by Joss Wood
The Fixer glanced at the clock on the dashboard, knowing that time was moving along and there were chores to accomplish, plans to put in place. Time spent in this vehicle, staring at this small screen, was time wasted, but the urge to wait, to watch, was strong. What a monumental fuckup. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this.
But the situation couldn’t be changed—it could only be managed. The Fixer tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and started the car, the stereo blaring. Needing quiet, the Fixer started to inform the onboard computer to turn the radio off when the announcer’s statement caught and held.
“A video of Luc and Rafe Marshall has, in recent hours, gone viral. While their father fights for his life after a horrific car accident, the two heirs to the massive Marshall fortune were seen trading blows outside St. Aloysius. Is this the first salvo in a fight for power to take over the reins of the multibillion-dollar, multinational company?”
The Fixer’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Well, shit.”
Seriously, the Fixer thought, whipping the car into a screeching U-turn, could this situation get any worse? The Fixer tossed a hard glare into the cloudless blue sky then peeled out of the parking lot. “And that’s not a fucking challenge, Universe.”
Chapter Five
Mariella was still livid that she hadn’t been consulted about Harrison’s move to this private clinic. How dare someone take that decision out of her hands. How dare they move him without her express permission! When she found out who had authorized his transfer, heads would roll.
She looked out of the tinted windows of the limousine as they approached an automated gate sliding across its tracks. The car passed into the grounds of Whispering Oaks, and Mariella caught a glimpse of a large white house perched on top of a cliff. It was the perfect spot for a hideaway property, Mariella thought. Isolated, out of the way, off the beaten track.
Mariella turned her head to look at Joe’s profile. He looked haggard, she thought, as, she was sure, did she. “Have you managed to find out why Harrison was moved and by whom?”
Joe’s chest rose and fell, and a shadow crossed his eyes. “Just be patient a little while longer, honey. I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Mariella tapped the tip of her finger against her thigh. “I’ve known you for a long time, and when you call me honey, I know that there’s a heap of trouble coming my way.”
Joe reached out and covered her hand with his, his skin tanned and his fingers long. Joe was an affectionate guy, and she was happy to feel connected, to allow the warmth of his hand to seep under her skin, up her arm. Annoyed at the burn of the tears, Mariella cursed herself, blinked the annoying moisture away and stared straight ahead, her brain idly cataloging the landscaped gardens, the swaths of emerald lawn, the luxury mansion with its many windows.
“It looks like a luxury rehab center,” Mariella commented.
Joe nodded. “It acts as one, if the addict is influential or rich enough to be admitted. But this is, at its heart, a small hospital with cutting-edge technology and hugely experienced and very smart doctors. Harrison needs to be here—it’s the best place to be.”
“I’m not disputing that, I just have a problem with the fact that the decision to move him here was not mine, that I was not consulted,” Mariella told him.
“What happened?”
Mariella shrugged. “After the press conference, I went to see Harrison and ran into Dr. Grant before I could reach his room. He told me that he completely supported my decision to airlift Harrison to this clinic, that he’d receive excellent treatment here. He assumed that I knew what he was talking about, and I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t and that I wasn’t told about his transfer out of St. Aloysius.” Mariella shuddered. “Imagine if that titillating titbit hit the press.”
Joe’s hand tightened on hers.
“Someone used my name to move him. Who could’ve done that? How did they manage it so quickly?”
The car pulled to a stop outside the portico leading to the hospital entrance, and it didn’t escape Mariella’s attention that Joe used their arrival as an excuse to avoid her question.
The driver exited the vehicle and opened the door to Joe, who turned to help Mariella from the car. Pushing her sunglasses off her face, she noticed that there was a clear view through the front door to the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the house. A tiny sailboat was heading at a fast clip across the surface of the sea, and she desperately wished that she was on that boat, wind in her hair, sailing away.
Joe’s fingers rested on her lower back, and his voice was a slow drawl in her ear. “The children will be here in a few minutes.”
“If they weren’t followed by the vultures,” Mariella retorted. “Damned press. I’m still angry about that fight. I raised them better than that.”
They stepped into the cool air of the entrance hall and were immediately approached by a stern but handsome man. The stethoscope hanging around his neck was a good clue that he was Harrison’s doctor. Mariella idly noticed that the jacket draped over his forearm did not match his suit pants. Unable to pull her eyes from that jacket, Mariella felt icy fingers dance up her spine. Something was wrong, badly wrong. For some odd reason Mariella suddenly felt like she was standing in the headlights of an oncoming train. She wanted to jump off the rails, but she was attached to the track, bound and helpless. It would be up to the train conductor to stop the train—her fate was in someone else’s hands.
“Mom!”
Mariella turned and watched Elana fly into the hallway. She opened her arms, and Elana burrowed in close, her wild-child daughter suddenly a little girl again. Mariella kissed the top of her head, patted her back and whispered encouragement in her ear. Over Elana’s shoulder she watched Gabe, Luc and Rafe walk up the stairs and into the hallway, all three of them sporting hard expressions and cool eyes.
The doctor cleared his throat, and Mariella stepped away from Elana but kept her arm around her daughter’s slim waist. Holding her hand out to the doctor, she introduced herself and her family.
“I am Dr. Michael Malone, chief medical officer here at Whispering Oaks. I am treating your husband.”
“Has there been any improvement?” Mariella asked, dropping her arm from Elana’s waist.
“No, I’m afraid that hasn’t happened. His condition hasn’t changed,” Dr. Malone replied gravely.
“Can I see him?” Mariella demanded.
“The nurses are busy with him now. Perhaps in half an hour. Ten minutes at a time, and only two visitors every hour for the first day,” Dr. Malone said, his tone suggesting that they not argue. It wouldn’t help, Mariella thought. This man ruled this space.
She’d choose her battles wisely, and if she didn’t push him on visiting hours, he might give her something else. “Can you tell me who authorized Harrison’s transfer to your facility?”
Dr. Malone didn’t react at all. “I am afraid I cannot.”
Call her spoiled and indulged, call her whatever you like, but Mariella detested hearing the word no. “I insist you tell me. He is my husband and my responsibility.”
“That may be so, madam, but I cannot.”
Mariella lifted her chin, ignoring Joe’s hand on her arm. He was trying to get her to back down, walk away, but Mariella’s blood was up and she wanted answers. And she wanted them now. “You must!”
“I can’t, because I don’t know.”
Mariella blinked then frowned. He spoke the truth, she realized, his words sinking in. His eyes never dropped from hers, never wavered. He truly didn’t know. “How is that possible?”
“Many people with high profiles pass through here. Some we acknowledge by name, and some we do not. Confidentiality is paramount to us. I was contacted by an individual and told that an influential man with severe injuries needed our s
pecialized care. I said that I had space, and a financial transaction secured his place with us.”
“No questions asked?” Luc moved across the room to stand by Mariella’s side.
“It’s not my job to question the source of the funding—my job is to provide the best medical care with complete anonymity.” Dr. Malone pasted a small smile on his face. “Now, through there is one of our reception rooms, which leads onto the balcony with grand views of the beach and ocean. I have arranged for refreshments—unfortunately, due to our dedication to privacy, we do not have serving staff. I will send a nurse to fetch you when the Captain can receive visitors.”
“The Captain?” Elana asked, her arched eyebrows pulling together in confusion.
“We find it easier to call our patients by aliases—it’s another privacy measure. Oh, I forgot.” Dr. Malone picked up the jacket from his arm and passed it to Mariella. “This followed your husband from St. Aloysius. I believe they found this jacket a little way from his body. It must’ve fallen out of the car when it rolled. His wallet is in the side pocket. It was, I understand, in the back pocket of his suit pants.”
Mariella took the jacket and buried her nose in the fabric. She could smell Harrison’s cologne, and it took all her willpower not to cry. Joe placed a hand on the center of her back, and she immediately felt comforted.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Joe said. “We’ll leave you to your duties.”
Dr. Malone sent Mariella a sympathetic smile before crossing the room to a locked door. Mariella watched as he punched in a code and placed his thumb on a fingerprint scanner. The door, eventually, opened. Whispering Oaks took privacy very seriously indeed.
Joe’s hand fell, and Mariella felt bereft. She watched as he walked over to the side table holding a pitcher of water flavored with mint and lime slices. Mariella nodded when Joe asked her if she’d like a glass. Mariella noticed Joe’s hand shaking as he poured the water from the pitcher into a crystal glass. Taking a moment to look at her old friend, she noticed that the grooves running past his mouth were deeper than normal, his lips thin and his normally merry eyes bleak. Joe looked like he held the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Mariella gripped Harrison’s jacket tighter and felt the crunch of paper beneath her fingers. Curious, she opened the jacket and pushed her fingers into the inside pocket. She pulled an envelope from the pocket, saw the printed address on the back flap and frowned.
The letter was from the Cayman Islands. Mariella frowned and flipped the envelope over. A logo was printed in the top corner, and the tiny letters under the crest read “Finco International Bank.” Seeing that her children were walking toward the balcony, Mariella gave in to her curiosity and slid her finger under the flap and pulled the letter from the envelope. She flipped it open, saw that it was a statement from a bank account, and her eyes dropped to the bottom of the page. The credit balance was in excess of a hundred million dollars.
“Mariella, your water.”
Mariella lifted her hand to take the glass Joe held out to her, but her fingers refused to grip the icy surface and the glass dropped to the carpet. Water droplets hit her shoes and her bare calves, and an ice shard bounced off the high gloss of Joe’s dress shoe.
That’s my life, Mariella thought, flowing away from me.
Mariella felt Joe take the paper from her hand and his eyes scanned the document. He whistled, carefully folded the statement again, looked at her, and his single fuck bounced off the walls of the reception room.
“Joe?” Mariella looked at him. “What’s going on?”
Joe took her hand and held it between both of his. “Well, that helps me with the decision I’ve been struggling with.”
Mariella frowned. “What decision?”
“About how much to tell you and when.” Joe raked a hand through his hair. He looked to where her children were standing on the balcony. “Let’s go outside, and we’ll sit down and have a conversation,” Joe suggested. “There are—” he hesitated “—things to be said.”
She didn’t want to hear; she didn’t want her life to change. She wanted Harrison to wake up, her life to go back to what it was. But that wasn’t going to happen, not today. Mariella nodded, straightened her shoulders and forced her legs to walk toward the balcony, toward this new life that she neither wanted nor requested.
* * *
Mariella sat down on the closest seat and stared out to sea, looking for the boat that she’d caught a brief glimpse of earlier. It was nowhere to be seen. A hundred million dollars in a bank account she knew nothing about? God, had Harrison become involved in something shady, like money laundering or drugs? His Vegas hotels operated casinos, and he routinely came into contact with men from the other side of the financial tracks. Had someone lured him into a deal that colored outside the lines? Harrison’s ambition was the driving force in his life, and he’d never outgrown his desire to prove himself to her, to out-rich his in-laws. He could now buy and sell the Santiagos a few times over, but the ambition and the drive for money hadn’t abated; if anything, they had strengthened over the past decade.
Mariella stroked the fabric of Harrison’s jacket, which she’d draped across her knees. Thinking she might’ve missed something else, she searched the other pockets of his jacket, which were empty, except the side pocket, which contained, as Dr. Malone said, his wallet. She flipped through it, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Around a thousand in cash, his no-limit credit cards, his driver’s license. Nothing else. It was clean, uncomplicated. Everything that her life, at this present moment, was not.
Joe gestured to the outdoor furniture and called out, “Sit down, everyone. I think we need to talk.”
Mariella frowned at his stark-with-worry face. She watched as he poured wine for her and Elana from the bottle in the ice bucket on the white cast-iron table. The men each took a beer, and they sat down in a rough circle.
Mariella placed her glass on the table in front of her and linked her hands around her knees.
“Obviously, this has been a horrible time, and we are all deeply worried about Harrison, but there is still much to discuss,” Joe said, his voice rough with emotion.
Mariella nodded, his blunt attitude pulling her out of her shocked state. “Business stills needs to be handled, and decisions still need to be made. We need to discuss how that’s going to happen.”
Joe cleared his throat. “Before we get to that, there is something you should know.”
Here it comes, Mariella thought. The train was gathering speed...
Joe withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket of his slouchy linen jacket, and she realized it was the bank account statement she’d found in Harrison’s jacket pocket. It was a measure of her state of mind that she hadn’t realized that Joe had taken possession of the document. Joe handed the envelope to her, and Mariella slid it into the long side pocket of her limited-edition Fendi bag.
“What’s that?” Gabe asked, always observant.
Joe raised his eyebrows at Mariella, and she knew that he was leaving to her the decision to tell the children about the bank account or not. Her instinct was not to tell them, to shield them from this latest bombshell. She also wanted to try to work out why Harrison had kept the bank account a secret and, hell, whether there were other secrets she wasn’t privy to. Her children would ask questions she couldn’t answer. No, it was better that they remain in the dark about the king’s ransom gathering interest in their father’s name. Dammit, Harrison.
Before lifting her head to look at Gabe, Mariella dropped her sunglasses over her eyes, not willing to take the chance that Gabe would read her eyes and know that she was about to, deliberately, deceive them.
She bit the inside corner of her cheek and saw Gabe’s eyes narrow. What should she do?
“Let’s not get bogged down by irrelevant details and focus on what we can cont
rol,” Joe suggested. “We need to talk business.”
He’d seen her indecision, and Joe, practical and protective as always, was trying to change the subject. Mariella sent him a grateful smile. “You’re right. We do need to talk about what happens if Harrison takes a while to heal. Did Harrison discuss a contingency plan with you, Joe?”
Joe rubbed his jaw. “Did he discuss one with you?”
Mariella shook her head. Joe knew, as well as she did, that her husband thought he was invincible. “He thought he’d live forever. The thing is, we need someone to make the hard decisions, the day-to-day decisions. Obviously, seeing that I helped Harrison build this business, and Joe is his longtime business partner, we are best placed to do that, with Gabe’s help. I will have my PA draft a memo to all our senior staff telling them that.”
Joe held up his hand, and Mariella stopped talking. “That’s not going to happen, Mariella.”
“What do you mean?” Mariella asked.
Joe looked resigned but resolute. “I asked you whether he discussed any plans with you. I didn’t say that he hadn’t made plans. He did, and you have no power to change those plans or even give input into those decisions.”
To Mariella it sounded like Joe was speaking Mandarin. What could he mean? Of course she would always have a say in what happened at Marshall International. She traveled with Harrison as they established a business footprint internationally, opening venues in Tokyo, London, Paris. It was their company—she and Harrison had made it together. She was at every ground breaking, at every nightclub opening, at every opening night at new restaurants. Hell, their oldest and most iconic nightclub was called Mariella, in honor of her. She and Harrison were a team; they had been for thirty plus years. “I don’t understand.”
“Clearly,” Luc said, resting his elbows on his knees. “Neither do I, so I’d suggest that you start explaining, Joe.”
Joe narrowed his eyes at her eldest child. “I understand that you are worried about your father, but I’d like to, gently, remind you that I don’t take orders from you, Luc.”