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“Stepdaughter,” I correct him, still searching through his paperwork. “You don’t own her. Also, if she found out how you operate, it’s no surprise she’d want to leave. But” — I adjust my tone, to be more positive — “you treated her well, so maybe give her some space, to figure out how good she had it, and she’ll come back to you. You did cut her off, right?” I look up from his in-tray, to meet his gaze.
“Of course. First thing I did when Cy forced maintenance payments because Meredith had control of Daisy’s inheritance. It’s why he had to give her a job as his assistant, so she could try to survive on minimum wage. I can assure you, nobody else in this town was going to hire her. I made certain of that.”
I nod, then pretend to look thoughtful and frown.
Jack glares at me. “What’s that look for? If you’ve got something to say, do it with words, not your stupid face.”
I shake my head, shrug, and then sigh when I get to the bottom of his papers without finding what I needed. “It’s probably nothing.” I give him a curious look, and then move across to his out-tray. “But she did rock up to work in a very nice Bentley last week. She’s been dressing more upmarket, too. Are you sure she doesn’t have extra cash, coming in?”
Jack stares at me a moment, then taps at his laptop. “I stopped the payments the second my lawyer found a loophole in her paperwork.” He draws his thick brows into a deep V. “She’s had nothing for months.”
The light from the changing screen illuminates his face with the green of his collective banking sites, making him look impish and creepy, but I love it when he walks so easily down the pathways I lead him to. He must believe he’s broken me enough to trust I’ll do right by him and the family companies, and I don’t mind at all. It only makes it easier to undermine every step he takes.
The change in his face is so fucking amusing, I almost smile when his jaw drops. He glares at the screen, as if it was the computer that did something wrong, and he taps at his keyboard, shaking his head. “What the—”
Right about now, he’ll be wondering why Daisy’s substantial living-cost payments doubled, instead of stopping. Jules is a fucking tech genius — not quite good enough to figure out how to hack the intensely guarded system, keeping my watch and Kira’s ankle tracker in play, but plenty good for tampering with the banking system he helped devise.
He would’ve removed one trail and left the most beautiful, altered breadcrumbs, to make Jack think he hit the wrong button. Only one transaction will show, and Jack knows he made one transaction, so he can only believe the facts he can see for himself.
It’s wonderful, sowing the seeds of his ruin and watching each one sprout. Some, we planted years ago. Others, we drop when the opportunity arises — not too often. He can’t become suspicious. This is a slow and calculated process that has taken years to set up, but Jack Montgomery’s sons have found strength in allegiance. We’ve rallied, to take down our common enemy, and we’re very nearly in a position to apply all the powerful lessons he’s so thoughtfully bestowed upon us.
Jack types a few things and hits theEnterkey with force. “That’ll show the little bitch,” he mutters, before returning his gaze to where I’m still rifling through his signed papers. “The sales agreement won’t be in there,” he growls, shooing me away from his out-tray. “You haven’t fucking sent it through.”
I lean away from his flicking fingers, pluck the signed paperwork from the tray, and lay it in front of him. “You were saying?”
Again, his expression reads ascomically disturbed.
Will he think it’s dementia? The reality is going to be so much worse — the perfect revenge, for a man who’s sealed his own fate with the proud choices he made. He thinks he has no weaknesses, because he loves and trusts nobody, but he’ll learn where he went wrong soon enough.
He looks up at me, dumbfounded, because it’s definitely his signature, written by his hand, with his pen, on the right document. And he doesn’t remember doing it.
Hypnotherapy is a wonderful thing when the subject doesn’t know they’re undergoing it. Jack actually signed these documents two months ago, not long after we first discussed how we’d handle the Dramadus takeover and I drafted up the agreements.
The specialist hypnotist was hard to find and costs and exorbitant amount, but we’re not short of cash, and he’s been worth every penny. He’s as unscrupulous as Jack, and while he can’t make big alterations like changing our father’s unpleasant personality entirely, we’ve found the most wonderful uses for his talents, regarding the little things.
I raise an eyebrow at Jack, because he knows I hate him, and showing him sympathy would give the game away. “Do you need your annoying ginger office bitch, to schedule you an appointment with your personal physician?”
Sayyes, Jack. I’d love you to hear a medical opinion about your mental state from the dubious quack we funneled into the position and installed permanently three years ago, after we found the right man to exploit. The doctor made some choices that would cost him his license if we didn’t helped cover things up. Grateful and now indebted to us, he agreed to do our bidding without much reluctance, and the more he’s learned of our father, the more enthusiastic he’s become with the job.
He’s especially good at doctoring blood results, to hide the occasional micro-doses of LSD we slip into Jack’s whisky, and the kinds of mushrooms Jack doesn’t know go into his dinner sometimes. We also pay the doctor handsomely.
What our father hasn’t realized is that people respond as well to the right reward as they do to threats. It is all about leverage and incentive, though, so he gets points for trying.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Jack blinks at the forms before tossing them back into his out-tray. “I thought you meant something else.”
I maintain the unconvinced expression I’ve practiced in the mirror so much, I know it by heart. “Uh-huh. Well, two of our upcoming deals are linked to this, so make sure you remember how things are meant to go down. I’ve worked hard, to get everything into position, and it’s been the opposite of easy. These measures are the most complex we’ve taken so far. If you fuck it up by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, there’ll be very real consequences on a very visible scale, and I know how you prefer to keep things out of the media.” I hand over the documents I brought in with me.
Jack snatches them from my hand. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
He seems unaware he’s acting like one, which amuses me.
“Are you going to wipe that smirk off your face, or do I need to do it for you?” he asks.
I adopt my submissive stance and bow my head slightly. “That won’t be necessary, sir.”
He grunts and flips open the first page. Skims it. His gaze shifts back and forth, and then rises to meet mine.
“Make sure the right names are on every document. I need Minty’s metaphorical fingerprints all over this shit. Asshole thinks he can swindle a swindler, but he’ll learn.”
