be so convinced I was a monster that you didn’t come back until everything was settled.”
“And is it now?” I asked him. “Settled, I mean.”
“As much as it can be,” he said. “I have my money back, as well as unfettered access to the company’s finances, too. In addition, I get to direct ou
r future endeavors—and that means the shelter on 39th Street stays right where it is.”
“You’re incredible,” I said, laughing as I let it all sink in. “I can’t believe you did all this.” But one thing gave me pause. “How’s Mom taking it?” I asked him.
“Not well,” Preston answered. “I’m afraid I’m no longer going to be your stepbrother. I know you’re broken-hearted over it, but we’ll just have to get past it, somehow…”
I punched him in the shoulder, and he cringed dramatically. “Shut up. You’re serious, though? They’re not getting married?”
Preston laughed. “My father is very possibly going to jail, and even if he’s not, he’s been disgraced. She blames him for everything, while he blames her for being out of the country while I turned him in to the authorities. Really, they’re perfect for each other. I don’t see how it wouldn’t work out.”