Avery responded while taking the groceries out of the bag. “With a one-year-old, an hour is good damn time.”
“You think this is funny?”
She turned to him. “Did I laugh? You asked where I was and I told you.”
“Then why didn’t you answer your cell?”
“Anthony,” Avery said as more of a sigh than anything else. “I don’t know. The battery must be dead. Just, please.”
“Please what?” Anthony asked, his voice holding an injured tone. “Or maybe you just turned it off.”
Avery slammed the can of soup on the counter. “Where do you think I was? What do you think I was doing? Why not stop wasting our time with these same questions and just tell me where you think I was.”
“I wasn’t going to say you were with Carter.” Anthony’s expression darkened as it always did when he said the name of the man he believed had ruined his life. “I know you aren’t sleeping with him, but I know the only reason you’re not is because he doesn’t want you.”
Avery was taken aback by the sting of his words. “You’re an evil asshole.”
“You made me that way,” he retorted. “Let’s face it, Avery. If he wanted you, you’d be fucking him, wouldn’t you?”
“Leave me alone, Anthony.” Avery went to place the soup in the cabinet, but something shiny caught her eye. She looked down at the sink and saw a silver-label bottle of whiskey.
She grabbed the bottle and noticed that it was almost empty. “I see you’ve been doing some shopping yourself.”
“That’s none of your business,” Anthony said. He rolled toward her, holding his hand out. “Give it to me.”
Once Anthony had been through a couple of months of physical therapy, the doctor approved the addition of a disabled hoist and braking system in his car. It was an expensive transition, but it allowed Anthony the ability to drive. He took lessons, and within the last month, he was driving it regularly—that was, when he wasn’t feeling phantom pain from his injuries. He was in pain often and had decided to use the new freedom the car provided him to go and buy liquor. That and driving by the art gallery where Avery worked to make sure she was there.
“Dammit!” Anthony yelled as, instead of giving him the bottle, Avery turned it over and let the rest go down the drain of the sink. “You are such a bitch!”
Avery was ready to come back at him, but Connor began to cry. As she hurried to her baby, Avery felt horrible. She had practically forgotten that Connor was there.
“It’s okay, baby.” She picked Connor up and tried to soothe her. “We’re making too much noise? It’s okay. Sorry, sweetie. Don’t cry.”
Avery thought of what had happened between Kimberly and Michael as their marriage fell apart and how angry it made her over what it was doing to the kids. She couldn’t let that happen to Connor. It was bad enough that she no longer got along with Carter. If Connor had to witness the strife between her and Anthony, too, it was bound to harm her psychologically.
“I’m sorry,” Anthony finally said, although he was already turning and wheeling out of the kitchen when he said it.
Avery wanted to cry. He looked so pitiful, and she was too tired to try and do more for him. Fortunately, his upper body was intact, so he was able to take care of his most personal needs, but besides that, Avery was doing everything for him. Because of his mobility issues, and because they were financially strapped, they sold the View Park town house they lived in and moved into a much smaller ranch-style home in a less pricier suburb.
Avery had tried to help him by staying positive and holding on to hope that he could regain the use of his legs. The doctor said it wasn’t an impossibility, because Anthony’s injury was just below the point on his spine where damage was always permanent. But Anthony had fallen behind on his physical therapy, and ever since he had been able to drive himself, he told Avery he didn’t want her coming with him to his doctor’s appointments because it was humiliating.
As Connor’s cries subsided to sniffles, Avery sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and lowered her head to pray. She prayed for the same things she prayed for every day. She prayed for herself to be a better wife and mother. She prayed for Anthony’s recovery. She prayed for Carter’s anger to subside. Most importantly, she prayed that she would never lose her baby.
When Michael walked into his father’s office, he was a little taken aback by the reception. Usually Steven was at his oversized mahogany desk that Janet had won at a Sotheby’s auction a year ago, looking down at his laptop or papers, talking to someone on the phone, waving him in without a look, or doing something else. Michael was used to it, but today it was different. He hadn’t knocked, because Steven’s administrative Fort Knox had ushered him in. When Michael entered, Steven wasn’t sitting at his desk. He was sitting in one of the leather chairs on the opposite side. He was half turned around and met Michael with a smile on his face.
“Come in, son.” Steven gestured for Michael to sit in the other chair right next to his.
Son? Steven always called him Michael when they were at Chase Beauty or doing business elsewhere. When he was mad, he would call him boy, but never son. What was going on?
“What’s the matter?” Steven asked, noticing the look of apprehension on his son’s face.
“Nothing.” Michael sat down. “I was told you summoned me.”
Steven sighed. “Is it that painful to be alone with me?”
Steven knew that his son still held animosity toward him. They had been so close that everyone referred to Michael as the favorite. He was a clone of his father in many ways and was the exact opposite in others, but while Carter seemed determined to make his name without Chase Beauty, Michael ate, slept, and breathed the company.
Their relationship had been a series of dysfunctional ups and downs. Steven was a harsh father, and he knew it. He loved his children and would give his life for them, but he wasn’t an affectionate man, and he believed strongly that you had to be firm with boys to make them tough and prepared for manhood. Still, Steven had always been confident in Michael’s succession to his empire.
That was, until Michael’s wife, Kimberly, killed David and the truth about her past was revealed. To say it was a shock that his son had married an ex-runaway hooker and, with Carter’s help, had gone to such lengths to hide her past from his parents would be an understatement. To find out who he had paid off, what records he had stolen, and especially that he had framed David and had him locked in a Mexican prison was completely unexpected.
None of that compared to the nightmare that the murder, which Kimberly claimed was an accident, had been for Steven and Janet. They had to call in all their favors and do things that even they, with all they had done to protect their family, had a hard time living with. It had worked, but Steven couldn’t even talk to Michael. He was so angry that every time Michael tried to appeal to him, he shut him down. Janet had been more understanding toward Michael, but the fact that he had chosen to stay married to Kimberly made things worse. Her presence in the family put them under a constant threat of disaster.
But things changed last year when Carter and Michael were on the Chase jet returning from New York to L.A. It malfunctioned and crashed. The pilot was killed, but Michael and Carter survived with minor injuries that healed within months. The thought that he had almost lost his sons, neither of whom he was barely talking to, floored Steven to a point where he didn’t know who he even was. It put him in a spot so vulnerable that he didn’t know how to deal with it. What he did know was that he loved his sons more than anything and would never treat them the way he had in the past. Never again.
The problem with this was that Michael’s life had fallen apart and was threatening to put him over the brink. He was embarrassing the family in public and, worse, was making decisions that could put Chase Beauty at risk. Most of all, he looked as if he was turning an emotional and psychological corner that Steven and Janet feared he couldn’t return from. It was all stemming from the
breakdown of his marriage to Kimberly, and it was damaging their grandchildren, so Janet and Steven made the choice to force Michael to give Kimberly a divorce and offered Kimberly $20 million to leave L.A. without the children and never come back.
While fear that Kimberly would accept this offer urged Michael to give her a divorce, but on his terms, he hated Steven and Janet for what they had done. He took a leave from Chase Beauty and refused to speak to either parent. He kept them out of the divorce and custody proceedings and didn’t involve them in putting his life together. He had stopped drinking and was seeing a psychiatrist but was still keeping Janet and Steven at arm’s length.
Steven suspected it was all to impress Kimberly, but he was happy nonetheless and tried to convince Michael to come back to Chase Beauty. Everyone in the family urged him to return, and eventually, with an exceedingly generous compensation package and increased authority, Michael came back.
It had been four months since he’d been back, and while he was working at the same top-notch level the Columbia MBA grad always had, Steven knew there was still deep-seated anger. Steven listened to his wife tell him he had to be patient and wait for Michael to come around, but patience had never been one of Steven’s strong points. It just wasn’t in his blood.
Michael looked down at his watch. “Dad, I’m very busy. Do you need to talk to me or not?”
“Yes, I do.” Steven stood up and walked around his desk to his chair. “But first I wanted to know if you would like to come home for dinner tonight.”
Michael shook his head. “I’m looking at a condo after work today.”
“It will be nice to get out of that hotel room after all this time.” Steven thought he might try again. “You know your mother and I would love to have you stay at the house until you find a place.”
Michael nodded an acknowledgment of the offer. “Dad, what is this about? Is it the Mexico contracts? Because legal has them right now and dealing with—”
“It’s not about work,” Steven interrupted. “It’s about Jerry Gregoire.”
Michael shook his head with a sarcastic smirk. “Since when did you start looking at my expense reports?”
“Since someone brought to my attention that you are using Chase Beauty funds to pay for a private investigator to follow your ex-wife.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Michael,” Steven said impatiently. “That isn’t the point. You have to stop following Kimberly around.”
Michael shot up from his chair. “Stay out of it.”
“I’m not done talking to you,” Steven said as Michael turned to leave.
Michael turned back around. “Unless you have business to discuss, I’m done talking to you.”
“It’s not healthy,” Steven said. “You know this.”
Michael nodded in agreement. “Yes, I know. But I’m not ready to…I’m just not ready.”
“I want to help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Michael responded. “I don’t want it.”
Steven let Michael go, knowing that to push the point would be useless. While Carter stood toe-to-toe with Steven when they argued, Michael simply shut down and gave nothing. He said he didn’t need his help, and Steven believed him. He told himself that this was a good thing, that he had held on to Michael for too long. But he wanted his son back. He wanted Michael to need him again.
“Would you like to see another pair?” asked Natalie, the personal attendant that always dealt with Chase family members when they shopped at Neiman Marcus. While Michael’s divorce gave Janet Chase the excuse to cut Kimberly off from most perks the Chase family had access to—and there were countless perks—her personal shopper was one Kimberly was not willing to give up. Natalie knew what she liked and always had a great selection ready for her.
Today, Kimberly had come for shoes, and the selection was, as always, top-notch. Of all the choices, she had picked two. A $1,200 pair of Christian Louboutin black floral lace over pink satin platforms and a $1,000 pair of silver double-platform sandals.
“No, these will be fine,” Kimberly said, feeling extremely pleased with herself. Shoes had that kind of effect on her. “Just have them wrapped up and delivered to the house by the end of the day.”
Before Natalie could respond, Kimberly’s phone rang, and she reached into her oversized Bottega Veneta purse. She felt a pang in her belly when she saw the caller ID but knew she couldn’t avoid him much longer. He’d just keep calling. She dismissed Natalie before answering.
“Hello, Keenan.” She spoke with the polite, unemotional voice that she had learned from Janet. The bitch was perfect at polite coldness.
“Why haven’t you called me?” Keenan Chase, Steven’s younger brother by a few years, had a low, raspy voice that made him seem like he was always on the verge of being angry.
“I have other things in my life to do besides check in with you,” she responded. “We’re supposed to be partners, remember? I don’t work for you.”
“You aren’t working at all,” Keenan said. “I need progress.”
Keenan was asking for information on Steven and Janet Chase that he could use against them with the ultimate goal of destroying them. Last year, while trying to find out more about Michael’s latest mistress, Elisha, Kimberly stumbled upon Elisha’s real reason for being in Michael’s life. While he believed Elisha was helping him purchase an upscale publishing company to add to Chase Beauty’s portfolio, she was actually trying to help Keenan, her real secret lover, attach Chase Beauty to a corrupt company so Steven could be held responsible and made bankrupt through fines and consumer lawsuits.
Keenan had been using Elisha, and Elisha had been using Michael, but she ended up developing real feelings for Michael, and she slipped up when Kimberly challenged her by threatening to expose the plan. The business deal was dead before Steven could even realize his brother, head of the White-Collar Crime division of the FBI, was behind it.
Kimberly thought nothing of Keenan’s foiled plan until Janet and Steven offered her $20 million to divorce Michael, leave L.A., and never see her kids again. She had always hated Janet for the way Janet had treated her. The first second Kimberly had been alone with her future mother-in-law, Janet told her that she wasn’t good enough for Michael. She intended to get rid of Kimberly as soon as possible after the children were born, but Kimberly fought her every second. She had taken Janet down at different times, but she always got back up, and Kimberly ended up the worse for wear.
The offer, which Steven and Janet told her was not really a choice, was the last straw. Now Kimberly hated Steven just as much as she hated Janet, and she wanted their perfect image and all its glory to turn to dirt. She wanted them to hurt for thinking they could buy her babies from her, and the only thing that could really hurt them was destroying Chase Beauty, their legacy to the world.
This was why, after she was assured of her divorce and custody rights, Kimberly contacted Keenan herself. He was skeptical at first, but as they shared their stories, they both came to believe that they could help each other.
“What have you done?” Kimberly asked.
“I’m in Washington, D.C.,” Keenan answered. “You’re right there.”
“We’ve been through this before,” Kimberly said. “I’m not in ‘there’ anymore, and Janet has pretty much made it so I can’t get in there at all. I’m shut off. What can I do?”
“Use your husband.” Keenan’s tone gave away his desperation.
It worried Kimberly. While her lust for revenge had softened somewhat as she settled into her new, free life, she realized that Keenan’s hatred for Steven was more of an obsession than she’d originally thought. A childhood of comparisons had left Keenan feeling bitter and unloved. Steven had everything, including Janet, who Keenan says was interested in him before she met Steven. Steven got all the breaks, and Keenan had failed at almost everything. Although he had made it up the government law enforcement ladder, his brother’s success through life and
marriage only made Keenan hate him more. It should have been my life, he’d told Kimberly more than once.
“If everything you tell me is right,” Keenan continued, “then he’ll want you back in his life. Use him to get access to the family. There has to be something.”
“It isn’t time yet,” Kimberly said. “I worked so hard to get away from him. They will all be suspicious if I try to get closer to him so soon.”
“Kimberly.” Keenan sighed and paused for a few seconds. “You’re my only hope. If I can’t…If something doesn’t happen…I can’t stand to see his success anymore. I just can’t…”
“Calm down,” Kimberly said. “I’ll do what I have to, but I think after the…Things have happened to make Steven hold everything even closer to his chest than before.”
Kimberly had told Keenan of all her pain and suffering at the hands of Janet and Steven Chase, but she left out the details of her past and David’s murder. She sensed that Keenan knew she was keeping something from him, but her hatred was pure enough for him not to care.
“You have to be patient,” she said.
After a few seconds, Keenan responded with, “I don’t think I can anymore.”
After he hung up, Kimberly once again wondered what she had gotten herself into. At the time she had agreed to partner with Keenan, she had been consumed with despair and anger. But now her life was under her control again, and although she still wanted Steven and Janet to suffer for what they’d done, she didn’t have the passion to spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to get that done.
3
The second Leigh entered the L.A. office of the Republican Party’s only black senator, Max Cody, located on the ninth floor of a Santa Monica Boulevard office building, she could see the pace was hectic. It was a relatively small office, but there had to be at least ten people running around, carrying stacks of paper, or talking on at least one phone at a time.
The middle-aged Hispanic woman who sat at the front desk was wearing an early ’90s-style flower dress and talking very fast on a landline while at the same time holding a cell phone in her other hand. Leigh waited patiently, as no one seemed to have even noticed she was there. After the woman hung up both phones, she went straight to an appointment book on her desk, never looking up until Leigh cleared her throat.
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