Chapter Nine #2
Pieces clicked together in my brain. “Oh Christ,” I said, my heart jumping into my throat. “I know what you’re talking about now.”
“Jack?” Yukiko asked.
“Some clients bring you money,” I said, watching Marcie nod along in understanding.
“Some bring you prestige. Harrington is the latter. If you want a reputation for doing the impossible—you want to save a two-hundred-year-old historical building everyone else says needs to be demolished, or restore a landmark bridge, or replace the buttresses in a Pilgrim-era cathedral—you need a specialist structural firm who can pull it off. Harrington was that guy for Daniel.”
I watched it click for Kiki. “Harrington Structural is the kind of firm that other firms respect.”
“Exactly.”
“And having them in your portfolio shows richer, more lucrative mainstream clients that you’re the firm for the job.”
Behind us, the rest of the group started to get clued in.
“This is big, isn’t it?” Tasha asked. “How the fuck did Victoria let that slip through her fingers?”
“Has she?” Saskia sounded serious.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I’d always assumed Ramsey Engineering would fold Harrington into the company whenever Carl retired.”
Mona chuckled. “He was planning to,” she explained. “But by then, he had his hands full with the merger. Adding an entire extra firm to the deal could have potentially sunk it—and he wouldn’t have done that for the world.”
I understood.
“Tallulah took it over after he died,” Jessamyn said. “And Tallulah cut her loose about as publicly as you can where engineering firms are concerned.”
“Why?” Yukiko asked. I could already see my strategist thinking, working the angles. “Money? Did Victoria try and lowball the contract?”
“That’s the part I don’t quite get,” Jessamyn admitted. “It wasn’t money—Victoria offered her a better deal than the one she’d had under Daniel. Tallulah turned her down anyway.”
“She probably could tell what a snake she is,” Maria ventured.
Jessamyn blanched. “From what I’ve heard, it sounds like there was some kind of test. That’s the word going around. Ramsey Engineering failed the test. Nobody seems to know what the test is, though.”
The room went quiet, thinking.
And then Marcie spoke up in a clear, quiet voice.
“I do.”
Every head in the room turned to her.
When I looked at Marcie, I was struck by a sudden thought—I don’t think she’d ever looked more like a Ramsey than in that moment. I swore I could almost see her father’s intensity peeking out from behind her eyes.
“Wexford.” Marcie looked triumphant. “I’d bet you anything that’s what the test is.”
I blinked. “Angel, you’re going to have to walk me back a step or two.”
Marcie’s voice picked up speed and excitement. “The footbridge in Wexford,” she said, looking around the room like she expected everyone to know. “Jack, Dad never told you?”
“Told me what?”
“When Dad and Carl were young—like, my age, when they were just starting out—there was little town near where Carl grew up. Wexford. There was a bridge that connected the mill to the town proper, and it was falling apart, and the town couldn’t raise the money to fix it.
A kid almost drowned.” Marcie licked her lips. “So Dad and Carl did it for free.”
“Wait. That was Carl Harrington? The damn bridge that Daniel did when he was twenty-two?”
I’d heard that story how many times? Daniel told it the way a former high-school quarterback told the story of catching the game-winning touchdown at the homecoming game. Somehow he’d never mentioned the other guy, though. That part had always slipped his mind.
“Neither of them could stand the thought of anyone else getting hurt,” Marcie said. “Dad and Carl spent all summer on it. And when it was done, they made a promise.”
I remembered the promise. “Daniel told me,” I said. “Ramsey Engineering would keep that bridge standing. For as long as the company exists.”
“Dad told you he promised the town, didn’t he?” Marcie was grinning. “Like he shook hands with the mayor or something.”
I nodded. “But it was Carl, wasn’t it?”
Marcie’s gaze turned inward. “Dad took me to that bridge when I was, like, twelve,” she said.
The memory hit her harder than she expected—maybe it was the thought of Daniel in the hospital and the rehab facility, but suddenly her eyes were glistening.
“I thought it was the most boring thing in the world. He told me, ‘Marcella, anybody can build a thing for money. The true test of what a firm actually is, is what it’ll build for nothing. What it’ll build because it needs to be built.
’” She wiped her eye with the heel of a hand.
“I bet it needs work. Jack, I’d bet everything I have that Tallulah brought up that bridge, and Victoria quoted her a price.
Like Ramsey Engineering didn’t have a standing offer to fix it.
Like she’d forgotten the promise Dad and Carl made each other. ”
All at once I knew it was true. “She failed the test.”
“Tallulah wanted to be sure the new owner understood what Ramsey Engineering really stood for,” Marcie said. “And Victoria whiffed it, because of course she whiffed it! She’s a fucking venture capitalist who saw a line item with no margin in it and tried to renegotiate!”
Then, while all of us were processing it, Marcie stood up and said the thing that changed the whole shape of what we were fighting.
“I can get that contract.”
I turned to her. “Babygirl—”
“I’m Daniel Ramsey’s daughter,” she said, sounding fierce.
“I’m the girl he took to see the bridge.
I hugged Tallulah at her husband’s funeral.
” She turned to Mona. “Put me in a room with her, and I will get us the Harrington contract.” Her jaw set in a way that was so much like Daniel Ramsey it hurt.
“We’ll take it from Victoria and she’ll never see it again.
Because it was never hers to begin with. ”
I swear I heard someone start clapping behind us.
Mona looked Marcie up and down. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” She looked like she wasn’t sure she wanted to say more, then she pressed on.
“You couldn’t do it, Mona. You can’t bully Tallulah or bribe her with a bunch of zeroes.
But if we go up there, me and Jack, we can prove to her that we’re the actual heirs to Ramsey Engineering, and not Victoria. ”
Mona nodded.
And that was that.
This is it, I thought, filling with pride. This is the thing that’s hers.
I’d promised her weeks ago. Something that belongs to you. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s going to be yours. At the time, I hadn’t known how I was going to give it to her.
I didn’t realize it was going to fall into our lap, in the form of a weapon against Victoria Ruocchio that only fit into Marcella Avery’s hand.
“Marcie,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “You’ve got this.”
She looked at me and grinned. The second I saw it, I knew she already realized what I was thinking. “I won’t let you down, Uncle Jack,” she said. “I want this.”
“I can get you a meeting,” Mona said. “Give me two days. Miss Harrington doesn’t take cold calls, but…” She smiled. “I’ve never let that stop me.”
“Do it,” I said.
As the room came to life, everyone talking at once, Jessamyn Fawkes watched us from the screen. Hope flickered in her eyes.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, her tone almost dangerously ingratiating, “Carl Harrington sounds like he was a good man.”
“He was,” Marcie said.
Mona reached for the laptop. “We’ll be in touch, Miss Fawkes. Keep your head down. And Jessamyn?”
“Yes?” the blonde asked.
“The Daniel thread. Keep pulling on it. I’m starting to worry there might be something going on that I’ve missed.”
“I will,” Jessamyn said.
Mona pushed a button and Jessamyn’s box disappeared.
Everyone was out of their seats and around Marcie almost instantly. “Way to go, chica!” Maria said, giving her a high-five. “You rocked that!”
“I’m impressed,” Lakshmi purred. “If we’re successful at this, we’ll really give Victoria Ruocchio a black eye.”
“Fuck Victoria,” Mona said, sounding almost feral. “We get Harrington back under our belt, every firm on the East Coast will know that we’re the real Ramsey Engineering, and Victoria’s company is the fake. This is the biggest opportunity we’ve had since—”
Her phone buzzed. She glanced down at it.
“Hang on,” she said, distracted. “I need to take this.”
While she left the room, Samantha came from around the table and pulled Marcie into a hug. “I am so freaking proud of you,” the former president of Delta Rho told her former pledge. “You are such a badass!”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” Marcie hastened to add. “Jack and I still need to go and meet Tallulah. We’ve got to convince her that we’re the real deal—”
“Pssh!” Samantha batted the worry away. “You’re Daniel Ramsey’s daughter. And Jack is Daniel’s heir. If that woman doesn’t hire you both, it’s her loss, not ours.”
“I’ll go with you if you like,” Caroline murmured. “Make sure you put your best foot forward.”
“I might take you up on that,” Marcie said.