Champagne Brunch: The Stiletto Sisters Series

by Ainsley St Claire

  “Put your legs around my neck,” he says.

  I lift my legs to his shoulders, and Axel strokes long and fast. It doesn’t take long until he grunts his release. I’m so sensitive that I can feel him pulse his climax.

  He pulls out, and immediately I miss him. He grabs a tissue from my nightstand and wraps the knotted condom before tossing it in the wastepaper basket. Then he returns to pull me close.

  “I swear, each time we do this, it gets better and better. I wish I didn’t have to be at the airport so early tomorrow.” He kisses my ear.

  “And I wish I didn’t have to meet with the lawyer tomorrow.”

  “Regarding Flirt?” he asks.

  “No, tomorrow I’m being deposed by Viviana’s lawyer.”

  He sighs. “I’m sorry. I’ll be there with you in spirit. Come meet my sister and her kids tomorrow for dinner. We’ll order something and just relax. You can tell me about your day, or we can completely ignore it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he whispers, sounding half asleep.

  “Do you want to go with me to Jackson Graham’s wedding next weekend in Maui? No pressure,” I add in the same breath. Part of me is still certain he’s going to run away. I still haven’t totally come clean.

  “I think I can make that happen,” he says after a moment. “The team will be doing an East Coast swing.”

  I lie in his arms, and my heart soars.

  Chapter 18

  Mia

  Geoffrey Lindsey, the Assistant US Attorney from Oregon, has joined Marci and me for today’s debacle: my deposition with Viviana’s lawyer at her office. Marci warned me that Tatyana Turgeneva plays dumb to increase her witnesses’ anxiety. And she appears to be correct. So far, Tatyana has forgotten to tell the court reporter the correct time for our meeting, said her computer wasn’t connecting to the network and her notes were on the server, then the camera wasn’t recording, and now she needs another coffee after all this time.

  “Are you sure you don’t want another coffee?” she asks us, a faint Russian lilt to her voice.

  “I’m good,” Marci assures her.

  Assistant US Attorney Lindsey waves her off.

  I shake my head.

  More than an hour after we were supposed to begin, the court reporter has arrived, Tatyana is connected to the network, the camera is recording, and finally she sits across from me with her hot coffee.

  She places both palms on the table. “I think we can finally start. I appreciate your patience.” She smiles like a big, fat Cheshire cat.

  I take a deep breath. I’m not sure anything I do can throw her off, but then again, she didn’t grow up with my mother. I’m ready to deploy the reverse interview techniques I encountered growing up with a strong mom in the Couture household.

  I look her in the eyes. “Tell me, how long have you worked for Viviana Prentis?”

  AUSA Lindsey turns to me with the same look he might have if I stripped off my suit and shook the girls at the table. Horror. I ignore him. He’s hardly said two words to me, and thankfully Marci has done most of the prep for today. Sure, you could argue he’s from Portland and doesn’t know Tatyana Turgeneva, but he did nothing to ready me for this interview. I may be going a little off script, but you don’t get where I am by being unsure and meek.

  Tatyana’s eyes widen. She was expecting me to be complacent. I’m sure Viviana has fed her every single one of my insecurities. But Viviana always underestimated me. That’s why I win at poker, why my company has hit nineteen on the Forbes Fortune 50 list, and why I’m the youngest female CEO in the top 500. Tatyana needs to know this is only round one with me.

  “I’m not sure exactly.” She smiles, but without teeth or her eyes.

  “Would it be before she killed Cecelia Lancaster? Or while she was hopping around the world, evading the police and lying to all her friends? Maybe it was after she was stupid enough to think she could get to Nate Lancaster in his home and made a lame attempt to kill him?”

  “I see someone isn’t happy about being here,” she teases.

  But she doesn’t answer my question. Marci told me she’s a second-generation Russian mob lawyer, and most likely she was working for Viviana long before she killed Cecelia.

  “I figure all your stalling techniques were designed to ratchet up my anxiety because Viviana told you I get anxious.” I smile as she gives me a smirk. I’m on the right track. “But Viviana always failed to realize all that I’ve accomplished. Also, I’m very good at reading people. So, let’s cut this pretense that you’re an airhead and want to disarm me with your false charm. Ask your questions you already have the answers to, and let’s get this over with.”

  She sits back in her chair. “I figured Viviana might have been swayed by her devotion to her friend.”

  I look at her with disgust. Viviana was no devoted friend. “Let’s get started. We agreed we’d go until one, and I have lunch plans today. You fucked around for over ninety minutes, wasting our time as part of a power play, so you’d better get going.” I look dramatically at my watch—the watch Nate Lancaster gave me at the last poker tournament. “You’ve got two hours and twenty-three minutes.”

  Tatyana looks at Lindsey. “You know I can have a judge compel her to stay here for hours.”

  Marci clears her throat. “Maybe, but I think you overplayed your hand with Ms. Couture. We were prepared for your antics, and I have a statement from eight other witnesses about how you dick around and waste hours with mindless talking and conversation to ask a half dozen vital questions. I think the judge will rule in our favor, so I suggest you start with those before Ms. Couture leaves.”

  Lindsey stares at Marci and Tatyana like it’s a tennis match. He’s out of his league on this, and right now it’s painfully obvious.

  “We’ll see.” Tatyana returns her palms to the table. “How did you meet Viviana Prentis?” she asks.

  “We met about eight years ago. We’d both been part of a round of investments by Sullivan Healy Newsom—SHN.”

  Tatyana raises her eyebrows. “That’s it?” she asks.

  “I answered your question,” I reply. “What more are you looking for?”

  “Did you hit it off?”

  “I guess. I don’t recall if we exchanged contact information.”

  “You didn’t go out after SHN’s circus party?”

  I suppress an eye roll. It wasn’t a circus. It was a company summer picnic with carnival performers. “I don’t recall whether she was there that evening. There were probably two dozen people at the place I went after the SHN event.” I shrug.

  “You don’t recall having a conversation with Viviana about your plans and your data-mining algorithm?” she asks.

  I purse my lips. “I don’t. I’m sure at some point I told her about it, but I can’t recall exactly when.”

  “Would it surprise you to know that Viviana was a meticulous journaler, and she wrote down all her notes about who she talked to and what they talked about?”

  My lips quirk. “I would be surprised that it was a journal and not a report to her KGB superiors.”

  AUSA Lindsey struggles to swallow a sip of coffee as he coughs and sputters.

  Tatyana’s mask slips for a moment. I’m sure they’re recopying Viviana’s reports over to journals so they can be admitted as evidence.

  “Do you recall that you told her about your plans to sell the information you collect to the highest bidder?”

  That catches me off guard, but I touch my watch and control my emotions. “I know for a fact that I never told her anything of the sort.”

  “Can you be sure?” she challenges.

  “Without a doubt, because that’s not what I do, and in fact, it would be impossible.” I stare at her, daring her to argue. If she takes this to court, she’ll look like an idiot.

  She tilts her head to the side. “But your customers run searches that target marketing and information for them, yes?”

  “Actu
ally, it’s a basic command. If you search online for pink dresses, you drop a cookie. When you go to other websites, you carry that cookie with you. If an advertiser has pink dresses, they can bid and try to win the right to advertise their pink dress to you.” I lean forward. “But to see what cookies someone has and the searches they’ve done, you need to have their actual computer. So even if they use my services, I don’t have access to any particular bit of information to sell to someone else.”

  I sit back. Take that, bitch.

  “But you bill for each of those searches.”

  “Our client users are billed a certain amount based on the plan they have with us, not by search.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Landon Walsh.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  I smile. “No.”

  “What about Jackson Graham?”

  I tilt my head, not sure what her question is.

  “Did you sleep with Jackson Graham?”

  “No. I don’t sleep with my friends. But Viviana slept with both of them before they met their fiancées.”

  We spend the next two hours going through a few things, and I quickly realize how to tell when she’s trying to bait me. She picks up her pen from her notepad, so she doesn’t get many gotcha moments. Throughout the conversation, I keep my eye on the clock, and at one p.m., I stand. “Well, I guess that’s about it.”

  “I’m not done yet,” she says, sounding a bit panicked.

  “I’m afraid I am. We agreed to a one o’clock end time, and it’s one. I told you I had lunch plans. If you’d like to speak with me again, you’ll need to ask a judge.” I walk out of the conference room with Marci and head for the elevator bank.

  Lindsey does not seem to have realized I wasn’t bluffing when I told her I’d be leaving at one, and he’s left to gather his computer and the notes in front of him.

  Tatyana stands and yells from the doorway, “Viviana would like to see you. She misses you.”

  My heart stops beating. I miss my friend terribly, but I know Viviana is not my friend.

  “Remind her that she betrayed me. She knows what I do to people who deceive me.”

  Marci joins me in the elevator when it arrives, and once the doors close, she reaches for my hand and squeezes it. We agreed before we started this morning that we’d not talk in Tatyana’s building at all, because we couldn’t be sure it wasn’t bugged.

  As we step outside, AUSA Lindsey catches up. “Well, that was enlightening,” he says, a bit short of breath.

  I look at him, confused.

  “She had very little to say that was surprising,” Marci tells him.

  “Oh… well…” he stammers. “It shows us she doesn’t have much.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Marci counters. “Viviana has documented reports of her everyday interactions with everyone she met over the last decade, or even longer.”

  Marci and I leave him standing on the sidewalk and get in my car. Peter pulls into traffic to drive us to the Waterfront Café.

  “Holy shit, woman,” Marci exclaims as the car picks up speed. “You were channeling someone fierce in that depo. I’d love to get a copy of the video so I can show it to all my clients who need instructions on how to manage a deposition.”

  I shake my head. “She pissed me off making me wait. Every two and a half minutes, I adjusted my skirt. I figured it would make her believe I was nervous, but it also gave me something to do. I counted the seconds and then adjusted and began counting again, keeping count of the number of times I adjusted my skirt.”

  She looks at me carefully. “Were you counting while we talked?”

  I purse my lips. “Yep.”

  “I can’t do that and be precise.”

  I chuckle. “That’s because you didn’t grow up with my mother. She was tough.”

  “I do know tough mothers, so I get it. Why do you think Viviana wants to meet with you?”

  “To mess with my head.” I look out at the streets full of people. I need a break. The City is beginning to wear on me.

  But I am getting away this weekend with Axel. And we’ve also talked about going to New York for a Yankees game. That would mean taking him to meet my parents. They won’t be happy he’s not Chinese, but they’ll survive. My sister covered the Chinese husband when she married Marvin.

  “—so it may be hard,” Marci says.

  I nod. I’ve totally missed everything she said.

  “Here we are,” I announce, to cover my checking out.

  We’ve arrived at the Waterfront Café. It’s located along the shore, just below the Bay Bridge, and has a spectacular view. It also has a private dining room you can rent if you don’t want your meeting to be disturbed. Today is one of those days.

  When we walk in, I can see we’re the last to arrive. Walker Clifton is here, as are Nate and Mason and Jim—pretty much everyone relevant to Viviana’s case. Marci takes her place at the head of the table, and a waiter appears at my elbow, asking for a drink order.

  “Water is fine,” I tell him.

  He looks at Marci. “Unsweetened iced tea, please. No lemon.”

  “How did it go?” Nate asks.

  I shrug.

  “Mia was a rock star in there,” Marci says. “As predicted, Turgeneva stalled.”

  “For over ninety minutes,” I add.

  Nate’s jaw clenches. He’d have walked out. Maybe that’s what I should have done.

  Mason rolls his eyes and Walker looks up at the ornate ceiling and shakes his head.

  “Before she started, our lady of the hour here—” Marci does her best Vanna White impression. “—asked Tatyana when Viviana hired her—if it was before she murdered Cecelia, when she was running all over the globe evading capture, or after she admitted to Nate that she’d killed his wife.”

  “Were you that direct?” Mason asks.

  “Pretty much.” I shrug and look over at Nate, who thankfully looks impressed rather than upset with me. “I’m sorry, Nate.”

  He holds up his hands. “I love it. And she has been working for Viv for a long time.”

  Marci shares a few other reactions and notes that the biggest takeaway is that they have Viviana’s journal, which is likely really her briefs to her handlers.

  “Did anything she say surprise you?” Nate asks.

  Marci shakes her head.

  “Yes,” I answer, and heads swing to me. “For one thing, we now know she’s not afraid to lie. She accused me of selling the information Diamond Analytics collects to the highest bidder. But even crazier, she said Viv missed me and wanted to talk.”

  Nate shakes his head. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Viviana Prentis is not my friend. She lied to me from the very beginning. She’s lonely sitting in Colorado. I’m not giving her the time of day. She can rot, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Walker looks at me, his eyebrows raised. “Mia, don’t reject it yet. We may need to get information out of her.”

  I take a deep breath. I don’t think I can face Viviana right now. She hurt me.

  “If it can benefit the case, you’re open to having a conversation, right?” Walker presses.

  “If you and the US Attorney in Oregon think it’s a good idea, I’ll do it. But know I won’t be meeting her happily. Nothing positive for me personally comes out of that conversation.”

  We chat a bit more after our food arrives, and I know Marci won’t toot her own horn, so I want to be sure everyone is aware of how essential she is. “Walker, the Assistant US Attorney for the District of Oregon, Geoffrey Lindsey, is too young and too inexperienced to handle this case. Tatyana walked all over him. Because of Marci’s advice and preparation, I was able to do well, but had she not been sitting by my side, I would have struggled. He was no help.”

  Walker looks at Marci.

  “I was going to say it when we got home,” she murmurs.

  He shakes his head. “A
bram Frieman knows this is a big case. I can’t believe he wasn’t there himself. I’ll look into that.”

  Once lunch is over, I breathe a sigh of relief. I want to be done thinking about this for a while.

  Nate walks me out to wait for my car. “Thank you for doing this,” he says. “I know it’s not easy having your life filleted in front of the world. Viv is going to make this hard, but I appreciate all you’re doing to help my girls get their closure.”

  My heart breaks for Katrina and Bex. They lost their mother too early. “You’re too kind.” I flash him my watch, and he grins. “This was my talisman today. Every time I wanted to tell her to fuck off or storm out of the room, I touched the watch.”

  He smiles. “I think I’ll do the same when it’s my turn. I don’t know if I can keep my cool with her fucking around, though.”

  I shrug. “Find something or someone to think about, and focus on that while you’re sitting there. If you think about work, you’ll only be pissed that you’re being forced to sit there and not be productive. And whatever you chose, make sure it isn’t something that will upset you.”

  “That’s good advice.” He nods and then clears his throat. “How are things progressing with Axel Remington?”

  I look down at the sidewalk. I’m embarrassed that he’s playing matchmaker, but I do really like Axel. “I think I’m going to bring him to Jackson’s wedding. Do you think that will be a problem?”

  He puts his arm around me. “Not at all. I would expect you were invited with a plus one.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. But do you think Axel will feel out of place?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s a good guy. Everyone will like him. Has he figured out who you are yet?”

  I roll my eyes. “He has to have the general picture by now, but we haven’t compared bank statements, if that’s what you’re asking. He knows about my role with Diamond and Flirt. As a sports agent, he’s a confident man—and not that poor.”

  Nate laughs. “He’s got some great players on his roster. I would think he’s doing quite well.” Both of our cars roll up. “When will you see him next?”

  “He had to fly in his sister and her four boys at the last minute, and they arrived this morning. I’m going to meet them for dinner tonight—after I put on something a little more casual.”