Park Avenue (Book Six in the Fifth Avenue Series) (69 page)

“Stand down,” the man
behind Mario said.
 
“Move to the
side, Mario.
 
Don’t touch her.
 
Jennifer, get back in the hallway.”

“So sensible,” Carmen
said.

But she was no fool.
 
When she approached them, she sprayed
the mace at them, shielding her own eyes, and burying her mouth and her broken
nose in the crook of her arm.
 
She
ran past them so they couldn’t touch her.
 

The woman dropped to her
knees, and started to gag.
 
Carmen
leaped over her, and turned to make sure no one was following her.
 
When she did, she saw the other man fall
into the hallway, his hands at his throat, and his face turning red from the
lack of oxygen.

She didn’t see the other
man, but this was all she needed.

She threw the can of mace
and the blade in a wastebasket as she passed it.
 
She looked at her hands, saw that they
were covered in blood, and looked around for something to dry herself off.
 
To her left, she remembered, was the
bar.
 
Discreetly, she moved through
the reception area’s side door, stepped into the lobby, and cut around to the
bar, which was empty.
 
She grabbed
some napkins, spit on them, and wiped the blood from beneath her nose.
 
She grabbed another handful and held
them to her nose, but it was useless.
 
Her nose was smashed.
 
There
was no stopping the bleeding.

She didn’t have much
time.

People were trying to get
out.
 

Security was everywhere,
assisting people toward the exits.

Looking terrified, Carmen
grabbed a thick clutch of napkins, held them to her face, and moved with the
rest of the herd.
 
With her head
lowered, she slid deep into the crowd, becoming one with them, and was moving
toward the doors when behind her, a man shouted out to warn them all.

“Stop her!” he said.
 
His voice was choked, almost
airless.
 
It sounded like friction
to her.
 
A mere rasp.
 
“Red dress!
 
Stop her!”

But there were too many
red dresses.

And
Carmen Gragera, her job finished, hurried into the night, where her red dress,
in the darkness that consumed her and the others moving down the sidewalk,
might as well have been black.

EPILOGUE

THREE
MONTHS LATER

PARIS

It was sundown in the
Marais.
 
A chilly December breeze
flowed down the active Bourgeois, but Vincent Spocatti, who wore a black
cashmere coat with a black scarf at his neck, leather gloves on his hands, and
a loaded Glock in his pocket, was nevertheless warm.

The lamps attached to the
sides of the buildings were starting to glow to life.
 
They cast amber umbrellas of light onto
the cobblestone sidewalks, which he thought was pretty.
 

This was a popular
shopping district, and he walked past such stores as Diptyque and Babylone,
Rayure and Et Vous, while keeping his mark just ahead of him.
 
She was window-shopping, just as she
always was, and frankly, he was starting to find this habit of hers
increasingly dull.
 

At least she ends tonight
, he thought.
 
Then on to the next.

His cell buzzed in his coat
pocket.
 
Curious, he pulled it out,
saw Carmen’s name on the screen, and smiled.
 
This would be the first time they had
connected since New York.
 

“This is a surprise.”

“Surprises are what we do
best.”

“No argument there.
 
Where are you?”

“Where huts stretch deep
into the clearest, bluest waters you’ve ever seen.”

She was talking in
code.
 
Obviously, she was back in
Bora Bora where her former lover, Alex, was murdered.
 
She’d watched him die.
 
He couldn’t believe that she had
returned.

“Now I’m truly surprised,”
he said.

“So am I.”

“How do you feel?”

“Despite everything, this
is my home.
 
This is where I
belong—it always has been.
 
I
bought a new place today.
 
Just signed
the final paperwork.
 
And as stupid
as it sounds, I can feel him here with me.”

“It’s not stupid,
Carmen.
 
I’m happy for you.”

“Where are you?”

“In a city of too many
lights.
 
It can be blinding over
here.”

“You’re in my favorite
city.
 
Lucky you.
 
Working?”

“I’m always working,
Carmen.”

“Easy or difficult?”

“Remains to be seen.”

“Thanks for making things
even with me.”

She was referring to him
splitting Cullen’s initial payment of twenty-five million down the middle.
 
Since Cullen killed himself and they
were cheated out of the rest of their money, he felt it only fair to give
Carmen an equal share of the initial payment.

“My pleasure.
 
You certainly earned it.
 
And I needed to make sure you had enough
to fix your nose.”

“Very funny.
 
You know, I’ve been thinking about
it.
 
That job was a bitch.
 
Have you been reading the press?”

“About which story?”

“Mario’s father....”

“Finally out on bail, I
hear.
 
Back at his Todt Hill
mansion.”

“Trial by the end of next
year, unless his lawyers can extend it, which they will.
 
I hope De Cicco enjoys his freedom while
he can because they’re going to put him away.
 
Same goes for the rest of the
Family.
 
The Feds have too much on
them.
 
They’re going down.”

“I wonder what he’ll do
with his spare time between now and then?
 
Especially if he senses he might be going away for a long time.
 
Or forever.
 
That tends to be when people take
risks.”

“With him on the loose, I
wouldn’t want to be a certain woman.”

“Or a certain son.”

“Or a Greek shipping
tycoon.”

“Some people take
betrayal so seriously.
 
If he acts,
it could backfire on him.
 
But maybe
he doesn’t care.”

“I see him getting
revenge.”

“I think you have perfect
vision.”

Spocatti’s mark stopped,
so he stopped.
 
He stepped next to a
storefront window and pretended to look inside at some chocolates while he
spoke to Carmen.
 
“Did you follow
the funerals on CNN?”

“You couldn’t miss
them.
 
Epic.”

“Lavish.”

“Overkill.”

“I quite enjoyed them.”

“You would.”

His mark started to move
again.
 
He followed.

“What I can’t figure out
is who killed the redhead.
 
What’s
her name?
 
Pepper Redman and her
boyfriend.”

“Neither can I,” Spocatti
said.
 
“But obviously, someone else
was involved.”
 

His mark rounded a
corner.
 
Spocatti quickened his
step.
 
“I should go,” he said.
 
“Things are picking up.”

“We’ll talk soon.
 
Come for a visit.”

“I’ll call you when I
can.
 
Enjoy the sun, Carmen.
 
Fix up your new place.
 
And when you come upon him again, which
you will, probably late at night when you’re on the cusp of sleep, say hello to
Alex for me.”

“I will.”

“We’ll talk soon,” he
said, and then he clicked off his cell, and put it in his free pocket.
 
He tightened the grip on his Glock in
his other pocket, and rounded the corner, where his mark, to his surprise, had
obviously outwitted him.

She must have been onto
him, because now she was nowhere in sight.

*
 
*
 
*

NEW
YORK

At Redman International,
Leana Redman stepped into her father’s office with Mario.
 
She closed the door behind them, locked
it, and fell into one of her father’s leather sofas.

It had been a brutal
morning, during which her lawyers had gone to battle with her father’s board
members.
 
Ultimately, she got what
she demanded, and she knew that what she had done was right.

“So, that’s that,” Mario
said, sitting next to her.

“Looks that way.”

“How do you feel?”

“Exhausted.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever been so
tired—emotionally or physically.”
 

She absentmindedly placed
her hand to her throat, where there was a fine scar where she’d been cut.
 
When they got her to the hospital that
night, one of the city’s finest plastic surgeons was there because one of his
patients, a burn victim, was failing.
 
With nothing for him to do except make sure that his patient was kept
comfortable, he was available to operate on Leana.
 

What he did for her
wasn’t perfect, but it was as close as anyone could have come to perfect.
 
Though Leana nearly died that night, she
nevertheless was brought back because of Mario’s initial efforts of keeping
pressure on the wound, and later because of what the plastic surgeon and other
surgeons had done for her in the operating room.

Michael wasn’t as lucky—with
no one able to help him, he died.
 
His funeral was in Los Angeles, where he was buried in the Great
Mausoleum at Forest Lawn.
 
Her
father had not wanted a funeral, and so he was cremated.
 
Leana was given his remains, which she
kept on a mantle in their penthouse on Park.
 

She was still too stunned
by their deaths to comprehend them.
 
Even what happened to Pepper woke her up at night and troubled her to
her core.
 
As much as she disliked her
cousin, Pepper hadn’t deserved that.
 
The grief Leana felt for all involved was something that still shook and
affected her.

Once again, Louis Ryan
had targeted her family.
 
This time,
with the exception of Leana and her mother, who would be in prison for the rest
of her life, he had succeeded through a man named James Cullen.
 
Cullen, Leana later learned, had taken
his own life and had left behind a video made by Ryan weeks before his own
death.
 
She was asked if she wanted
to see it, and while she didn’t want to, she felt that she owed it to her
father, Michael, Pepper, and Sean to view the tape since she had survived, and
they hadn’t.

The week before, after
months of therapy with a psychiatrist, she finally felt strong enough to meet
with the board, and finalize what her lawyers had set into place.
 
A meeting was set.
 
Today it was hammered out.

In his will, her father
left her all of his shares of Redman International, which comprised fifty-one
percent of the company.
 
As the
majority shareholder, Leana knew at once that she had what the board didn’t want
her to have—a significant influence in Redman International’s business
operations and in its strategic direction.
 
She wasn’t CEO, but as majority shareholder, she had ultimate
decision-making power.
 
She could
approve or deny them anything—something she didn’t want and something
they didn’t want her to have.

Leana forced the board to
rebrand and rename the corporation in exchange for her shares, which they
bought at a premium.

“Redman International
died with my father,” she told Mario when the process began two months
ago.
 
“They can keep the company,
but they can’t have his name.
 
I
won’t allow it.”

“Will they agree to
this?”