Business Meets Pleasure…

Prologue

Hennessy

THE THUMPING STARTS inside my head. In my dream I’m in the office of my family’s publishing company.

I know it’s Wade and Walters because there are shelves of magazines lining the walls and they are swaying from side to side—gently at first, and then more vigorously, so that the magazines start to fall, smacking against the floor one after the other, louder and louder and louder…

My eyes snap open. The pounding is not inside my head. Someone is banging their fist against the door to my apartment. It’s probably Mrs Godfrey, my neighbour, looking for her cat.

Picking up my phone, I sigh. Today is my birthday.

I am twenty-five years old. There is one message from my best friend, Antony.

None from my mother, Jade, which is unsurprising, as she never remembers my birthday.

But nothing from my father, Charlie either, which is odd.

Charlie is hardly father of the year, but he is sentimental about birthdays. Then again, it’s the weekend.

Still clutching my phone, I roll out of bed.

My body is shaking, and my head feels as if it is about to split in two, just as if I’d been drinking.

Only, I don’t do that anymore; I haven’t self-medicated with drink or drugs for nearly three years now.

But my birthday always has this effect on me.

Justifiably, I think, given that my mother walked out of my life at my third birthday party and never came back.

She lives in Rio now with her latest partner. I haven’t met him. I didn’t meet the last one either. But then, I haven’t seen her in three years—not since Las Vegas.

To say that I thought about her after she first left would be something of an understatement.

At first, I was upset. For a time—longer than she deserved—I would imagine her returning to clutch me against her.

But, as time passed and she didn’t return, I played out different scenes where I rained down fury on her.

Of course, when we finally met nineteen years later, it was nothing like I imagined.

She was the angry one. I was stunned, paralysed, wordless.

My mind twitches at the memory, and of another, because that was quite an evening.

Not only did my mother tell me that I was her worst mistake, but I made a fool of myself with my childhood crush: Renzo Valetti.

Just his name makes my cheeks burn. Growing up, I used to fantasise about him being my boyfriend.

Not that he knew, much less reciprocated.

What with the age gap, and the fact that he is Antony’s brother, he always treated me like some irritating kid.

Only, I wasn’t a kid that night. I was twenty-two and I wasn’t thinking straight.

Or maybe I was, because kissing him felt imperative, as necessary as my next breath, and he kissed me in the same way…

The thumping on my door snaps me back to the present and I stand up unsteadily. My blinds are still down, but a few splinters of sunlight push past the edges and I use them to make my way to the door and squint through the peephole.

There’s one man, one woman. Both are wearing dark suits, both are strangers, and for perhaps a fraction of a second I think they are one of those singing telegrams. It’s the kind of idiot thing Antony would think was cute.

But even without my contact lenses I can tell that they’re not here to wish me a happy birthday.

I blink as an ID is thrust up to the peephole on the other side of the door.

Reading the letters, I swear under my breath: FBI.

Now I want to close my eyes like a child and pretend that I haven’t seen them, but what then?

I’m trapped on the fifty-second floor, and I can’t hide for ever, so I take a breath and unlock the door, cracking it open an inch.

The female agent steps forward. ‘Ms Wade? I’m Agent Carson; this is Agent Merrick.’

‘Is this some kind of a joke? Because it’s not fu—’

She cuts me off. ‘It’s not a joke, Ms Wade. We’re looking for your father, Charles Winthrop Wade.’

‘I know who my father is,’ I snap, tilting my chin. ‘And he’s not here—’

Agent Carson interrupts. ‘Do you know where your father is, Ms Wade?’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘What’s this about?

’ I’m trying to think what Charlie could have done that has brought the FBI to my doorstep on a Saturday morning.

And yet I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to deal with whatever it is, to have to handle another of his messes.

Particularly now, when I’ve only been working at Wade and Walters for three months, and I’m trying my hardest to prove I’m not a chip off the old block, not another ‘nepo-baby’ cashing in on my name.

‘Your father is under investigation for fraud, tax evasion, obstructing justice and failure to present himself into custody at the appointed time.’

‘Failure to what?’ I can’t make sense of her words.

‘Your father wasn’t considered a flight risk.’ Agent Carson raises her voice then and glances over my shoulder, as if Charlie is hiding behind the door and might magically leap forward. ‘But it appears he has absconded, Ms Wade.’

‘Well, he’s not here,’ I say again, my hand tightening round my phone. ‘And I don’t know where he is.’

I make to shut the door, but Agent Merrick pushes his foot into the gap like a detective in an old black-and-white movie. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Wade, but we have a warrant to search your apartment.’

He doesn’t seem sorry. He sounds bored, or at least he looks it. I can’t hear how he sounds over the pounding of my heart.

A warrant… Now I think I’m going to throw up.

A warrant is real. I want to howl and smash things.

What is Charlie playing at? And why didn’t he warn me?

But I know how and why, because he has been doing this to me since I was a child.

And then, as now, bad things are happening and, I am going to have to face them alone.

As the two agents walk past me, my phone rings shrilly, slicing through my panic. I answer it without even looking at the caller’s name.

‘Charlie?’

‘So, you haven’t spoken to him, then?’ David’s voice is sharp—urgent, almost. David Walters is my father’s co-CEO, the logos to his pathos. He is calmness personified, so to hear him sounding so stressed makes the world tilt on its axis.

‘No. But the FBI are here,’ I say, and I hear him breathe out shakily.

‘I see. Well, what’s done is done. Clearly, we need to discuss our next steps.

I’ve notified the board and arranged an extraordinary meeting at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

But I’d like to see you before the meeting starts, so if you could get there fifteen minutes earlier?

Crisis management cascades down from the top, Hennessy, so you and I need to be on the same page. ’

The phone feels slippery in my hand. ‘Why me? I’m only the CMO.’ And I’ve only been Chief Marketing Officer for three months.

There is silence, then David clears his throat. ‘Not anymore. Your father and I agreed that if anything happened to either one of us, as majority shareholders we would decide our stand-in or successor, and you are Charlie’s choice. Which means, as of this moment, you are my co-CEO.’

As David hangs up, I lean back against the door and watch the agents move smoothly and efficiently around the apartment.

This can’t be happening. I can’t deal with this. I can’t be co-CEO. But, apparently, I am.

Happy Birthday, Hennessy.