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Try as we might, Rachel and I hadn’t been able to get her to stop drinking. Then, the inevitable happened. We’d lost her in a car accident. She’d managed to find the keys Rachel had hidden, and as far as we could tell, she had been on her way to the old house in the Hamptons.
Losing Mom had sent my sister into a tailspin, but at least Dad and I had gotten her off the booze. Dad deserved most of the credit for her turnaround. Whatever he’d told her had worked.
Even though I now lived by myself, I kept in constant touch with her to make sure she was still on the straight and narrow.
Instead of wallowing, I’d used the shock of all that had happened as incentive to prove myself. And I had. I’d gone from happy Upper West Side teenager to destitute Brooklyn girl to graduating with honors from Columbia with both a BA and an MBA, all on scholarships I’d earned. I’d even landed internships at big-five accounting firms for three summers—with pay no less—which was better than any of my classmates. I was proud of this, and it had only reinforced my determination to show everybody what a poor Brooklyn girl could do.
My Brooklyn apartment was smaller than most people’s closets, but it was close to work and the subway. Moving out on my own had been high on my goal list.
Poster girl for the American dream, that’s me. I’d accomplished all of it on my own, through hard work and diligence. And everything I was, everything I’d accomplished was in spite of what the McAllisters had done to us.
I composed myself and didn’t bother with any of the fake pleasantries I didn’t feel. “I must be in the wrong place.”
The intensity of Evan’s stare dropped the temperature of the room a few degrees.
“I’m supposed to meet with Zoe Shorter,” I added.
He retreated behind his desk without even a perfunctory handshake and motioned to the chairs across from his desk. “Please sit. You’re in the right place. I’ve taken over for her. It was rather abrupt.”
His assistant pulled me out of my stare. “Ms. Borelli, can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
Shaking my head, I glanced at her. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
She moved to the door.
Evan stopped her. “Diane, would you please get a pad and sit in to take notes for us?”
“Certainly,” his assistant answered, retrieving a notepad from the credenza next to her without having to leave the room.
I considered running for the door, but that would probably give him too much pleasure, so I took the seat he’d offered and glared my best fuck-you smile at him.
Had he invited his assistant to join us to make me more comfortable in his presence, or to protect himself against me clawing his eyeballs out like I felt I should? Either way, we both had to behave ourselves now.
Evan sat in his ostentatious ergo-chair with more levers than a spacecraft. “I’m new in this position, and Ms. Shorter was called to London on short notice, so I have to admit I don’t know what you and she had scheduled to discuss today,” he began.
The pieces fell into place for me. The scandal had dropped on Page Six early this morning. Of course I’d seen the photos—everybody in the office and probably half the Eastern Seaboard had seen them by now.
Evan was sitting in front of me because he’d been demoted. He’d been punished and knocked off his high horse. It was about fucking time.
I didn’t know how many notches down the corporate ladder he’d been pushed, but it served him right. Karma had finally come to dig her claws into his ass and drag him down. Asshole that he was, he deserved this and a heap more. It didn’t make up for what had happened to my dad, but it was a start.
Fine. Game on. I’d handled sharks before. It didn’t matter that he’d seen me in a bikini. Or that he’d seen me puke my guts out after we’d both had way too much of his father’s gin.
“I’m here to discuss this year’s drive, and your company’s participation level,” I told him. That much should have been obvious. “Not your swim session last night.”
His eyes narrowed, but he held his temper remarkably well.
That had been a low blow on my part, but he was the one who’d gotten naked in public in the middle of downtown. The City Hall fountain had been a particularly dumb choice.
“And what was our donation last year?”
If he had to ask, he didn’t know, and that gave me an opening. “Two hundred thousand, and this year…” My salesmanship professor, Mr. Sliphorn, had said to always start high. Two hundred thousand was way beyond what McAllister International had ever given us. I paused, trying to figure out how high I might be able push him.
“You’d like us to increase that, I take it?” A hint of a smirk, but not a smile, played on his lips.
Nodding, I added, “It would show your generosity to do so, yes.”
His head tilted, as if trying to read my thoughts. “To what level?”
