Page 95 of The Cinderella Secret
Aiden mulled that one over. “What about you?” he asked, looking sideways at Evan. How far was his cousin willing to go to cheer him up? “Am I smarter than you?”
“Obviously, I’m stillwaysmarter than both of you,” said Evan. Evan’s tone was as arrogant as Aiden had ever heard it, but his eyes twinkled, and Aiden laughed.
“Obviously,” he agreed, then rubbed his head again. “Ev, I’mreallynot sure how to fix this mess. I’m pretty sure it was Charlie, but I don’t have any proof.”
“Sounds right,” said Evan. “He used to try and get me to smoke Dad’s cigarettes when I was ten. Thought it was funny. I guess that’s not relevant. But my point is that he’s someone who thinks that rules are for other people. If you want to get him, you have to offer to let him help you take down the Zhao. Tell him you want to do something illegal and you need his help. He’ll believe it because he thinks we’re like that. He thinks he knows us.”
Aiden looked at Evan and felt himself grin. “He doesn’t know us at all. And he sure as fuck doesn’t know Jackson.”
34
Jackson – DevEntier Corporate
Jackson stood in the lobby and waited for the information of his presence to filter through to Charlie. He noted that a dark-suited gentleman seemed to be loitering conspicuously near the front door. Jackson pretended not to notice. Eventually, a secretary showed up to escort him upstairs to the CEO’s office.
The DevEntier offices had moved multiple times over the decades and currently resided in a shiny glass-and-steel midtown building. It was everything that was modern. The original DevEntier building with the records storage and junior researchers still existed on the outskirts of Brooklyn with its pseudo-futuristic and dated eighties architecture. Jackson had sent teams out to do recon on both locations. They had reported heightened security provided by an outfit called Unified Coverage. Jackson wondered if there was a marketing firm somewhere that specialized in generating vague business names for barely legal jack-boot operations masquerading as security firms.
Unified was run by an ex-Marine, Joe Foss. Foss had managed to retire one step ahead of an investigation into criminal misbehavior in Afghanistan. Not that anyone was supposed to know that—everything public was black bar redacted. But knowing the right people who drank with the right people meant that the black bars could slip a little. Jackson was unimpressed by both Foss’s reputation and his hiring practices. At least three of the operatives Jackson’s team had identified had felony convictions and white power affiliations.
Jackson knew he was the last person who should be judging someone else on prison time and he didn’t hold it against anyone for running with the right color gang in prison—that was just how prison was. But that didn’t mean you had to associate on the outside. Particularly not with white power asshats who probably couldn’t spell Nazi without some guidance.
The secretary, who was of the old school variety in a tight skirt and heels and looked like she didn’t know how to type, but probably took dictation, led him into MacKentier’s office. It was expansive and dominated by an enormous desk that was probably a masterwork of furniture design, but Jackson thought would be a bitch to get through the door.
“Jackson!” said MacKentier, coming forward to shake his hand. “Color me surprised.”
“I gave up coloring,” said Jackson. “I could never stay in the lines.”
Charlie laughed, but Jackson saw his eyes narrow as if searching Jackson’s face.
“Trying to decide if I look like Randall?”
“Yes,” said Charlie. “I’m not really seeing it.”
“Got a cigarette?” asked Jackson. It was half a joke. His cousins were convinced that smoking made the family resemblance stronger. He thought it was the reason they had wanted him to quit. But Aiden had also said Charlie was a closet smoker and Jackson thought that if he was here to do his best Randall impression, then he might as well start with the one thing he knew for certain about either man.
“Now, at least, I’m hearing the resemblance,” said Charlie, laughing again. “Randall would never admit he had a habit. I swear he stole more cigarettes than those bums down on the street.”
Charlie returned to the massive desk and rummaged through a drawer for a moment before tossing a pack and lighter over to Jackson. Jackson caught them and took a seat in the chair across from the desk.
“My brand,” said Jackson, feeling surprised, and flipping open the gold box of Sobranie cigarettes with the double-headed eagle embossed on the cover.
“And there it is,” said Charlie with a nod. “This is all Owen’s fault.”
“What is?” asked Jackson, pulling out the black bodied cigarette, trying not to inhale it like a damn junkie. He rolled it between his fingers, feeling the familiar, smooth black paper, and he went through the ritual of tapping it on the box before lighting it. Charlie pulled a shallow dish off a shelf and plunked it down at Jackson’s elbow. It was a crystal cut bowl with a plaque on it that said Business Man of the Year 2011.
“The Sobranies. He started dating that model.”
“Evan’s mother?” asked Jackson as he breathed out his first lungful of smoke in three years. He tried not to look like he was having a mini-smokers’ orgasm. He’d forgotten how fucking good nicotine was.
“Yeah. I forget her name,” said Charlie, returning to his desk.
“Sofia,” supplied Jackson, who had an entire file folder on her back at Cheery Bail Bonds.
“That’s right,” said Charlie. He sat down in the tall, ergonomic, high-tech chair that was at odds with the dark wood desk. “Anyway, she smoked ‘em. She was a model. And she was Russian, so she liked smoking Black Russians.”
Jackson tried not to sigh. Sofia was Ukrainian. He didn’t understand why people couldn’t get it straight.
“Owen liked them too, so he switched. And since Randall wouldn’t buy his own goddamn pack, he smoked them too. Which meant that then he wanted everyone else he bummed cigarettes off of to buy them as well. He said switching brands led to smoker’s cough.”
