Chapter 3
Tristan
“Are you ready?”
Mom’s gaze is reminiscent of any day in primary school, lips puckered, pointedly judgmental. As a boy, my tie had never been straight enough or my shirt tucked in quite right. Boarding school had been a reprieve from reproach, and certainly a relief for my parents.
As her heels click out a steady drumbeat with her approach, I can’t help but wonder what she’s going to correct. I’m not wearing a tie. I’m fully capable of tucking my shirt in and my cufflinks shine. Her perfectly polished ballet pink nails smooth my lapels and the diamonds on her fingers and wrists twinkle with the movement.
She gazes up at me beneath long lashes that perfectly frame her brilliant blue eyes and winks. “I believe you are.”
The unanticipated maternal pride has me second guessing playing this role. Perhaps I should read Mum in. Explain to her what’s going on and why I’m pretending to be interested in our family business. But then I’d be letting her know what I really do with my days and she’s better off not knowing. Her competitive nature wouldn’t be able to withhold the information from her close friends or acquaintances. I love my mother, but any lapse in judgement poses a risk to her. My life’s work involves putting away some of the world’s most connected and powerful criminals. It’s not a stretch to say her life could be in danger if someone I put away connected me to her. She’s far better off not knowing anything at all.
“Now,” she says, picking up a leather bound Louis Vuitton black embossed notepad she carries with her everywhere. “Remember, Nelson is ambitious. I raised him and he’ll do what I say, but if he sees you as a threat, he’ll make your life hell.”
“What do you mean, you raised him?” Technically speaking, she didn’t raise me.
“You look like you’re here to play. Wipe that smirk off your face.” Her heels click against the marble hallway as she leads the charge.
Mum’s office building isn’t in the same building as Lumina. After the sale of The Wagner Group to Lumina, she gave retirement all of two weeks and launched a make-up line. Dad said that it’s possible she’ll sell it to Lumina as the conglomerate includes a burgeoning cosmetics entity. She and Dad remain on Lumina’s board, but Dad is truly retired. According to Dad, Mom works longer hours than ever before.
We wait in front of a brass elevator with an aged patina. Mom wipes below her eyes with an index finger, touching up her makeup in the reflection, while I lean forward to press the down button like the dutiful son.
“Do I have siblings I have yet to meet?” Yes, I’m being a prick. It comes naturally.
She rolls her eyes, and a trace of a smile appears. “You know what I mean. I taught him everything he knows. Worked his way up from an intern. He’ll treat you fairly. He won’t want to face my wrath. But you’re going to need to work. You’re late to the game to be entering the company. Most of your colleagues have been here since university. You know that about us? Right? People come here and spend their careers here.”
The elevator dings, the doors open, and she steps in. A man pushing a mail cart exits and I join her in the elevator.
My grandfather had been proud that the Wagner Group rated as one of the best places to work in Europe. He followed a policy of paying everyone fairly and refused to take a salary more than one hundred times what the lowest paid employee earned. Back then, the lowest level had been the mailroom, a place he entreated me to work on breaks.
“You still have a mail department?” I ask after the doors close, sealing us in. I suppose they would, although the only thing I get in the mail is junk.
“Of course we do.”
The doors open on the next floor and a middle-aged woman in a sweater dress and tall boots enters. My mother and her exchange curt, formal nods. No words. She either doesn’t work for my mother or she’s an underling.
I often wonder what my grandfather would think of my parents selling to a conglomerate. They tried to blame it on me. If I would not join the firm, why keep it as a private family company? But, off at boarding school, I recognized that proclamation for what it was. A way to deflect guilt. My father didn’t have to sell. He’d inherited plenty. But the proceeds from selling set him into the stratosphere. A financial windfall that placed him among the wealthiest of the wealthy.
Mom’s desire to continue working mystifies him. As she charges down the hallway to an interconnecting passage that will lead us into Lumina’s corporate tower, I can’t help but wonder how well he knows his wife of forty-odd years. I’m not an expert on my mother, but I recognize that it’s in these hallowed halls she comes to life.
“How many here did you raise?”
She side eyes me and I halfway expect her to reach up and pop me on the back of my head. If I weren’t out of her reach, she’d probably do it.
“Remember Tristan, you belong here, but you still need to earn your place.”
Inside Lumina’s headquarters, the number of suits increases exponentially. Shoes tap and subdued voices hum. It’s hard to believe that amongst all these ordinary-looking citizens is an employee, or likely employees, who hired an assassin and is responsible for three known murders.
We pass a series of desks facing each other along a long hallway leading up to twelve foot black doors. One of the doors is ajar, and my mother pushes it.
“Nelson,” my mom announces.
An older man with thin white hair and spectacles looks over his computer. He’s missing the youth I expected from a man my mother purportedly raised, but then again, I arrived here from her womb and I’m on the shady side of my thirties. But this man must be in his late fifties. My mother turns sixty-six next month.
“Where’s your assistant?”
I glance back at the two desks that line the sides of the executive hallway leading to Nelson Peltz’s office. One has a computer monitor, the other is vacant.
“She’s away on an errand.” Nelson stands and comes around his desk to embrace my mother and her kiss her on both cheeks. “How are you doing? You look lovely. My god, Victoria, you simply do not age.”
The man is a kisser of arses, but his thin frame and timid nature don’t strike me as possessing a personality that would remain calm after ordering a hit. Unless he’s a psychopath.
“And I take it this is your son. It’s been such a long time.”
Ah, he’s one of those. He met me in my youth and expects I shall remember him.
“Yes. I must thank you for bringing me on.”
There’s something there in his expression that puts me on guard, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I only have a second to read into it, because he’s off to close the door we left open.
Nelson returns to his desk and sits on the edge, facing us. He’s propped himself next to the brass nameplate that reads Nelson Peltz in engraved letters. A fantastic name, that one.
“So, Tristan, your mother tells me you’ve developed quite the fascination with research.” My gaze remains fixed on Nelson, but the insolent boy in me wants nothing more than to shoot my mother a glare.
“Quite.”
“And is there a specific project of ours that has garnered your fascination?”
Now here I need to be careful. I need to play the spoiled trust fund kid, but I need to come across as worthy of being hired. I should be quite pissed if I’m stuck pushing the mail cart for the next three months.
“It’s my understanding that Lumina’s research division is one of the most respected in the world. I’d love to better understand how the source of the competitive advantage.” His eyes narrow behind his spectacles. “I remember my grandfather taking me through the product research process and I’m curious how it’s changed since his time.”
“If you don’t have the answers to that, then your fascination with research has been skin deep.”
“Ouch.” I offer a gentleman’s jesting smile. “Quite so. I have much to learn.”
“We can’t put him in a lead position.” Nelson addresses my mother as if I’m not in the room. I can’t help but feel that I fell right into a trap with the first question out of his mouth, but I’m not looking to lead the company. I’m not even seeking to lead a department.
“Nelson.” My mother says his name with a heavy reprimand. I search his face for any awareness that he’s about to get it. “There’s no one I trust more than you to teach him everything he needs to know. I expect you to do for him what I did for you.”
“We have interns with more knowledge and skills.” Have to give it to the man. He’s not backing down. Pass me a bag of popcorn.
“I was thinking the Dextra project? The contract was signed yesterday, no?”
“That’s an important client. They’re counting on us to help them achieve first-to-market advantage.”
“Precisely. It will be the perfect project for Tristan. We’re on day one of the project. The team kick off isn’t until this afternoon. You can bring Tristan in as a co-lead. By the end of the project, he would have walked through the entire process from beginning to end.”
“Dextra is on a three to five-year timeline.”
“You’ll make it in two to three. Those are the stretch goals and you always hit your stretch goals.”
The two glare at one another and it’s evident there are things unsaid between the two. Interesting.
“I don’t need to lead.” I don’t want to lead but I can’t say that in front of Mum. “But I love the sound of this project.”
“Do you?” Nelson asks, nostrils flaring.
“Yes. And don’t worry about my pulling a Myriam.” I cast a fond smile in my mother’s direction. “You can have me sign non competes or whatever so I won’t take my knowledge and build a competitor.”
“Heavens,” Mom sighs. “Why would you go and put that nonsense in his head?” Her eyebrows lift ever so slightly, but her forehead remains impressively smooth. “Nelson, that is not what we’re about.”
Nelson pushes off his desk, head bowed, most likely deep in thought until he arrives at his high-backed leather desk chair. His throne.
“Myriam, you know I’ll do anything for you.” His expression doesn’t quite match his words, but my mother appears oblivious. “We’ll find a spot. Let me confer with Jean-Claude. He’s the project lead. In the meantime, I had my assistant clear an office space for you. It’s an office along this hallway. We’d been using it for storage.”
“Lovely,” Mom says as she stands and smooths nonexistent creases in her dress pants. “Thank you so much, Nelson. It means so much that I can count on you.”
His countenance is one of muted obedience.
“Would you like to get started immediately?” Nelson asks, turning his attention directly to me.
“Ah, well.” I make a show of checking my Patek Philippe watch. A man like Nelson Peltz will recognize the brand. “I need lunch first.”
I don’t want a position with too much responsibility, as there are other things I need to do. And under no certain terms do I plan on being trapped in this tower two to three years from now. Of course, I don’t have two to three years. I have ninety days.
“Very well, then.” Nelson says. “When you return from lunch, my assistant will get you situated.”
He reaches for the handset of the phone, dismissing us. “Did you need anything else?”
“Not at all,” my mother says. “Thank you, Nelson.”
He turns his attention to the phone on his desk, pressing at buttons before we’ve exited the office. My mother has lost some of her heralded power. In my youth, you would have thought she was the queen the way the staff held themselves in her presence. But of course, she’s no longer a Lumina employee. Not technically.
I open the door for my mother and pause as I take in the young woman sitting behind the now occupied assistant’s desk.
Dark hair, pulled back into a low bun, full lips and cheeks, and tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. Thick, long lashes that adorn dark eyes. Her demure black turtleneck dress hugs all of her curves with unstated professional elegance.
She’s the woman from the pub. The woman that’s been flitting through my mind all weekend. The reason I returned to that pub by myself once on Saturday and twice on Sunday.
Thank god I didn’t introduce myself with any of my last names. Thank all the gods she declined my advances.
A sharp thwap on the back of my head reverberates from my skull down my neck.
“Ow,” I say, scowling at my mother. “Rings,” I remind her. How did she even reach my head?
“Off limits,” Mum hisses, and pushes me down the hall.