Page 20 of The Cinderella Secret
“Yeah, McNuggets,” murmured Pete, nodding sympathetically.
“Oh, please,” said Jackson. “Like Rico lets you eat McNuggets.”
“Of course not,” said Pete. “Why do you think I had to eat all forty-eight in one go and destroy the evidence?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Aiden, pointing emphatically at Pete. “He understands.”
“Both of you need to stop dating vegetarians,” said Jackson.
“Rico is not a vegetarian,” said Pete. “He’s a pescatarian.”
“Oh, totally different,” said Jackson, rolling his eyes.
“It is,” said Aiden. His diet had gotten thrown completely out of whack when dating the Channel Four weather girl, who should have come with a warning label for eating disorders. “They eat fish.” Jackson raised his eyebrows. “Which you already know but were being sarcastic about. Right. Anyway. What was the question? Whether or not we’re stupid or clueless?”
Jackson nodded, looking enormously entertained at Aiden’s expense.
“When it comes to matters like legal matters?” asked Aiden, trying to muster his dignity. “No, we’re neither stupid nor clueless.”
8
Ella – Declarations of War
Ella looked at her reflection in the full-length window of the conference room. She had put her hair up and wore what she thought of as her Bette Davis pantsuit. It was cut like 1940s menswear, and she usually liked it because it made her feel like one of those broad-shouldered dames who took command of everything. But looking at herself in the wavy reflection, she wondered if it had been a mistake. Maybe she should have gone for something frothy and feminine. She had wanted the Deveraux lawyers to take her seriously, but maybe she should have allowed them to misjudge her. She decided probably not. She had a hard enough time getting respect in a courtroom already. She probably didn’t need to feed into it.
The other Zhao lawyers were sitting to the right of Bai. Their backs were ram-rod straight and they sat with perfect formality, hands folded over their briefing files. They might as well be robots. Ella thought of them as Tic, Tac, and the bald one was definitely Toe.
In her brief, post-law-school career she had worked only for her uncle, and she was aware that he had dropped her like a shark into bigger and bigger pools of water, testing her skills against larger and larger problems. She had met each challenge with ease. It had not been until they had arrived here that she’d understood. What he’d been training her for was this—claiming a controlling spot on the board of DevEntier Industries for her uncle.
There was just one teensy little problem. The shares necessary to get on the board were never going to become available. Charles MacKentier Jr. and Evan and Jackson Deveraux had controlling interest of the company and there just weren’t the shares needed in the marketplace to force his way onto the board. But when her uncle found a decades old email from Randall Deveraux to Bo Zhao buried in the Zhao Industry servers, it had felt like the winning lottery ticket. It was thin, at best. The words were vague and the promises merely implied, but it was enough to do what Bai wanted—wrestle shares away from the Deveraux cousins.
“Who do you think they’ll send?” asked Bai. “They won’t actually come themselves.”
Ella knew who thetheywas in that statement. He meant Jackson and Evan. But sometimes she wondered if he meant Randall and Owen. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Bai hated the deceased Deveraux brothers.
“No,” said Ella. “Odds are they’ll send Jerome Strand. He’s Harvard Law. Good at contracts and cheating on his wife. They might also send Aiden Deveraux for the look of things. He goes to the board meetings for them.”
“The stupid one,” said Bai, nodding. He had read the same background reports she had.
“Our research indicates,” said Tic, “that Strand will negotiate and settle onsomeamount of shares, but not all. We doubt that he is aware of our share purchases, so whatever he gives us should be enough. We do not think anyone at DevEntier has been aware of our efforts.”
Bai stared at the lawyer, who promptly went back to sitting quietly.
“What do you think Ella?” asked Bai, still watching Tic for movement.
“I think it depends on how annoyed Evan Deveraux is,” said Ella. “The background file indicates that Evan can be… territorial. Jackson does not appear to care about DevEntier or follow the stock market at all. I think Evan is the one we have to worry about. I put in a few calls to people who have worked with him that are also in our contact list. They say he can be hell to negotiate with.”
“Who did you call?” asked Bai, looking up at her in surprise.
“Eizo Matsuda in Tokyo. He said Evan was an ice-cold bastard who he really liked.”
Bai snorted. “Sounds like the kind of person Eizo would like.”
“It was his estimation that if we’re going up against the Deveraux, we should prepare for war.”
“That was all he said?” asked Bai, looking skeptical.
“No. He invited me to dinner next time I was in Tokyo and then said that you should go fuck yourself,” said Ella.
