Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game (40 page)

Gabe stood in the doorway, watching her car drive away.

Good-bye, Lexi.

On Monday morning, when the markets opened, Kruger-Brent stock was down by almost 90 percent.

On Wall Street, rumors were rife.
Someone
had inside information about Kruger-Brent, and it was bad:

The default on the Singapore bank loan was the tip of a bad-debt iceberg.

A massive accounting fraud was about to be uncovered.

One of the “wonder drugs” of the firm’s pharmaceutical division was going to be exposed as a lethal killer.

Not since the banking crisis of 2009 had the markets seen such a huge company brought to its knees overnight. A couple of traders emerged from the woodwork, admitting that they’d taken huge bets on the company’s demise. Carl Kolepp, owner of the legendarily aggressive hedge fund CKI, was one. The
Wall Street Journal
estimated that over the weekend, Kolepp had personally made $620 million out of Kruger-Brent’s misery.

Lexi Templeton, like the rest of her famous family, had lost everything.

Max Webster made a statement on CNBC, appealing for shareholders to stay calm, echoing Roosevelt’s famous line that there was “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Like millions of others, Lexi watched Max’s broadcast live. She was shocked by how ill he looked, how frail and gaunt. The world was on fire, and Max was burning.

Think of it as preparation for the flames of hell. Bastard.

Max’s statement calmed no one. By Tuesday, it was all over. Hundreds of thousands of Kruger-Brent employees all around the world woke
up to find themselves out of a job. Tens of thousands of shareholders saw their money go up in smoke. Across America, the headlines screamed:

KRUGER-BRENT BANKRUPT!

U.S. GIANT COLLAPSES!

In the midst of all the commotion, few people noticed the short press release from Templeton Estates, announcing that the firm had ceased trading.

By Thursday, the press stopped hounding Lexi for interviews. She had given a statement, expressing her profound sorrow at Kruger-Brent’s passing and making it clear that she had nothing more to say.

The entire extended Blackwell family was door-stepped by photographers, gleefully cataloging their spectacular fall from grace. Talk about the mighty fallen! The media gorged itself on schadenfreude like a blood-drunk mosquito. Footage of Peter Templeton looking old and frail outside Cedar Hill House was aired on all the major news channels, who were running back-to-back retrospectives of Kruger-Brent’s illustrious history. Interviews with Kate Blackwell from the 1960s were dusted off and replayed, pulling in enormous ratings for the TV networks. America had grown up with the Blackwells and Kruger-Brent. It was, as Robbie Templeton told reporters outside the Royal Albert Hall in London, the end of an era.

Eve Blackwell, as ever, remained barricaded in her self-imposed prison on Park Avenue.

Max Webster’s whereabouts were unknown.

Two weeks later, the furor began to die down. Lexi Templeton slipped quietly out of her apartment one night at about six o’clock. Taking a series of taxis, making sure she wasn’t followed, she arrived at a nondescript Italian diner in Queens around seven.

He was at the table, waiting for her.

Lexi sat down. “Have all the transfers been made?”

“As agreed. Seventy percent for you, thirty for me. A bit harsh really, considering I did all the work,” he joked.

Lexi laughed. “Yeah, and I took all the risk. I staked every penny I have on borrowing the additional stock we needed. I broke my own
company—begged, borrowed and stole.” She pushed the thought of Gabe from her mind. “If the market hadn’t panicked, I’d have been wiped out.”

“But they did, though, didn’t they?” Carl Kolepp grinned. “How do you feel?”

Lexi grinned back. “Rich.”

“Good. The spaghetti’s on you.”

They ate and celebrated. What they’d done was completely illegal. Short selling was one thing. But manipulating a company’s stock price through an orchestrated campaign of misinformation? That was something else. Lexi had used her inside knowledge to defraud shareholders. If she and Carl were caught, they were both looking at a long stretch of prison time.

But we won’t be caught.

This time Lexi had covered her tracks completely. All threads linking her to Carl Kolepp had been meticulously destroyed. Unless one or the other of them confessed, they were home free.

Carl asked Lexi: “So what’ll you do now? Buy yourself an island somewhere peaceful? Fill your swimming pool with Cristal?”

The suggestion seemed to amuse her.

“Of course not. This is where the real work begins.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to rebuild the company, of course. Buy back all the decent businesses. Get rid of all the dross Max acquired in the last ten years. I’ve halved my own score. Now I’m going to double my opponents’.”

“Excuse me?”

Lexi laughed. “Forget about it. Private joke.”

“Let me get this straight.” Carl Kolepp looked puzzled. “You bankrupted your own company just so you could rebuild it?”

“Uh-huh. I lost so I could win.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a little bit nuts?”

Lexi smiled. “A few people. Apparently it runs in my family.”

T
WENTY
-S
IX

FELICITY TENNANT WAS DEPRESSED. SHUFFLING OUT TO the mailbox in her pajamas, she did not return her neighbors’ cheery waves on this glorious, sunny September morning. Behind Felicity stood the idyllic white clapboard house where she and her husband, David, had lived happily and harmoniously throughout twenty years of marriage. Until last month.

First rule of a happy marriage: Get Your Husband Out of the House.

Ever since David quit his job at Templeton, he’d been moping around at home like a bear with a sore head, getting under Felicity’s feet. For reasons Felicity did not understand, they had apparently lost a lot of money. David was even talking about selling the house and moving somewhere more modest. Perhaps even leaving Westchester County.

Over my dead body.

The morning mail did not lift Felicity’s spirits. Bills, bills and more bills. There was only one white envelope among the brown and red.
(Red bills! The shame of it!)
Felicity would have liked to open it, but David got terribly prickly when she opened his mail. Then again, David got terribly prickly about everything at the moment.

“Here.” Back in the kitchen, she handed him the letter, along with the bills. “For you.”

David Tennant opened the envelope without interest. Since Templeton folded, it was as if a black cloud had descended over his life. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Inside the envelope was a note and a check. David Tennant read both. Twice. Felicity noticed that his hands had started to shake.

“What? What is it?”

He handed her the note.

Dear David, I am sorry this has taken so long. And I’m sorry I was not able to be more open with you. I hope this check will go some way toward restoring your faith in me. Your friend, Lexi

“Humph.” Felicity Tennant was unimpressed. “Guilty conscience got the better of her, has it? It’s about time.
Your friend
, indeed! After the way Her Ladyship has treated us.”

Silently, David Tennant passed his wife the check.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Felicity Tennant clutched the kitchen table for support.

The check was for $15 million.

It was going to be a good day after all.

Yasmin Ross smiled at her boss when he walked into the office.

“Morning Mr. M. The mail’s on your desk, next to the latte and skinny blueberry muffin. I moved the morning meeting to a quarter after so you’d have time to eat something.”

Gabe smiled back gratefully

“Yaz, you’re an angel.”

Poor man.
Yasmin watched him go into his office, shoulders slumped, head down. Gabe’s smiles didn’t fool her, or anybody else at the charity offices. Ever since he’d broken things off with Lexi Templeton, the joy seemed to have drained out of him like air from a punctured tire.
Lexi must be crazy, letting him slip through her fingers. I wouldn’t kick Gabe McGregor out of my bed, not for any money.

Sitting at his desk, Gabe picked at his muffin. He knew his assistant was worried about him, and her concern touched him. He hadn’t been eating well lately. Or sleeping, for that matter. Sighing, he turned his attention to the mail. Every day Gabe received scores of begging letters, asking for gifts from his foundation. Saying no was the part of his work he liked least, but it had to be done. If they spread themselves
too thin, they’d achieve nothing. There was still so much work to be done.

Recently Gabe had been saying no even more than usual, thanks to the hole in the charity’s funds made by Lexi. Legally, Gabe was obliged to report the theft to the police. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. Not yet, anyway.

When he saw the handwriting on the plain white envelope, he choked on his coffee, spraying brown liquid right across the desk. Gabe hadn’t heard a word from Lexi since that awful day in the Hamptons.

What could she want? A reconciliation?

Is that what I want, too?

He opened the letter. Except there was no letter. Only a check.

It was for exactly three times the amount Lexi had stolen.

August Sandford was suspicious.

“I don’t know, Jim. Who else is going?”

Jim Barnet was the head—ex-head—of Kruger-Brent’s manufacturing division. Along with a select group of other divisional heads, Jim had been summoned to a meeting by the firm’s receivers. Apparently, a potential cash buyer had come forward, interested in bidding for some of Kruger-Brent’s more profitable businesses.

“Me, Mickey. Alan Dawes, I think. Tabitha Crewe.”

“Tabitha? They want mining?”

“Apparently. And real estate.”

“And nobody has any idea who this mystery benefactor is?”

“Nope. But come on, man. It’s not like we’re exactly inundated with offers. Most of the market still seems to think we’re toxic.”

August hung up the phone.

“Who was that, darling?” Leticia, his mistress, rolled over in bed, pressing her soft breasts against his chest. Since Kruger-Brent went bust, August’s performance as a lover had dropped off a cliff. It was like there was an invisible thread connecting his dick to his net worth. When one shriveled, so did the other.

“Jim Barnet. Some cash-rich buyer wants to talk to us apparently.”

“That’s good, right?”

Reaching beneath the Frette sheets, Leticia gently ran her fingers over August’s balls. He used to love that in the old days.

“Maybe.” August felt the first stirrings of an erection.
A good sign?
“I hope so.”

Mandrake & Connors was one of the largest, most respected accounting firms on Wall Street. In Kruger-Brent’s glory days, it’d made a fortune acting for the firm. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, it found itself handling its bankruptcy. Unraveling the accounts of such a vastly complex network of businesses was expected to take months, if not years.

August Sandford sat with five of his former colleagues in one of Mandrake & Connors’s conference rooms. A month before, the six Kruger-Brent board members would have called the shots at such a meeting. Today, Whit Barclay, the accountant, was in charge. He was loving every minute of it.

“You all know why you’re here.”

Whit Barclay was a small man with a weak chin, receding hairline and permanently wet lips. A drone who had made it to the top of his anthill full of drones by the simple expedient of staying in the same job for thirty-two years.

“It goes without saying that everything that is discussed within these four walls today remains strictly confidential.”

The Kruger-Brenters murmured their assent.

“A company known as Cedar International has approached us, expressing an interest in a number of Kruger-Brent’s more profitable business areas.”

“And mining,” muttered August Sandford. Tabitha Crewe shot him a venomous look. Everybody knew that Tabitha’s division, which had been responsible for Kruger-Brent’s gold and diamond mines, was a lame duck.

“Indeed,” Whit Barclay averred. “In any event, Cedar International—”

August Sandford interrupted again. “Who are these guys? I’m sorry to piss on everybody’s picnic. But has anyone heard of this company?”

“Really, Mr. Sandford. There’s no need for coarse language.”

“I haven’t,” said Jim Barnet.

“Me neither.” Mickey Robertson and Alan Dawes agreed.

“How do we know they’re for real?”

Whit Barclay flushed with anger.
He
was supposed to be chairing this meeting.

“I can assure you, Cedar International is a legitimate,
highly
capitalized firm with—”

“Yeah, but who are they? What do they do? They’re not active in any of our business areas or we would have heard of them.”

The door to the conference room opened. Everybody turned around.

Whit Barclay said stiffly: “Allow me to introduce the CEO of Cedar International.”

August Sandford’s jaw almost hit the table.

“Hello, August. Everybody.” Lexi smiled sweetly. “It’s been a while.”

Lexi had done her homework. She knew exactly which of Kruger-Brent’s businesses were viable and which had become dangerous drains on the firm’s resources. She could afford to pick and choose, buying up the cream of the crop at bargain-basement prices. The only area where she’d let her heart rule her head was in mining. Jamie McGregor had built Kruger-Brent on diamonds. Kruger-Brent without a mining division would be like Microsoft without Windows. Besides, she was convinced she could turn the business around, once she’d fired Tabitha Crewe and the rest of the lazy yes-men whom Max had allowed to bleed the company dry.