2
Seattle, Washington
One Day Earlier
August 4, 6:00 a.m. PDT
On that warm August morning, I woke early, roused by gulls screeching along the shore. Beside me, Matthew was still asleep, sprawled on his back, snoring faintly. I showered and dressed for the day’s work in a white linen suit, slingback pumps, and a sleeveless taupe blouse. The uniform , as I thought of it. Last night, my father had called a 7:00 a.m. council meeting.
Family only.
Something was up.
Matthew’s eyes opened as I was buttoning my jacket.
“Nadia,” he whispered.
But he was asleep again before I could answer.
I tucked the sheet around him. Matthew—a commodities trader—was due to return to Florida today. It would likely be weeks before I saw him again. Our relationship was exclusive but casual: careers first, love a distant second.
My phone pinged as I was walking to my car. My sister, Cass.
What’s up with the meeting? she texted. Past my bedtime here.
Singapore, where Cass was overseeing the build of Red Dragon , a boat she and I had designed together, was fifteen hours ahead of Seattle, making it after nine at night in Southeast Asia.
Her text was followed by a yawn emoji. Then: You know I’m up early. Is the family trying to kill me?
I laughed, relieved that she sounded like herself. Cass had been moody lately. Secretive. I texted back: No idea what the meeting is about. Turn off the camera and sleep. I’ll fill you in later.
Her reply was quick: And miss Guy and Uncle Rob fight? Ha!
That was Cassandra through and through. I was miserable when the family argued, always the first to beg for peace. But Cass rolled up her sleeves and jumped right in.
My sister and I were opposites in almost every way. She was outgoing, indifferent to rules and propriety, a woman with the skill and charisma to convince our ultra-high-net-worth clients—people with hundreds of millions to spend on a toy—that her ideas for their yachts were better than their own.
I was solitary by nature, reclusive, happiest when I was designing yachts in the isolation of my own thoughts.
Still, we were best friends. And despite our differences, someday—hopefully in the far future—she and I would run Ocean House together.
I got into my car. About to drive. See you on video in a few.
Nadia wait , came her reply. There’s something we should talk about.
Three dots indicated she was still typing. I stowed my briefcase and took my sunglasses out of the console. After another moment, Cassandra’s message appeared.
Never mind. We’ll talk later. Luv u sis.
Love you back.
Robert Eugene Brenner—my urbane, Ivy League–educated uncle—waited for me outside the steel-and-white-plank seven-story headquarters of Ocean House Yacht Design the sun winked off his Bentley aviator sunglasses.
“Thank god you’re here,” he said as I approached the front door. “It’s going to be a bloodbath. Tigers at the Colosseum. Roadside bombs. Someone’s going to be required to commit hara-kiri.”
“You know I hate it when you mix your metaphors.” I accepted Rob’s tobacco-laden kiss. “What is this council meeting about?”
“We’re being pilloried.”
I pulled back. “Pilloried?” Ocean House was yacht royalty. Unassailable. The trade rags sang our praises. Our builds won top awards. Clients convinced friends to get on the waiting list for one of our bespoke boats. Admittedly, our bottom line had been dipping in and out of the red for a year, but still. “Pilloried for what?”
Rob smashed out his cigar on a concrete ash receptacle. “Oh, don’t let me spoil the fun. Come find out for yourself.”
He opened the door and ushered me inside. Once through the door, I paused as I did every morning to take in the sights and sounds of the place that had been Cass’s and my home away from home since we were children.
Ocean House was eighty years old. Young by European standards, but we’d grown fast, expanding into the yacht market with the cowboy enthusiasm of our adopted country. We employed three thousand people around the world: designers, engineers, skilled workers, and apprentices. Here at headquarters were the admin offices as well as R&D, exterior and interior design, and the brains behind our shipyards in Seattle, London, and now Singapore. Men and women moved purposefully through the lobby and in and around the sea of cubicles beyond. The bank of elevators dinged, landlines rang, doors to the walled offices opened and closed. Conversations rose and fell in a Doppler shift as people swirled past in suits and dresses. No Pacific Northwest athleisure wear in these offices.
Rob took my elbow and steered me through the lobby to the elevators. He stabbed the button for the seventh floor and said, “Your father, as you can well imagine, is the spark that will set our boat on fire if we don’t manage him. As soon as Guy starts railing at journalists that Ocean House will always be king while stating we’re considering semicustom builds, we’ll look desperate. We can’t afford desperate.” He adjusted the lapels of my jacket. “You’ve got to talk him off the ledge.”
Rob, the perennial optimist.
Guy had set the meeting on the family’s private top floor in a corner office with a view of Puget Sound. We’d laid out a huge sum of money for this waterfront building with its luxurious office suites, private dining room for executives, gym, and a host of other amenities. In the yacht-building world, image was everything.
I waved Rob ahead and stopped in the kitchen for coffee. I was surprised to see my hand trembling as I poured. I scolded myself. Rob was big on drama—whatever Guy had to share was probably minor. A tempest in a teapot, to borrow one of Rob’s expressions.
I carried my coffee and briefcase down the hall and paused outside the conference room to observe my family.
Robert and Guy Brenner were cochairs and co-CEOs of Ocean House. Guy handled the marketing and administrative side of the business. Rob, who had a background in marine architecture, served as creative director. My mother, Isabeth Brenner, with her Harvard MBA, filled the role of chief financial officer.
Somehow Rob and Guy made it work, even though they were as unlike each other as a tugboat and a racing yacht.
Rob was a man of sartorial splendor. He dressed like our clientele, in elegant suits or yachting clothes, and was always ready to talk fine wines, fine whiskys, rare books, and the latest offerings at Sotheby’s. He tended to drop dollops of philosophy and Shakespeare into his conversation. Clients loved his ability to sound like a bon vivant while he cheerfully kissed ass.
Few discerned the wolf beneath the lapdog.
My father was Rob’s dark doppelg?nger. Guy Brenner was compact and pugnacious, a man of elbows and teeth whose presence took up half of any room he was in, along with most of the oxygen.
My mother, petite, French, and—Cass and I speculated—beloved by both men, oversaw all of it from the inner sanctum of her small office. She was the cajoler, the one who smoothed ruffled feathers and drew the brothers back together whenever they argued, which was daily.
My family. Apex predators. I loved them, admired them, sometimes resented them for their talk of family nobility and honor and their whispered secrets. Secrets to which Cassandra and I had never been privy. Maybe we’d get the secret handshake when we took over the company.
At the moment, Rob stood frowning out the window at the sound, where banking clouds glowed scarlet in the western sky. Cassandra, attending remotely from Singapore, appeared on the large monitor that hung on the far wall, cupping a coffee mug and yawning.
Guy and Isabeth—they’d dropped “Dad” and “Maman” as soon as Cassandra and I hit our teens—sat at the table, flipping through paperwork, their shoulders hunched.
Over their heads, gazing austerely down, hung a photograph of my great-grandfather Josef Brenner, the founder of Ocean House. Family lore said Josef carried the blood of Austrian nobility through his father. His mother, according to legend, had secretly married a nobleman, who was hastily sent away when the marriage was discovered. The marriage was annulled, and all records destroyed. Only a diamond-and-emerald brooch, the rumor of nobility, and baby Josef bore testament to the union.
I blew Josef’s photo a kiss, then squared my shoulders and strode in. Isabeth glanced up and smiled. Guy didn’t bother. I could almost see the storm cloud over his head.
I chose an empty chair across from them and set my briefcase and coffee on the table. From the screen, Cassandra gave me a small wave.
Guy finally looked up.
“About time,” he growled. His pugilist demeanor turned the room into an arena. “Let’s get started. Isabeth?”
My mother handed me the latest issue of one of the industry’s trade magazines, Showboats International .
“It’s hitting the newsstands this morning,” she said. “Cassandra, I emailed a copy to you.”
I took a seat and began reading.
Will Newcomer Paxton Become the Next Yacht King?
When the rich buy Mercedes, the ultrarich buy Bentleys. For years, this has meant a full-custom motor yacht from Ocean House. The House’s boats have carried emirs and oligarchs, kings and princes, around the world for eighty years.
But newcomer Paxton Yachts, the eponymous company of CEO Brandon Paxton, is setting itself up as some seriously stiff competition. With in-house design led by two of Ocean House’s former top creatives and an R&D department boasting some of the best “boat minds” in Europe, Paxton is taking a run at the monarchy.
Headquartered in Germany’s Bremen-Vegesack, the indisputable heart of shipbuilding, Paxton has been garnering praise and awards for its elegant designs and German craftsmanship. It’s also getting huge props for its innovative processes and a new semicustom line built on a proven naval platform, all of which reduces build time for clients eager to launch. Some of their semicustom interiors are clearly designed with the Asian market in mind. Paxton boasts a wait list with—our sources tell us—some very impressive names, including members of several prestigious East Asian dynasties.
Has the American firm run its course? Is it time to return royalty to Europe, where royalty began?
Only time will tell if Brandon Paxton is the new king.
I sucked in a breath and read the article again. I stole a glance at Cass on the video screen. Our eyes met. We would be up against Paxton for a slew of design awards at next month’s ritzy yacht show in Monaco. Suddenly, the show became something more than a friendly competition. Whether we won or lost could decide our future.
“Paxton is going to fuck us over,” Guy said.
Rob turned from the windows. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A snippy piece in an industry rag isn’t going to sink the ship.”
“No?” Guy glared up at his brother. “They took two of our best designers, in case you—our lead designer—hadn’t noticed. They’ve got a wait list—”
“An alleged wait list,” Rob interjected.
“Oh, they’ve got a goddamn wait list. Tell them, Isabeth.”
Isabeth glanced up from her papers for the first time since she’d nodded at me. Still a beauty at fifty-nine with her honey-blond hair and graceful figure, this morning she looked pale, her blue eyes muted.
She sighed and removed her reading glasses.
“I had lunch with a close friend from my undergraduate days in Paris,” she said. “Celine was in Seattle for a few days, chasing a lead on Native American art for a client. She’s working sales for Paxton Yachts. After two bottles of a rare Riesling, courtesy of Ocean House, Celine told me that Paxton has signed YBAs with the head of one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. And with a prince from Bavaria’s abolished monarchy.”
I tilted back in my chair. YBAs were yacht-building agreements. These weren’t signed until everything for a build was ready, from design to safety, timelines to budget. Once an owner committed to a YBA, it was showtime.
“So what?” Rob said. “They’ve signed a would-be and a has-been.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Isabeth said. “A social media hero and a man whose name still carries a great deal of cachet. It’s a triumph, Rob. Worse, Celine thinks they have a member of the king of Thailand’s family on the hook. And that cuts right into our growth trajectory into Asia.”
Rob folded his arms. “Snobbery. Elitism. There is no way Paxton is building the kind of quality we are. Not with the speed they’re moving at.”
Pink rose in Cass’s face. She picked up her phone and thumbed through the screen as if bored by the conversation. I noted her elaborate manicure—unusual for her.
“We have our own wait list,” I said. “There are more than enough clients for Paxton and for us. We’ll simply do what we’ve always done—stick with full-custom boats and then design and build better than anyone else. I don’t see reason to be alarmed.”
The room fell silent, as if cleaved by an axe.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Guy said to Rob.
My stomach arced through a delicate flip. “Tell me what?”
A vein throbbed in Guy’s forehead. Rob studied his hands.
I tapped my foot. “Tell me.”
On the screen, Cass still hadn’t looked up. Was everyone crazy today?
“Yes, Rob,” Guy said. “Tell your niece about Rambler .”
I looked back and forth between Guy and Rob. Rambler was a 40-foot build for a wealthy developer from Montana. Thirty seconds ago, I would have expected a glowing report about the maiden voyage of Rob’s most recent launch. But the look on my uncle’s face said the news wasn’t good.
“Rob?” I prompted.
“Catastrophic engine failure,” he said in a flat voice. “ Rambler suffered a cascade of electrical and hydraulic failures on her maiden voyage. We’re still investigating, but we suspect defective parts.”
Cass finally lifted her eyes.
Guy said, “They got stuck in the middle of the Mediterranean, not to put too fine a point on it. The Italian coast guard had to disembark the passengers while mechanics were flown in to fix the problem. Which they couldn’t. Damn thing had to be towed. We’re lucky it didn’t sink.”
On the screen Cass squeezed a blue stress ball.
I breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth. “How could a failure like that happen?”
“Sabotage,” Guy said.
But Rob shook his head. “Nothing so dramatic. It was almost certainly a supply chain failure. With shortages, suppliers are rushing diagnostics. This is the result.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “Any problems should have been caught during sea trials.”
Rob’s expression turned stubborn. “We’re looking into it.”
Guy stabbed a forefinger at the papers on the table in front of him. “My vote still goes to sabotage. Could be some eco freak doesn’t like it that an asshat from Texas is pillaging Montana’s wilderness. Maybe he managed to get himself involved with the build. But for the moment, it’s a mystery. A mystery that has taken a lot of the shine off our name. We won’t keep our clients with this kind of bullshit. Especially with the Showboats article. Nadia, do we still have Sovereign II ?”
I held up a folder from my briefcase. “Matthew signed an LOI last night.” A letter of intent was the first stage in the building process and one reason Matthew had flown to Seattle. Our shared love of yachts was what had first brought us together: I’d designed Sovereign I for him. Now Matthew wanted a bigger boat. “We also have Warren and Leanne Korda. I spoke with them yesterday. I’m flying to Florida next week to show them my preliminary designs for Lovely Lady .”
“An LOI is more of a moral agreement than a legal one,” Guy went on. “Still, first-rate work, Nadia. Congratulations. But if the Kordas expressed interest, I expect them to bail as soon as they hear about Rambler .”
Rob held out his arms, palms open. “Bad things happen. People understand that. We roll up our sleeves, stay on top of our current builds, and prove to the world that we’re still Ocean House. Our name—our family name—is worth more than that of some upstart in Europe. The brand is everything.”
Steel flashed in Guy’s eyes. “Since when did you corner the market on naivete?”
“Ever since you lost whatever mettle you used to have,” Rob snarled. “What the hell is the matter with you, Guy? You didn’t even want to expand into Asia, where the real money is. Audentes Fortuna Iuvat. Or to put it in words you’ll understand: fortune smiles on the brave, and frowns upon the coward. Have you lost the obscenely small pair you were born with?”
Guy pushed to his feet. The brothers locked eyes across the table.
Isabeth’s silk-over-wire voice slid into the gap. “Gentlemen. Do I need to put you in separate corners?”
Rob yanked out a chair and sat. “What’s our reputation worth to you?” he asked Guy. “Do we stay with full-custom boats? Or cheapen ourselves doing semicustom and refits?”
It was the same argument they’d had for the past year, ever since rising expenses, cost overruns, and worried millionaires had slowed our growth and hurt our bottom line.
“Making payroll is what matters.” Guy pushed back his chair and stood. “First things first, we make sure we don’t slip further into the red. If that means opening a line of semicustom builds or doing refits, I’m for it. Maybe we even outsource the builds and focus on design, which is the girls’ strength. Now all of you out. I need to talk to Nadia.”
On the screen, Cass waved and blew a kiss before exiting the meeting.
My argumentative sister had been uncharacteristically quiet. But I pushed aside my worry. For now, there were more pressing concerns.
Always the one to fire the final arrow, Rob paused at the door. “We can’t get back into the black unless we’re aggressive. We expand into new markets. Hire more people. And stick with what we do best. Ocean House is custom. No compromises.”
He stormed out. Isabeth rolled her eyes and followed him.
After I closed the door behind them, I turned to face my father. What I saw made me take a step back.
Guy’s pallor had turned gray, his sunken cheeks like caverns carved out of bone. Now that the wave of anger had passed, he had aged ten years in ten seconds.
“Guy?”
He sank back in his chair. “Have a seat, Nadia.”
I came around the table and took the chair next to him.
“I’m sending you to Singapore,” he said.
“What?” I glanced up at the now-dark screen. “Why?”
“I’m sick, Naughty.”
Naughty. My nickname. Rarely used. A nauseating panic filled me. “How sick?”
“I’ve got one foot in the grave,” he said. “Which ... okay. It is what it is. But now the other foot is losing ground fast.”
My hands flew to my chest.
“Naughty,” he said. There was a warning in his voice: Don’t you dare break down.
I sucked in a shaky breath and lowered my hands. When something went wrong at sea, the absolute first thing you had to do was not panic.
Think first, act second. Panic only when it was all over. The Brenner mantra.
“Be specific,” I said.
He didn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve got a few months.”
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my blazer to keep them from leaping toward my heart again.
“Cancer?”
He nodded. “Mesothelioma. Cancer of the thin tissues. From asbestos exposure in the shipyards, back in the day.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “We’ve got this. There are treatments. Chemo. Infusions. Trials. You can go to—”
Guy raised a hand. “I’m not doing any of that bullshit.”
Alarm tongued the base of my spine, an ice-cold rasp against my vertebrae. But I held my voice steady.
“Dad, you have to fight. You’ve always been a fighter. You’re sixty-one. You have years ahead of you.”
“No. I don’t.”
He turned away and straightened the papers in front of him. Through a film of tears, I watched as he closed each folder and lined up the corners. On the back of one of his hands was a tacky white substance—residue of medical tape. And a bruise, blue under his translucent skin.
“Dad, please—”
“It isn’t what I want. Not for you and not for Cass. Not even for Rob. And certainly not for your mother. But it’s time to wave the white flag. I don’t want to go out weak and frail, clinging to life.” Guy gave an emphatic headshake. “I’m dying on my own terms.”
My heart battered against my sternum. I sometimes didn’t know where my family ended and I began. We were a collective organism, the whole dependent on the parts. What was I without my father?
“We need you,” I said. Meaning, I need you.
“You’ll manage. Cassandra is strong-minded. Willful. Which is both good and bad. But she’s also an excellent project manager. And you’re the best damn designer on God’s green earth. Better than Rob, even if you don’t know it yet. Plus, you can read a room better than anyone else. That’s a useful skill in our line of work.” He patted my hand, the gesture awkward for its rarity. “The two of you will do just fine. You’ll have your uncle and mother. You don’t give Isabeth enough credit. She’ll be here for you and Cass.”
The chill climbed up my spine. “What do Rob and Isabeth say about your decision to not get treatment?”
“They don’t know I’m sick.”
I closed my eyes. Pictured my parents in their separate bedrooms with their parallel social lives. Isabeth busy with our sinking fortunes, Guy snarling off any intrusion. Rob oblivious, as usual. No doubt Guy was leaning on his secretary, Tyler Jacobs, to help him erect a smoke screen: lying about appointments, managing medications, covering for Guy when he was tired.
When I opened my eyes again, Guy was back to rearranging the files.
“Why not tell them?” I asked.
“Loose lips sink ships,” he quipped. But his laugh was hollow. “And you’re not to tell them, either. Not yet. I’m filling you in because Ocean House is going to come crashing down on your shoulders and Cass’s. You need to be ready.”
I nodded, even though the idea of moving into a true leadership role felt like stepping off a cliff. “But why not—”
“If you rat me out, your mother will collapse, and Rob will go on a bender. People will realize something is wrong beyond Rambler ’s failure. We can’t afford to let the world know that I’m not still at the helm. If this gets leaked before I’m on my deathbed, then Paxton will win. Brandon Paxton will bleed off all our talent and steal our clients. But if we keep this tight, then we have a chance to turn things around before I go to meet the devil. What we’re going to do is start moving you and Cass into position.”
I’d thought we had years. “We aren’t ready.”
“Bullshit. You and Cass have been preparing for this since you were weaned off your mother’s tit.” He splayed his knotty, sunspotted hands on the table. “I need you in East Asia. First because I want you to tell your sister in person. She shouldn’t learn this from a phone call, and I can’t travel. But also because something is—as Rob would say—rotten in the state of Singapore.”
Something inside me fell away. “ Red Dragon is only seven weeks from sea trials.”
“That’s right. If the schedule slips, it will be another black mark against us.”
A headache bloomed. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What do you mean, something is rotten?”
He pushed the folders around. “I’ve never been much on gut instinct. But I can smell ‘fishy’ from half a world away. There’s something off with Cassandra. Or with the build. Or both. I need you there.” He paused, seemed about to add something. But all he said was, “I’ve made the arrangements. You fly out early tomorrow morning.”
“Of course,” I agreed, even as I wondered how I’d manage it with everything else. “But I’ve read her reports. And we’ve talked. Some, anyway. She’s been quiet. But everything is fine.”
“Cassandra quiet?” Guy raised a thick eyebrow. “And you’re not worried?”
“Point taken. I’ll check things out in person. On one condition.”
“I’m not much in the mood for bargaining.”
“By the time I return,” I pressed, “you will have told Isabeth and Rob. You can’t expect Cass and me to carry this by ourselves.”
He rubbed his unshaven chin. “How about we wait until you report back? Then we’ll tell them together. Deal?”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Then it’s a deal.”
He eased my hands from my pockets and gripped my cold fingers. He peered into my eyes. I lowered my gaze as I felt him take my measure.
With one knuckle, he tipped up my chin. “Do you remember the drowning game?”
My fingers turned colder. I hadn’t thought about the game in years. Cass and I would take turns “drowning”—first in the family swimming pool, later in a lake, and finally the ocean. One sister would have to rescue the other. As Cass and I grew older, we vied for more-elaborate scenarios involving sunken ships or unfeigned drunkenness or shark-infested reefs.
After one close call, Guy ended the game. The point, he’d told us, was not to get ourselves killed. It was to realize we must always be there for each other.
“Find out what’s wrong with the Red Dragon build, Naughty,” he said. “Find out what’s going on with Cass. Then get into the trenches and fix it.”