A sister and niece who would soon be homeless if I didn’t figure something out fast.
“Zio!”
Speak of the devil.
I turned at the sound of my niece’s bubbly voice, but not before I took another glug of bourbon and tucked the flask into the breast pocket of my trench coat, then tipped the brim of my gray fedora a little farther over my brow to hide the glaze in my eyes. Drunk at seven in the morning isn’t a good look for anyone. Sofia didn’t need to see me like this.
My sister, however, wasn’t giving me a free pass.
“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” Frankie asked, glancing at my hidden breast pocket as they approached.
See, this was why I didn’t want to go home. My sister was a third-grade teacher at a school in Carroll Gardens—she spent half her days tracking down forbidden crap her students brought to class.
I shrugged as I gave Sofia a quick kiss. “I’m just getting off work, right? Call it my nightcap.” I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice. “Time doesn’t exist anymore anyway.”
“Well, if that’s the case, you won’t want your birthday present.”
“What?” Sofia looked between us, aghast. “Why wouldn’t Zio want his birthday gift?”
I glared at Frankie. “You just had to go there, didn’t you?”
She frowned, then turned to Sofia. “Sof, go throw rocks for a second, okay? Can you count ten and see how far they’ll go?”
“I can count twenty!” she shouted jubilantly, scampering to the small beach next to us. “Watch!”
“Kid’s got it made,” I remarked. “If we could all just be happy skipping rocks, maybe the world would be a better place.”
“Hmph.” Frankie frowned as she came to stand next to me. “Well, while you feel sorry for yourself, open that. Happy birthday, big brother.”
I looked down to find a small package pressed onto my lap. “What’s this?”
“Just something little. And unmedicated. Open it.”
Obediently, I pulled the ribbon off the small black box, then opened it to find a scarlet paisley tie folded neatly inside.
“It’s—” Something thick lodged in my throat as I saw a similar fabric tightly binding a pair of snow-white wrists to a headboard. “It’s nice, Frankie. Thank you.”
“You burned that other red tie, so I figured you could use a new one. Sofia helped me pick it out.”
I blinked, taken back to the day I’d arrived home from Boston, gone straight to the kitchen, and burned the red tie in my pocket. The one that had still singed for four hours from the remnants of passion and rage all at once.
“It’s great, Frankie. Thank you.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it. That’s real silk, you know.”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I’m a little down, that’s all.”
“I’d say down is an understatement.” She sank to the cement block beside me, keeping one eye on Sofia. “Everyone’s worried about you. Nonna told me to drag you to Mass this weekend kicking and screaming if I had to. I told her I can only manage one toddler at a time.”
I shrugged, my hand moving automatically to the cross dangling over my shirt. I hadn’t been to confession in months. I hadn’t stepped foot in a church in just as long, and had been avoiding the calls from Nonna, Lea, and just about everyone else I was related to for more than eight weeks.
“This just isn’t where I expected to be at thirty-fuckin’-seven, you know?” I said. “A disgraced lawyer, bartending while I’m on unpaid administrative leave. And for what? A fuckin’ broad.”
Frankie snorted. “Okay, now I know you need to lay off the hard stuff. You keep talking like Sinatra, and I’m going to drag you over to AA.”
“No, no, no,” I said, but allowed her to reach into my jacket pocket and remove the flask. She was right. It only made me that much more pathetic.
“Have you heard from her?”
“Who?”
Frankie rolled her eyes. “Hilary Clinton. Who do you think? It is your birthday.”
“You think she’s going to, what, send me a card? Drop off some balloons?” I snorted. The idea of a princess like Nina de Vries strolling down our cracked sidewalk with a dozen multicolored balloons was laughable. “Nah, that’s all done with.”
Frankie glanced at the paper on my lap, then back at me. “It is?”
I scowled, crumpled the paper, and hurled it toward a garbage can a few feet away. It missed.
Frankie sighed. “Are you working again tonight?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I need to make the bills somehow.”
“What time? I could be home a little early. Get a cheesecake from Junior’s if you want. It won’t be Nonna’s, but it’s something…”
Frankie trailed off. Her meaning was clear. I’d stalwartly ignored any attempt to lure me up to the Bronx to celebrate getting older with my sisters and grandmother, who loved a party more than anyone.
“I have to be at work by five,” I lied. My shift didn’t start until ten.
Frankie’s brow rose. She could clearly see right through me, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she waited a moment more before speaking again.
“Mattie?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we…are we going to be okay?”
I frowned. “With what?”
“With…look, I have to ask. I noticed the mortgage is due in a few days, and, well, I know Jamie’s only been able to give you part-time shifts, and—”
“We’re fine,” I said a little too sharply. “Don’t worry about that.”
Frankie looked unsure. “I mean, I could probably pick up some shifts at Tino’s too, like I used to. Nonna could watch Sofia; I’m sure she wouldn’t mind—”
“I said we’re fine,” I cut her off again. “Frankie, I promise. This is your and Sofia’s house too. I’m not going to let anything happen to you two, all right?”
Even as I said it, a heavy weight lodged in my gut. I hated that she even had to wonder. I hated that we were both back where we started—Frankie working odd jobs because her teacher’s salary couldn’t pay for her and her little girl, me struggling to make mortgage payments I was way under-qualified to have. We had a tenant below who helped defray some of the costs of the red brick house off Van Duys Avenue. But it didn’t cover everything. Not even close.
“Zio!” Sofia interrupted as she scampered back over from the water. “Did you like it? I helped Mommy pick it out.”
I looked down at the tie in my lap, and immediately felt like shit. “Shi—shoot, kid. Yes, I love it. You did good, Sof. Real good.”
Sofia’s face split with a wide grin, minus two teeth. “See, Mommy! I knew it!”
She ran back to the water to continue throwing rocks.
“Okay,” Frankie said. “Well…if I don’t see you. Happy birthday, Mattie.”
I glanced at Sofia to make sure she wasn’t looking, then drained the last of my bottle. “Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Frankie. Thanks.”
Chapter Three
Nina
“I don’t understand. Why can’t I just give him what he wants and be done with it?”
Four pairs of eyes all blinked, none of them surprised.
I continued pacing on the other side of a marble-topped coffee table.
Jane and Eric sighed simultaneously from their places on their new olive-green Poltrona Frau sofa (I had to give Jane credit—her style was far more adventurous than mine, but she certainly made it work) while Barney Clay and Delia Hibbert, the two attorneys representing me in what was turning out to be a far more contentious divorce than anyone had anticipated, continued scratching notes on identical legal pads. They came highly recommended by Skylar when I decided to file for divorce in New York instead of waiting a year in Massachusetts. I just couldn’t stand to be married to my husband one moment longer than I had to.
Two months ago, the same day that I had pled guilty to charges of accessory to trafficking and identity fraud, I had also offi
cially filed for divorce from my husband of ten years. That, however, was just the start. Getting the man to sign any sort of agreement was quite another—particularly when I had agreed to testify against him as a result of my plea deal. Greg Cardozo, the attorney from the Brooklyn DA’s office now prosecuting that case, had not yet provided the information to Calvin’s counsel, though eventually he would have to. But all the lawyers I was working with thought Calvin likely suspected it, as did the newspapers. And subsequently, he was planning to use our divorce to prevent it at all costs.
Barney and Delia had come tonight with the bad news that yet another offer had been turned down by Calvin’s representation.
“Because, Nina,” Jane said as gently as she could from where she was currently curled up under Eric’s arm. “What he wants is everything.”
“Not to mention the impossible,” Eric added dryly.
He had arrived home from work just as Delia and Barney were finishing up their review of my case. My cousin still hadn’t even loosened his tie, but he was more than happy to nurse a vodka soda and cuddle with his wife. My own glass of pinot grigio sat untouched.
I turned from my place in front of the fireplace.
“Still,” I said to my attorneys. “He can’t be serious. Two billion dollars in DVS shares? A seat on the board? He knows my net worth. He knows I don’t have anything close to that.”
“He also knows you’ll do anything to retain full legal custody of your daughter,” Delia replied.
“Ms. de Vries,” said Barney, “if you might consider sharing at least some custody—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Fuck, no.”
“My cousin will never do that.”
Jane, Eric, and I all spoke at once. My heart thumped a few times in anger, but just as soon quieted. It was good to know my family felt as vehemently as I did.
I strode forward, collapsed onto a thick white ottoman, and pushed my face into my hands. “I don’t know what to do. We’ve offered the penthouse, the property in Aspen, that ridiculous hut in the Maldives he insisted on buying because all his friends swore by vacations on atolls. Do you remember that?”
Eric looked at me blankly. I had forgotten for a moment that he had actually been absent for most of my marriage.
“My entire stock portfolio and more than seventy percent of my liquid funds,” I rattled on. “You would think taking nearly all my assets would appease the man. It’s worth much more than the hundred million coming in my inheritance and what’s left in my trust.”
“The problem is that he knows there’s a lot more behind it all,” Barney said. “Mr. Gardner was there for the reading of your grandmother’s will, Ms. de Vries. He knows what the family is worth. And his other attorney is still doing everything he can to challenge the will in probate.”
Eric muttered something unintelligible behind me that sounded like “Don’t I fucking know it.” I gathered the probate issue had caused him some headaches at work once he had assumed leadership of DVS.
“But he’s not even a family member!” I burst out. “Tell me again how he managed to squirm his way out of the prenup, Barney? I cannot possibly believe that my grandmother would have ever let this happen!”
Delia and Barney both traded bemused, slightly terrified looks that weren’t unlike so many other traded glances I had seen around Celeste before she died.
“Well, as we’ve been over, Ms. de Vries, Mr. Gardner signed the prenuptial agreement less than two days before your wedding,” Barney said uneasily.
“We were engaged for less than a month, though,” I argued.
“Indeed,” Delia replied. “And he’s using that to argue that he signed under duress. Unfortunately, it also sounds like the judge may be inclined to agree with him.”
I groaned into my hands. “This is ridiculous. No one actually named in the will is arguing Grandmother’s state of mind or the document’s validity, but somehow he can get away with that too in probate? Calvin should have absolutely no standing here.”
“Well, considering your marriage lasted ten years, he may have more than you think,” Delia countered gently. “Mr. Gardner’s argument is that he has a right to maintain a similar lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed, which is larger than what he was offered in the prenuptial agreement. And the judge may sympathize. Now he’s not going to accept some real estate and a few million dollars and walk away, even if it is worth everything you have. Not when your family is worth billions and they have supported you both for years under, as he claims, the logic that until Mr. de Vries returned to the family fold, you were originally going to inherit the de Vries fortune. Not Eric.”
“That’s all that’s in your original trust?” Eric asked. “A few million dollars?”
“Really?” Jane piped up next to him. “Is that what’s important here?”
I frowned back at him. “Thirteen, to be exact. There was more, but I gave some to Calvin when we married to start his first investment company. But I’m only given a percentage of the interest as an allowance. Any more than that, and I have to request special permission. My father named Grandmother the head of the board of trustees when I was a girl. When he left for Europe. You should know this, Eric, considering you inherited that position along with everything else.”
I couldn’t help the resentment. It was one thing to be a teenage girl asking my grandmother for money for seasonal fittings or an extra trip to Paris with friends. Had I been given full access to my trust at that age, it would have almost certainly disappeared in a matter of years, if not months. But now I was thirty-one. And still begging my cousin, who was more like a brother, for pocket money.
Yet another cage from which I longed to be free.
“I—I didn’t realize,” Eric said, looking a bit ashamed.
“Didn’t realize that Grandmother held nearly all the purse strings and then handed them to you?” I replied dryly.
Eric swallowed and turned back to the attorneys. “Okay, so he’s tying things up because he thinks I’ll pay him off. For the record, I’m not against it—”
“Eric, no,” I put in, but he held up his hand, steely-eyed and suddenly resembling our grandmother more than I’d ever seen.
“Nina, it’s the least I can do. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. Maybe if I had been, you’d never have gotten wrapped up with the bastard.” He turned back to Delia and Barney. “Billions, no. I’ll have to speak to my finance guys, but I think we could put together a package worth up to five hundred million, likely including some stocks in other companies, possibly a subsidiary that we can let go. The penthouse and that creepy island. But no ownership of the company. That’s a hard line. Can you feel out his interest? Don’t name the number.”
Delia and Barney both frantically jotted down the details Eric had listed. My mouth was dry. Inheritance or not, five hundred million was far more than I was ever going to call my own. Calvin would be a fool not to take it. And perhaps that made Eric a fool for even offering.
Every iota of resentment I’d felt before melted away…and immediately turned to guilt.
“Of course, Mr. de Vries.” Barney nodded, and Delia shoved her notes into her briefcase.
I stood up and walked to a window looking onto West Seventy-Sixth Street, watching the occasional car drive past, a few people walking quickly home from work. They had places to be. Homes of their own. Refuges to return to.
I was tired of this. So, so tired. For the first time in over ten years, I had energy to fight, to do something more than lie back and allow whatever misfortune to wash over me like a dirty tide. Yet, once again, I was powerless. Despite only just having been freed from one actual cage, I was still a trapped animal. The world was out there, so close, waiting for me to touch it, and I was tired of everyone else holding the keys to my freedom but me. I wished desperately I knew how to pick the locks.
“It’s kind of strange, you know,” Jane said. “All the changes Celeste made before she died.”
I turned around. “Like what?”
“Like changing the terms of your trust so that you couldn’t access it until you were forty.”
I grimaced. It had been a lovely surprise last spring to learn that my thirtieth birthday no longer marked full ownership of my assets. I’d paid for it too when Calvin found out. Absently, I rubbed my elbow. That bruise had taken months to disappear.
“And then when she funneled all of your shares of the company out of your name and into Eric’s,” Jane added.
“Yes,” I said wryly. “It almost seems like she didn’t think she could trust me with my own money.”
“Or she knew this was going to happen, Nina. She knew that rat would try to take it all.”
I crossed my arms, hugging my thin frame, which had gotten even thinner over the last few months. Everything tasted like sawdust. I could barely swallow seltzer water.
“Then why did she let me marry him in the first place?” I asked bitterly. “Grandmother hated Calvin. That was never a secret. If she liked to control everyone so much, why not that too?”
Eric shrugged as he crossed one ankle elegantly over his knee and toyed with a loose lock of Jane’s hair. “Well, you never did tell anyone that he wasn’t Olivia’s father. So far as we all knew, he was. She probably just thought he had the right to his own family, at least.”
An awkward silence descended over the table. Eric and Jane had taken the news that Olivia wasn’t Calvin’s biological child in stride, but I did wonder if my cousin was a bit hurt that I had kept up such a lie after his return to the family fold. They had, however, agreed not to say anything to Olivia until I found the right time. The problem was, I wasn’t sure when that would be.
“There is…one other option here,” Barney ventured.
The lawyer withdrew a document and set it on the table. I walked closer to examine it and immediately recoiled. It was a nondisclosure agreement that effectively forced me to do nothing but take the fifth if and when I was called to the stand in Calvin’s trial.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Ms. de Vries, your testimony in Mr. Gardner’s criminal trial is arguably worth more than anything. If you agreed not to testify—”
The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3) Page 4