by Erica Orloff
“I was Claire,” she said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “Years ago. I was the girl who fell in love with Jack Pruitt, who believed in him. Believed in his high ideals. And then he discarded me. Worse, he passed me off to his brother. Like I was something to be traded.”
“So why didn’t you move on, Katherine? Why didn’t you leave the company, find another job?”
“Pruitt & Pruitt was my life.”
“You mean your obsession. Does Bing know?”
“Does Bing know what?” Bing snapped.
“He doesn’t, does he?” Madison suddenly felt more confident. This wasn’t unlike a boardroom meeting, setting the scene, making a case. Manipulating the players if need be.
“I don’t know what?” Bing’s face registered annoyance. Madison knew he hated being in the dark about anythingsurprises were his least favorite thing in the world. They once gave him a surprise fiftieth birthday partyand at the Plaza, no lessand he didn’t speak to Jack or Madison for a month afterward.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Katherine waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Ignore her.”
“Oh, no…it’s something, all right. Why don’t you tell him, Katherine? You tell him.”
“Tell me what? What is she talking about? This is madness. Get to the point.”
“Do you know Katherine’s real name?”
“Of course I do. Katherine Gould.”
“No, no, no, Uncle Bing…” Madison was mocking him, inciting his fury further. “The name on her birth certificate. The name she was born with. The name she had when she went to the courthouse. To watch her father’s trial. Poor little immigrant girl with her kerchief on. Thick accent. Ugly black shoes. Hand-me-downs. Tell him, Katherine. Tell him all about it. Or should I say Katarina?”
Katherine Gould stared with pure hatred at Madison. “Shut up, you pathetic bitch. You spoiled, spoiled, worthless girl.”
“Guess it’ll be up to me to clue in poor stupid Bing. That’s why you’re not CEOor won’t be for long. Too gullible. Don’t have the temperament needed to have a position of that power.”
“Shut up!” Katherine shrieked. “Just shut up, now!”
“Her real name, Uncle Bing, is Katarina Karaspov.”
Bing didn’t reactnot at first. It took a second for the name to seep into his brain. Madison watched it, almost as if watching a movie in slow motion. Then she finally saw the recognition dawn on him.
He turned to Katherine. “What? You’re…the…the daughter of that beast who killed my baby brother?”
“My father didn’t kill anyone. He was railroaded by the system. By a system that couldn’t see past his thick tongue, his accent, his ugly black shoes, like she just said. A system set up to revere people like the Pruitts and despise people like the Karaspovs. Immigrants. Use us like workhorses, then turn on us in an instant.”
“But he killed my brother. He…burned him.”
“He didn’t. He wasn’t capable of it. He turned that child over to the men he worked for. It was supposed to be a clean job. They were supposed to give him to a nursemaidto his own former nanny to care for him. Hell, she loved him more than his own stupid mother. She was too busy with her bridge club to even tuck her children in at night.”
Bing’s face was pale, and he had broken out in a sweat. “I can’t breathe,” he said, clutching at his throat.
“My father took the fall for his partners in crime, in return for enough money for me to go to college, for my mother to buy a house. But I knew he was innocent. And though I was the little immigrant girl, I made sure I got straight A’s, that I worked two jobs, that I had the ‘right clothes,’ the right look, the right hairstyle. And I spent yearslong relentless yearsresearching the Pruitts. I know more about the lot of you than you know about yourselves.”
“So you went for the job with my father with malice aforethought.”
“Absolutely. And along the way, he fell in love with me. And I became enamored of him. I changed my plan from ruining the Pruitts to the ultimate ironybecoming their matriarch. Marrying into them in the ultimate realization of the American dream.”
Madison looked at Katherine’s face. She was flushed, heady with the dream she’d once embraced.
“Then he threw me out like I was worthless. Or worse, old. I saw him going for younger women. Women who weren’t even fit to converse with him, let alone share his bed. Then that Claire…for God’s sake, she was your age. That was too much to take.”
“But what about me?” Bing asked, horrified. “What about me, us. Our dream?”
“You’re so stupid. Really…do you think you hold a candle to me? You’ve never been bright enough to compete with your brotheror me, for that matter.”
“But we were going to run Pruitt & Pruitt together.”
“You’re a fool. A stupid old fool,” Katherine said. “Men really never outgrow thinking with their pants, Madison. They’re not like women. Not like us.”
Madison realized Katherine had said more than enough for the FBI, but she needed to know if Bing was a pathetic patsy or a full participant, especially where the murders were concerned.
“Bing…okay, I get that maybe you were jealous of my fatherhad a sense of brotherly competition, but…why go along with her plan? You have enough wealth for a lifetime and then some. Why? I don’t understand.”
“I was so tired of the attention he got, Madison. Him and his golden-girl offspring, while me, I had two ex-wives and no children.” His voice was laced with a nasty sarcasm. “Katherine’s too old now. I guess I…she came to me with a plan. To increase my wealth tenfold through working with money that we could hide offshore. No one would know. And at the same time, we were creating a set of books that would topple your father’s reign as CEO. I’d never heard a more perfect plan in my entire life. It was sheer brilliance.”
“Bing” Madison shook her head sadly “my father loves you. You’re his only brother. He feels protective toward you.”
“Please…don’t patronize me,” he snapped. “Once he came along, he was all my mother cared about. He got the attention, he got the love, and I was shunted aside, this ugly reminder of William’s death. Then my father chose him as the heir to the throne of Pruitt & Pruitt. He chose him to lead the family into the new century. Me? I was an afterthought.”
“Bing, you run a huge part of the company. You’ve been on the cover of Fortune and been profiled in the Wall Street Journal. You’re delusional.”
“Would a delusional person have so perfect a plan? And it would have worked…”
“Except for Claire.”
“Except for Claire. So we had to get rid of her.”
“Bing,” Madison shook her head. “But kill her? How?”
“Katherine and I figured out she was snooping around. So it was a preemptive strike. I told Claire that I knew Jack was crooked, and I had proof. If she met me at the warehouse, I would give her the evidence. Once she got there, friends of Katherine’s erased her. End of story.”
Madison was stunned. Claire had gone there knowing the evidence might point to Jack. But she was willing to hunt for the truth, just as Madison was. Her admiration for her friend’s courage grew.
“And me? Getting rid of me?”
“If your father had married Claire, as was his plan, they would have had babies, and you, my dear, would have found your fortune divided many more waysmaybe even eradicated entirely. But once Claire was gone, I realized that if Katherine could arrange for your demise, too, then Jack would be completely and utterly destroyed. Only putting him in prison for illegal accounting practices would be the cherry on top.”
Madison was chilled. The two of them were stark raving mad, and now she had enough evidence on both of them.
“Well, your plan failed, you two. I’m still alive.”
Madison started to back up to the Mercedes, but Katherine pulled a gun from her purse.
“Sorry, my little blond heiress. Now it’s your
turn.”
Suddenly, SWAT teams made their presence known. A male voice shouted from the rooftop, “Freeze. Put the gun down…you’re surrounded.”
The Mercedes’s doors opened, and out stepped Troy and his team, their automatic weapons drawn and trained on Bing and Katherine. At the same moment, Bing grabbed Madison and thrust her in front of him as a shield.
“Hold on, everybody,” Troy said, holding his arms up and urging calm.
Katherine trained her gun on Maddie’s headright at her temple.
“If anyone moves one step closer, she’s dead.”
“Now…you do that, and you’re in a heap more shit, Katherine. That’s a capital offense…needle-in-the-arm kind of crime…” Troy spoke calmly, in a measured voice. “We don’t want this turning into a bloodbath.”
Madison tried to weigh her options, and found they were rather slim at the moment. If the SWAT teams could take out Katherine, she felt she could handle Bing, but the gun butt pressed to her temple was limiting any choices she had.
“I’d rather die right here than go to prison like my father,” Katherine said. “And taking a Pruitt brat with me will only make my demise truly spectacular and worth it.”
“No one’s killing anyone here, Katherine,” Troy said, inching his way forward.
Katherine and Bing, meanwhile, were inching their way backward with Madison.
Suddenly, Madison’s heel caught in a small rut in the gravel-and-concrete lot. As she fell and lost her balance, Katherine herself fell backward for a second, which was all Troy’s SWAT team needed. They shot her what seemed to Madison like a hundred times, and her body shook from the impact of dozens of bullets striking her like a target at target practice.
That left Madison and Bing, who were now wrestling on the ground.
He had his hands clasped around her throat, on top of her. Madison knew there was no way they could shoot him without risking the bullet traveling through him and hitting her. Taking her fingers, she gouged his eyeballs, and he let out a high-pitched squeal.
Rolling off her, Bing grabbed Katherine’s gun, which had fallen to the ground right by them. He couldn’t see, but he felt for Madison, who was rolling away from him. He grabbed her hair and brought the gun toward her. At that moment, the SWAT team had a clear shotand took it…
Just as Madison’s uncle Bing pumped two shots into herone just below where the vest protected her…and one in her thigh.
Madison felt as if she’d been punched with fire. The world started going black, the sky turning to stars.
The last thing she saw as she turned her head was Bing, his body moving as it was riddled with bullets, and then Troy…saying, “Hang in there, Madison!”
And then…
Nothing.
Chapter 23
Madison next woke up three days later in the hospital intensive-care ward. Morphine clouded her brain and she had no recollection of anything. She felt pain, but it was softened by the morphine. She felt fear, because she saw the machines around her.
And then she saw John’s face.
She relaxed a little at the sight of him. He stroked her face, and said something like, “You did it…they got them…. Don’t talk…I love you.”
And then blackness.
The next time Madison awoke, she felt stronger. She still didn’t remember much. She could recall Charlie and the limo blowing up, and Bing…and being wired. But the precise way she got shot was a blur.
Her father was there, looking ashen, next to John. “Darling…don’t speak. You’re getting the best medical care money can buy.”
Madison’s eyes focused, and she saw three private-duty nurses around her. If she could have, she would have laughed. She couldn’t movewhat did she need three nurses for?
Her father said, “Bing and Katherine are dead. Claire’s murder solved. I’m cleared…but at what price?”
She mouthed the words “How bad?”
“Your vital signs are stronger now. You lost a lot of blood. But you’re a tough one. Of course, anyone who has seen you in action in the boardroom knows that. And you were lucky. The bullets missed major organs. And the one in your leg missed your femur.”
Madison trained her eyes on John and smiled.
Her father said, “He hasn’t left the hospital. He’s a good man, Maddie, love…I’m very happy for you. So now you’ve got to pull through and get out of this damn bed and home where you belong.”
Madison grimaced as pain started coursing through her spine.
“Nurse!” her father shouted protectively. A nurse appeared with a syringe…and Madison fell backward into space into a sweet morphine oblivion.
The next person she saw was Troy.
“I sent John to a hotel to shower and get some sleep,” he said. “Your father is having a press conference right now. Everything’s going to be okay, Madison.”
She nodded. She felt more alert. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Water?”
Troy looked over at a nurse, who approached the bed with some ice chips, which she spooned into Madison’s mouth. The soothing cold wetness trickled down her throat.
Troy looked at the nurses. “I need five minutes with her.”
They nodded and left them alone.
“The Governess is really grateful on this one, Madison. Really grateful. If you weren’t undercover, trust me, you’d have a drawerful of medals.”
“Just…glad…it’s…over.”
“Sure. Me, too. I guess you can retire to your penthouse now.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to…walk,” she croaked. “Then kick your ass.”
He winked at her. “We’ll see, tough girl, we’ll see.”
Madison looked over at the windowsill. Huge flower arrangements, spectacular showy ones, stood in crystal vases.
“Ryan Greene, CeCe Goldbergof course, she wants an exclusive, Anne Kelly…Christ, the president, Renee, Ashley. You got so many flowers, we started sending some to the cancer ward…try to brighten a few patients’ lives a bit.”
“Good.”
Madison smiled. She was going to be fine. She knew it. And the hell with anyone if they thought this meant she was going to quit the Gotham Roses secret spy division.
Epilogue
Troy called Madison at work a couple weeks later.
“Hey…is this my old partner?”
“Oh, my God, Troy…how are you?”
“Fine. Assigned to a new case but missing my old partner. I keep bugging Renee to find us something new to work on.”
“That would be great.”
“How’s the office?”
“Feels good to be back, even if I’m still recovering from the ordeal. But I was going crazy cooped up in the hospital and then at home. On the bright side, my father is CEO again and I’m second-in-command. Stock is healthy…we’re building, climbing…doing great, Troy.”
“And John?”
“Wonderful.”
“You two set a date yet?”
“Sometime next summer when he has off from school. We want to marry in Tuscany.”
“Some guys have all the luck.”
Madison fingered the medal she still wore around her neck.
“Troy?”
“Yeah?”
“I still have your medal. I need to get it back to you.”
“Nah…you keep it. I want you to have it to keep you safe.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen, this isn’t an entirely social call. I need for you, your father and John to meet me somewhere.”
“Why do you need them?”
“You’ll see.” He sounded mysterious. “Renee actually has a surprise for you. But I need to deliver it to keep your real relationship with Renee a secret.”
“All right,” she said cautiously. “Where?”
“Drake Hotel. The restaurant. Eight o’clock on Friday. Reservations will be in my name. Table for five. Just sit and order a cocktail and wait for me. Don’t be late.”
> “But” she said, but found herself listening to dead air.
How odd, she thought.
On Friday, she and John and her father took her father’s limousine to the Drake. As she sat in the back with them, she couldn’t help smiling. “Out with my two favorite guys.”
“Well, we’re with our angel,” John said. He wore a Hugo Boss suit she bought him for his birthday. Her father came in his suit from the office, and she wore a simple black suit by Calvin Klein with a cream-colored blouse. In her hair was an antique comb John had bought her at a street fair they went to in Greenwich Village. Filled with marcasite and emerald stones, it had tiny art deco–looking butterflies.
They arrived at the Drake at a nudge before eight o’clock. As Troy had said, there was a table waiting for them in the back. The maître d’ said, “This is the table that was requested. Very private.”
Their waiter, with an elegant French accent, took their drink orders, and they sat back and looked at each other. Madison assumed they were all thinking the same thing. What the hell were they doing there, and why was this FBI agent acting so…well, downright cloak and dagger?
At eight-fifteen, Madison checked her watch. “Okay,” she said aloud what was on her mind. “The suspense is killing me.”
Five minutes later, the three of themthey had all sat with a view of the entrance to the restaurantsaw Troy walking in with a tall gentleman.
Troy approached the tableand he was beaming.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I’d like to…well, the hell with dragging this out. I’d like to present to you your uncle, Madison…your uncle William Pruitt.”
Madison’s father nearly choked on the water he was sipping. John dropped his bread knife. And Madison felt that if she stood, her legs would fail her.
“What?” Her voice was tremulous.
The tall manwho did look remarkably like her fatherleaned down and pecked her on the cheek. Then he shook John’s hand, and walked to the other side of the table and stared at Madison’s father.