Page 92 of Empress of Savages

Over dinner one night, I announce, “Much as I’m loving this nomadic life on the water, we need to be thinking about moving go back to Blackridge.”

Most amazingly and beyond my expectations, Daddy’s condition takes a massive turn for the better. It turned out that a mild kidney infection had gone unnoticed, and as soon as that got some treatment, he started to come back to his old self. So, excellent upsides and maybe a little downside slope, too.

A surprising addition to our retinue is Carstairs. The English butler was so dejected at losing his old boss. I asked him, did he like working for Don Romano and he told me he liked working.

“My special skills are in very scarce and somewhat rarified demand, especially in this area. What little salaried employment I can find is invariably at the households of,” he sniffs, “tech bros.”

So, long story short, I take him on. He’s worth his weight in gold, but I would keep him for the lemonade alone.

But, for that, I need to get all of us moved off the boat and back to the new house.

Don Pucci calls. The don, the head of the most powerful and established family in the Pacific Northwest. Well, he was. Now I suppose that’s me.

I’m not interested in challenging his authority, though, or his position. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown. I know that well enough.

He proposes, very courteously, that we meet.

We meet and stroll in the Olympic Sculpture Park. “Congratulations, Donna Fortuna. I was worried for you backthere. I have to confess that, if things got too rough, I did have a bailout plan in mind to cover you.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you even think about taking risks like that?”

“Because, now I’ll be straight with you, I would much rather be doing business or even being in competition with you than with him.”

“You mean you think I’m easier to beat?”

“No. Quite the opposite. But,” his shrug is expressive. “I like the way you do your business.” He stops. Looks in my eye. “Put it this way, I would sooner lose business to you than win it from him. Okay? I can’t be more frank than that.”

Then he says, Romano. You had him and both of his sons. You could have wiped him out.”

“I did wipe him out. In the Life, the most essential thing we have is honor. I took that all from him. He has none. All his men saw him reduced to to a blubbering wreck. He gave it all away with the stroke of the pen. And that means all of them.”

I look out, across the water to the majestic mountains. I don’t think I could bear to leave this place. “After all his talk about hard choices, he couldn’t take one. He can’t hold his head up here, ever again.”

“Would you have killed one of his sons? Or even both of them?”

“If I had to,” I look in his eye. “Sure. But I didn’t have to. I took everything he had. Everything. And I didn’t need to kill anyone.”

“You’re an asset to this town, Donna Fortuna. It will never own up and admit it, much less thank you for it. But it’s true. There it is.

EPILOGUE

One of the security team calls me, late one night. “There’s an intruder in the old house.”

I so want that place pulled down. And the last thing I want tin the world is to go there.

But he tells me there’s something I might want to see and he sends me a short video. Her.

Jago has returned to the scene of the crime.

With my brow low and my mood lower, I drive to the house, hating every mile, having no idea what to expect.

My footsteps echo on the cold tiles.

I find her in the library. Thin and pale in the darkness, she looks like a ghost already. She heard me step into the house, and into the room but she doesn’t move or look around.

I ask her, “Did you think you’d find something more? Had you left another notebook behind?”

She doesn’t speak. I say, “I should have realized it was you right away. All the damage was done to the businesses that were in the Fortuna family before I took over. The Crespi enterprises, all of the Benedetti businesses, none of that was touched. But that was all the information you had to sell, wasn’t it?”

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