We're taking a turn to the business end of things this week.
I'm thinking no update next week, as we'll be prepping to take an alternate route into PV at that time ; ) I'll take the time to do some careful construction on the next leg of this journey, as it is an important one...with the requisite twists and turns, of course.
This journey WILL be finished, though, in due time! (knocks on wood)
####
While the cats were away, the tiger would play.
This.
This was the playbook for how to deal with a couple of backstabbing ingrates. And she didn't even need ledgers or red markers. One knockout product and one slick PowerPoint presentation should do the trick.
She put the finishing touches on said presentation and transferred it to the drive that would transfer cosmetics' latest hot commodity to the necessary movers and shakers
Randi and Amanda wanted to prove themselves…wanted to waste time in classrooms with blue-haired old crones teaching them what Greenlee had learned through hard work and more than a few ill-timed kitchen disasters.
Fine. Let them.
Greenlee slipped the formula into her briefcase.
Someone could send them the satellite feed demonstrating how the women wear the heels and the evening gowns while the little girls play dress-up.
They really should've kept a better eye on their playmates.
####
Her money was on the orange furball in Corner A. Back arched porcupine-style, claws entrenched in the compact dirt.
The circling gray ghost held the apparent advantage, and his slow, stalking dance around his prey suggested playful confidence. The loud hiss ricocheted off the nearby trashcan, boomeranging through the air like a cackle.
Still, the fireball remained motionless. Stricken into frozen fear, perhaps.
Or, maybe -
The ghost launched forward, every bit the flesh-gnashing demon now. Except the only thing this demon would be gnashing today was a mouthful of sturdy aluminum.
Its head bounced off the can, the resulting vibration creating its own demented laughter.
Marian turned away when the fireball made its move, and the first screech temporarily muted the blaring horns and angry shouts: the symphony of the city.
A disconnected ring of shoddy doors provided the backdrop for this play in miniature, this very off-Broadway version of Cats.
Compared to their current surrounding, the Pine Cone was a regular presidential suite. At least this should make their offer more….well, attractive.
Stuart adjusted the rearview mirror, straightening the tie that stood in haphazard place of the usual bow. She took the opportunity to take in this man – this amazing human being that the world had tried to dismiss twice, and the people within it long before. Her King of Hearts.
He had died once before by trying to be the man who was his anti-thesis and his anti-hero in equal measure. Now, the world had once again tried to kill him more slowly by finally showing him its true colors
She touched his shoulder.
"Do I look right?" he asked.
For just a moment, he looked at her with that bright, wide smile….that confirmation that no, he would never look 'right' - not for this part.
She wouldn't see it happen again.
"Let me speak to him first."
The twinkle was not in those eyes. A dark, empty glint had taken its place. "No, it'll work. I'm sure it wll. I barely know the boy. He'll….he'll listen to me. People do. I'm the good twin, remember?"
Yes, I do.
"And you also have the face of the man he hates more than anyone in the world," she said.
Save maybe one person.
And wasn't that always the pot-boiler—the tie-breaker – at the end of any endless day? Precious payback.
Vengeance.
She would take what Stuart could not - could not without taking a part of himself. The best part.
She would take it for those two smiling faces affixed to the dashboard.
She expected the protests. The fight. But when she looked at her husband again, she saw his eyes transfixed to the same spot.
"OK," he said finally. The smile held no warmth. No him. "What will you do?"
Her own gaze returned to her granddaughter's face for the briefest of instants. "What I do best, darling."
On the way to the apartment of the young man who could change their fortunes, Marian passed the fallen ghost The exorcized demon.
Only what I do best.
####
"And I think you will agree that the figures speak for themselves."
Greenlee gave them her most dazzling, and the extra effort seemed to reel a few more in.
The holdouts, though….still with the knitted brows. The pursed lips. The carefully folded fingers. And the appraising eyes, searching with precision for a weakness.
A tucked hair. A twitch in the throat. A blink.
A tell.
Anything, anything to confirm that she would break.
"The revolution has arrived, ladies and gentlemen."
But she would not give it to them.
"If you would like to –"
Never.
"No, you 'must' be a part of…."
She focused on that man in the second row. Extra-knitted. Brown hair. Never a blink. And a slightly parted mouth that was saying –
"...the next…"
You did this.
"…great…"
You killed me.
The darkness, that she was ready to fight.
But for the bright, blinding, crushing light, she only had one defense: an upturned, pleading hand.
No defense at all, really.
####
"And if I do not have it on my desk by the end of the business day…"
She smiled at the hurried response on the other line. "Yes, please see that you do."
It always amazed her how half the effort got twice the results. Truthfully, she wasn't even sure what she would have followed that statement up with. Not that it mattered. It was never necessary.
She pushed the chair back and immediately felt the breaths ease. When her eyes rested on that familiar face – that ever-morphing face transmitting both boundless hate and endless love, and procuring the same – the breath caught.
"You must be smiling now." The tip of her finger traced the grin-grimace that had been as much a part of her childhood as Nelllie the doll. At least Nellie didn't live in a business suit.
"I've finally entrenched myself in the family business. We took down your worst enemy. Pete's…we'll, he's Pete. Good, reliable. Honest. And I - I finally saw that some things…some parts of our life can never last. Were never meant to last." Nina steadied her hand on the latest Cortlandt ode to corporate genius. "I've found someone who understands now, who gets it. I've found somebody who's not looking for the castles and the white horses, the fairy tale - somebody who helped me through one of the worst times of my life, just by being….well, just by being. And I'd like to think that maybe, just maybe, I did the same for him." The tremors would not abate, and she reached into the desk. Sought the medication and took back the one remaining ounce of control she still had to sacrifice. "I get it now, Father. I really do."
By the time the phone rang again, she answered with the steadiest of hands.
"Nina."
And responded with the steadiest, iciest of voices. The one thing she could not, or would not ever get in her current life was their so-called "silent" partner, who had, of course, decided that he would not remain so quiet after all. "Yes, Doctor."
Caleb had to have been off his own meds to –
"I think you might want to turn on the TV now. It seems your brother has an important announcement."
If David Hayward could ever manage something approximating a tone of panic – as characteristically cool and smug as it might be – this might be it.
Nina put the needle away and had a feeling that she was about to get stuck tenfold for the effort.
She pressed the button and Pete's face did indeed fill the screen…or half of it, anyway. The other half was occupied by a podium, a microphone, and one Adam Chandler, fresh from a cooling-down at the jailhouse, by Caleb's accounts.
She had tuned in just in time for the denouement of this little press conference, it seemed. Adam peered straight into the camera, straight into her office. "I am pleased to announce my newest partners."
Her throat didn't clench, her heart didn't pick up a few beats, and her hand still remained steady, even as she placed her head on it. Her eyes would not confirm what her gut already knew. Before she would close her eyes for a merciful moment, however, she glimpsed her father's face once again. And when she did paint the world in black, the imprint remained.
"Peter Cortlandt."
She waited, trying to reconcile the smile likely now gracing the screen with the shy grin of a brother she'd come to love.
To trust, such a precious commodity.
"And I am especially pleased to introduce our other acquisition…"
She could claim curiosity compelled her eyes up, but that would be a lie. It was the same compulsion that drew not curious, but strangely addicted onlookers to the latest car crash. The overwhelming urge to catch a glimpse of chaos.
Of annihilation.
She had never met the young man with the wavy black hair and the set of deep dimples. But she had seen him every day, his caught-off guard smile captured in a frame on Caleb's desk….the older man's one remaining concession to humanity.
Adam put his arm around Caleb's son and beamed.
Sneered.
"Let me be the first to welcome to the newly restored, improved Chandler Enterprises my son, Miguel."
