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“I suppose. The postmark says ‘Brasil’.”
“Then it’s Portuguese,” Jake said, his frown deepening. Who’d be sending him a confidential letter from Brazil? He’d done some business in Argentin
a, but he’d never even been to Brazil.
“And there’s something else,” Belle said. “A box. A small white one, the kind you’d get at a jeweler’s. Shall I open both the letter and the box, Ramirez?”
Belle had been with him a very long time, and he had few secrets from her, but a gut feeling was suddenly telling him to be cautious. He’d had made his fortune following his instincts. Why deny them now?
“No, that’s all right. Just put both of them on my desk. I’ll deal with them later.”
And undoubtedly discover that the letter was a clever advertisement for a time share in Rio and that the box held a small gift to encourage his interest, Jake thought cynically as he ended the call.
Sometimes, having money was a pain in the ass.
His day went well.
The president of the Stock Exchange was amenable to Jake taking a seat on the board, the Mayor liked his idea for a spring fund-raising event for the city’s ever-expanding homeless population, and the head of the Arab conglomerate that owned a building on Park Avenue Jake wanted to buy had finally decided the price he’d offered was acceptable.
Samantha phoned him twice, first to thank him for the flowers, and then for the bracelet and to tell him they’d been invited to a house party in Connecticut the next weekend.
“I’ll have to check my calendar and see if I’m free,” he told her, even though he already knew that he was. He wasn’t a big fan of house parties. Too many people wanting things from him—the men sidling up to him with false smiles, the women groping him under the table at dinner. But Sam enjoyed them and, at just three weeks into their affair, pleasing her was less a burden than he knew it would eventually become.
Jake was nothing if not a realist. His childhood on the mean streets of the South Bronx had ensured that.
Dario dropped him at his office a few minutes before seven in the evening. He was running late but he always made a point of stopping there at the end of the day if he was in town. It was an old habit, a need to make sure nothing had turned up that needed his personal or immediate attention.
Everyone was gone, even Belle. Jake’s footsteps echoed against the marble floor as he made his way past the reception area, down a couple of corridors to his own private domain. He switched on the lights, illuminating a room three times the size of the apartment where he’d grown up, and crossed the Aubusson carpet to his desk.
He scanned the page of notes Belle had left him, scribbled a couple of comments in the margins, then reached for the phone to call Sam and tell her he’d be a little late. His gaze fell on the vellum envelope and the small white box that lay next to it. In all the events of the day, he’d forgotten about them.
He picked up the box. What would it contain? he wondered with amusement. He’d received unsolicited gifts from upscale marketers before, everything from leather-bound appointment books to sterling silver key rings. This was most likely a key ring; the box was too small to hold a book.
Jake put it down and reached for the envelope. There were the words ‘private’ and ‘confidencial,’ just as Belle had described, along with the Brazilian postmark. He raised the envelope to his nose. Belle had been right about that, too. No smell whatsoever, except, he thought wryly, for a whiff of self-importance.
As offers for time shares went, this one was definitely aimed at the top.
He slit the envelope with a letter-opener and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. The letterhead read “Javier Estes & Associados, OAB, Rio de Janeiro,” but the letter itself was in English.
Dear Ramirez
My name is Javier Estes. I am the senior partner at the legal firm of Javier Estes & Associates…
A couple of lines later, Jake sank into his chair. The enormous room seemed suddenly small and airless.
Everything he’d grown up believing was false.
The father he’d grown up venerating had not existed.
He was not the son of a poor Hispanic boy who’d died a hero in a vicious, unheralded war in the jungles of South America. According to the letter in Jake’s hand, he was the son of a wealthy Brazilian who’d died in bed just a few months ago.
The attorney’s words spelled out a brutal story. Thirty-one years before, during a trip to New York, Enrique Ramirez had engaged in a brief affair with Sarah Reece. He’d gotten her pregnant, gone back to Brazil and never contacted her again.
Jake was the fruit of that union.
There was more, things even more impossible than that heart-stopping revelation, but Jake wouldn’t bother with them now. He couldn’t; it was too much. Instead, he reread the part of the letter that made a lie of everything he believed in, everything his mother had told him.
His gaze dropped to the last paragraph.
