AUGUST SANDFORD GRIPPED THE SIDES OF HIS CHAIR AND ground his perfectly straight white teeth with frustration.

The team meeting of Kruger-Brent's new Internet division had run over by almost an hour now. Max Webster, Kate Blackwell's twenty-one-year-old great-grandson and Kruger-Brent's probable future chairman, was on his feet, pontificating.

August thought: I didn't spend eight years at Goldman Sachs to sit here and listen to some business-school freshman talking out of his ass. Or did I?

August's girlfriend, Miranda, had warned him about joining Kruger-Brent.

"It's a family company, babe. However huge, however global, at the end of the day the Blackwells will always call the shots. You'll hate it."

August had ignored her warnings for three reasons. The headhunter from Spencer Stuart had promised to triple his salary and bonus; he'd be fast-tracked onto the Kruger-Brent board, and he wasn't in the habit of taking career advice from his girlfriends. August Sandford picked his lovers according to a strict set of criteria involving largeness of breasts and flatness of stomach. He wanted a lioness in the sack, not a life coach.

"Don't worry, sweetie," August told Miranda patronizingly. "I know what I'm doing."

But he didn't know shit. Miranda was right. On days like today, August Sandford yearned for his old job on the Goldman derivatives desk like a shipwrecked man yearns for dry land. No salary was worth this.

"You're being shortsighted." Max Webster's black eyes blazed with passion. "Kruger-Brent should be allocating more money to its Internet businesses, not less."

His speech - more like a sermon, thought August bitterly - was directed entirely at his cousin Lexi Templeton. As if the two Blackwell heirs were the only people in the room. Both Max and Lexi were on a six-month leave from Harvard Business School. When they graduated, both would join Kruger-Brent. But only one would ultimately take on the mantle of chairman, a position reserved for family members only.

The general consensus was that that person would be Max. Aside from the obvious drawback of her hearing, Lexi was seen as too much of a party girl to be taken seriously. She showed up for the first day of her internship on the back of a Ducati, her long legs wrapped around its owner, Ricky Hales, and her trademark blond hair flying in the wind. Ricky Hales was the drummer with the latest hot rock band, the Flames. More tattoo than skin, with a heroin habit that made Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa, Ricky was almost as much of a paparazzi favorite as Lexi herself. Lexi gave Ricky a lingering kiss on the steps of the Kruger-Brent building, a shot that made the front cover of every gossip rag in America the next morning.

Lexi Templeton was an enigma. Part vulnerable child, part vixen, she kept the press guessing and the Blackwell-obsessed public intrigued. But August Sandford sensed that Lexi's little show with Ricky Hales was not intended for the media. It was a deliberate attempt to goad her cousin, the brooding Max Webster.

The rivalry between the two Blackwell heirs was intense.

They reminded August of the Williams sisters, announcing at their first Wimbledon tournament that they considered their only competition to be each other, thereby instantly alienating every other women's tennis player on the international circuit. Unlike the Williams sisters, Lexi and Max further fueled the flames of their competitiveness with a sexual tension so strong you could practically smell it in the air. Not that either one of them would admit it, even to themselves.

Miranda's voice rang in August's ears: It's a family company. The Blackwells will always call the shots.

August looked around the table. Apart from Max, Lexi and himself, there were three other Kruger-Brent executives at the meeting. Harry Wilder, a gray-haired former academic with mad-scientist eyebrows, was nominally the most senior. A board member for a decade, Harry Wilder was a golf buddy of Peter Templeton's, Kruger-Brent's current chairman. Other than a decent handicap and an affable clubhouse manner, however, it was hard to see what value he added to the company. Nobody took him seriously, least of all August Sandford. The fact that Harry Wilder was the board member chosen to head up the Internet division did not bode well for any of them.

Next to Wilder sat Jim Bruton. Jim Bruton was an up-and-comer at Kruger-Brent. A dead ringer for a young Frank Sinatra, Jim's most meaningful personal relationship was with his mirror. Second came his busty personal assistant, Anna. In distant third was his loyal wife, Sally, mother of Jim's three legitimate daughters, Corinna, Polly and Tiffany, always referred to pretentiously by Jim as "the heiresses." (His two illegitimate sons, Ronnie and Carlton, lived with their mother in Los Angeles, unbeknownst to Sally and the girls.)

To say that August Sandford despised Jim Bruton would be an understatement. But even August had to admit that Jim was sharp. He'd tripled the profits of the biotech division during his stint as head in the early nineties. Jim made no secret of the fact that he intended to make Kruger-Brent Internet his next money-spinning fiefdom.

Over my dead body, thought August.

Beside Jim Bruton was a young woman named Tabitha Crewe. Recently hired from Stanford Law School, Tabitha was attractive in a neat, regular-featured, hair-pulled-back-in-a-ponytail sort of way. Apparently she'd started and sold a small dot-com while at college and made herself a little nest egg, hence her assignment to the team. August looked at Tabitha's impassive, makeup-free face and found it hard to imagine her having the get-up-and-go to start a washing machine, never mind a business. She seemed so...blank. Especially when she sat next to Lexi Templeton.

Now there's a chick with a fire in her crotch. If she weren't so obsessed with her prick of a cousin...how much would I like to screw all the haughtiness out of her? Sexy, opinionated, stuck-up...

"Mr. Sandford. Are we boring you?"

Jim Bruton was staring at August, a wry smile playing across his lips.

Yes, you're boring me. You're all boring me stiff.

"I apologize." August returned the smile. "What was the question?"

"Mr. Webster here is proposing we make a formal submission to the board, asking for a bigger budget with which to make acquisitions. Ms. Templeton disagrees. Harry and I were wondering where you stood on the matter?"

August opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Lexi. Her deafness made her speech slower and more deliberate. She also had a habit of moving her hands when she spoke, unconsciously signing her words. August watched her long, slender fingers perform their delicate dance and found himself wondering what they'd feel like wrapped around his cock. He started to get hard, which irritated him even more.

Lexi said: "I'm all in favor of expanding our online reach. What I'm not in favor of is throwing money at a random bunch of start-ups before we've done our due diligence. My cousin seems to think that no economic fundamentals apply to Internet companies. I disagree."

"So do I," said August.

Max glared at him. Jim Bruton and Harry Wilder followed suit. Both had clearly decided that the chances of a deaf woman taking over Kruger-Brent were slim to none, whatever Kate Blackwell's will might say, and were pinning their colors firmly to Max's mast.

If I had any sense, I'd do the same, thought August. I don't even like the girl, so God knows why I'm defending her. But the fact was, Lexi was right. Max was talking out of his ass, jumping blindly and greedily onto the Internet bandwagon like every other Harvard Business School groupie.

"Any acquisition proposal we make to the board needs to be specific and backed up by hard data." August stood up to leave. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid I have an important lunch appointment."

That night in the bath, Lexi Templeton thought about August Sandford.

He's not the ugliest man in the world, she conceded grudgingly, picturing his thick chestnut hair, strong jaw and almond eyes, offset by a butterscotch tan acquired, no doubt, on the beaches of East Hampton this past summer. Lookswise he was the exact opposite of Max. Brad Pitt to Max's Johnny Depp. Or so August probably thought.

He's almost as good-looking as he thinks he is. Not half as smart, though.

Lexi knew scores of August Sandfords at Harvard. Handsome, rich, well-educated, chauvinist pigs. Take one rampant ego, saute lightly in wealth and privilege, top with a blue-chip business card, and voila! August Did-I-Mention-I-Was-at-Goldman? Sandford. Yawn.

The bright young things at Harvard bored Lexi, but they served a purpose. She slept with all of them. Ever since the night of her sixteenth birthday party, when she'd lost her virginity to Christian Harle, Lexi had been haunted by the thought that her childhood abuse might have ruined her for sex as an adult. Having worked so hard to overcome her deafness, it was terrible to imagine that the pig might have won after all. That he might have turned her into some sort of sexual cripple. Determined not to let this happen, Lexi threw herself into college sex with all the single-minded fervor of a sailor on shore leave. Harvard was an education on every level: algorithms by day, orgies by night. Threesomes, bisexuality, sex toys, role-play; Lexi wanted to discover it all. To prove to the world and to herself that she was not a victim, that the pig had not defeated her. It was an open secret on campus that Lexi Templeton was the best lay at HBS. But an unspoken code of loyalty prevented her classmates from spreading rumors in the newspapers. Harvard was a closed world, a safe place to explore one's wild side. Outside the college walls, it was a different story.

At Kruger-Brent, I'll have to be more careful.

Lexi brought her thoughts back to August Sandford. At least he'd stuck up for her against Max today, which was more than those other stuffed shirts had done. Lexi was well aware that 99 percent of Kruger-Brent's senior management had written her off. Kate Blackwell's will favored her over Max for the chairmanship, but then Kate Blackwell had never known that Lexi would grow up to be deaf. In any event, a unanimous board decision could see Max usurp her position. Most people at the company, including Max himself, not to mention Lexi's own father, seemed to view this as a foregone conclusion. It drove Lexi wild with rage.

How dare they write me off? My GPA has always been higher than Max's. I'm smarter than he is, I have more business sense. Okay, so I can't hear. But Max can't listen. That's the real handicap. He loves the sound of his own voice too much.

Lexi rubbed soap under her armpits and breasts with a sponge. Men were all the same. So impressed with themselves, beating their chests like baboons. August Sandford, Jim Bruton, Max...they were just grown-up versions of Christian Harle and the other Andover jocks. They patronized Lexi, the way they patronized all women, only in Lexi's case her deafness seemed to make it worse. That and the fact that she was beautiful, rich, famous and smarter than all of them combined.

August Sandford might have thought he had his poker face on today. But Lexi could see the envy in his eyes.

He hates me because I'm better than he is. He hates me because he wants to sleep with me and he can't. He hates me because -

A flashing light on her PC screen in the living room caught her attention.

New message.

Grabbing a towel, Lexi leaped out of the bath and ran, dripping, across the polished walnut floor of her apartment. Unlike mommie's-boy Max, who still lived at home with Eve, Lexi had her own place on the Upper East Side and reveled in her independence. A sleek, modern two-bedroom in a classy building on Seventy-seventh Street, between Park and Madison, it was decorated in neutrals and whites with huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A delicate Christopher Wray chandelier in glass and stainless steel hung from the living-room ceiling above a cream pony-skin rug. In the far corner, perched on a Danish Modern desk was Lexi's white Mac - her portal to the hearing world. She'd often wondered how on earth the deaf had managed before the advent of the Internet and thanked God she'd been born in the age of the text.

Scrolling past e-mails from Robbie and her father, her Harvard professor Dr. Fairford, and countless lovers, Lexi said a silent prayer.

Please be from him.

Finally, she reached the new message. Clicking it open, her heart gave a little leap of excitement. The subject heading read:

I've found him.

Tommy King did not like Thailand.

There was only so much Asian pussy that one man could enjoy. Once you'd seen the first hundred girls fire Ping-Pong balls out of their assholes, smoke cigars with their pussies, and exhaust the rest of their repertoire of bizarre sexual party tricks, it actually got kinda tame. And then what were you left with? Fried bugs, stinking hot weather and friggin' dysentery, that's what.

Tommy King wanted a Big Mac, Monday Night Football, Fox News and sex with a white woman over thirty who considered her asshole to be an exit not an entrance. After five long years, he wanted this godforsaken assignment to be over. The guy was obviously dead, like his two buddies. Why couldn't the Templeton girl just accept that?

When Tommy King first met Lexi Templeton at her sixteenth birthday party, he thought he was onto a cash cow. Little had he known that the search for the girl's kidnappers would take five long, fruitless years. Years that had seen the sallow-skinned PI clock up more air miles than Henry Kissinger, and for what? Sure, the job had netted him a tidy little nest egg. But he was sixty-two already and tired as all hell. Besides, what use was money in a dump like Phuket?

Agent Edwards, the FBI hero (schmuck) who pulled Lexi out of the burning mill all those years ago had tried to warn him. Tommy King went to visit Agent Edwards at his place on Long Island, a huge French Country pile paid for by the girl's grateful father. Crunching his way up the graveled drive, Tommy King thought: Jeez, Blackwell money goes a long way. Then he saw Agent Edwards's barbecued face and thought: But not far enough.

"You'll never find them. Believe me, we've tried."

They'd sat outside in the garden on a joyously warm spring day. A maid brought them fresh lemonade. Tommy King watched Agent Edwards sip it with what used to be his mouth and tried not to wince.

"What makes you so sure?"

"The fire destroyed everything, all the physical evidence. All we had to go on were Lexi's own descriptions. They were fairly detailed in some respects, but it wasn't enough." Agent Edwards shook his head sadly. "We're as sure as we can be that none of the major crime syndicates were involved."

"No Mob?"

"Definitely not. We looked into everyone close to the Blackwell family who had a grievance. Real or imagined. It's a long list."

"I'll bet." Tommy King took a sip of his own lemonade. It was ambrosial.

"Kruger-Brent employees, household staff. We even looked at Dr. Templeton's old patients. He was a psychiatrist, you know, before his marriage. We figured maybe some whack job with a thing for little kids?"

Tommy King shivered.

"Anyway, after two years and a pretty much unlimited budget, we dropped the case. I wish you luck. But you're looking for three needles in a haystack the size of Canada."

Two years later, Tommy King found the first two needles: William Mensch and Federico Borromeo. Billy Mensch was a small-time drug dealer turned contract killer from Philadelphia. Borromeo was a friend Billy had made in juvenile detention in 1970, a con artist and compulsive gambler with no known history of violence.

Both had died in a car crash in Monaco in 1993, the year after Lexi's rescue.

When Tommy King first told her, Lexi, then aged eighteen, refused to believe it. She wrote to Tommy, demanding to see pictures of the bodies. After four months spent painstakingly grooming the lonely, overweight receptionist at the Monaco Medical Examiner's Office, Tommy obliged. Along with the pictures he sent a bill, and a note of his own, asking if Lexi wanted to continue to search for the third man.

In two years, I've discovered no trace of him. As you know, the FBI also drew a total blank. I feel it only right to advise you that, in my opinion, we will not be able to track down this individual and that continuing the case would be a waste of both my time and your money.

One week later, Tommy King received a check for $20,000 from Lexi Templeton, along with a one-word note.

Continue.

Two years later, he got a lead on a man calling himself Dexter Berkeley, a known rapist and petty thief from the San Francisco area. Berkeley regularly visited the Far East as a sex tourist.

Tommy King booked a flight to Bangkok.

In Thailand, Dexter Berkeley had disappeared again like a fish swimming into a sewer. Every few months, Tommy King saw him leap like a salmon out of the river of filth. In Bangkok, he surfaced as Mick Jenner, insurance salesman; in Pattaya, he was Fred Greaves, toy manufacturer; in Phuket, he was Travis Kemp, taxi driver. Only in his latest incarnation had Tommy King been able to get any sort of grip on his slimy, sewage-slick form:

John Barclay, aka prisoner 7843A.

John Barclay had taken a ten-year-old hooker back to his five-star hotel room and been arrested at gunpoint by a Thai vice squad fifteen minutes later with his pants around his ankles.

Ten years. No parole. No prepubescent pussy.

Too bad, Dex. Or whoever the hell you are.

Tommy King sat at the bar, waiting for his BlackBerry to buzz.

One thing you could say for Lexi Templeton. She wasn't one to let the grass grow under her feet. Not with news like this.

Sure enough, within sixty seconds, Tommy's phone jumped to life. He allowed himself a single, gold-toothed smile.

Thank you. Your employment is now terminated. I will wire the rest of the money to your Bahamanian account first thing Monday morning. Good-bye, Mr. King.

Tommy wondered briefly what would happen now. Would Lexi wait ten years for the guy to get out - assuming he lived that long - before taking her revenge? Or would she consider a decade taking it up the ass in a Thai jail punishment enough?

Whatever. It wasn't his problem anymore.

Good-bye, Ms. Templeton.

Good riddance.

Six blocks from Lexi's apartment, Max was having dinner at home with his mother.

"What's the matter, darling? You look tense."

Six feet of gleaming mahogany separated Eve from her son. The table was laid formally, as usual, with full silver service. A Cordon Bleu cook prepared all Eve's meals, taking care to keep her daily calorie intake below eighteen hundred. Keith may have stolen her face decades ago, but even now, at fifty-five, Eve was vain enough to obsessively maintain her trim figure. Unable to go to restaurants for fear of being photographed, she tried to make meals at home as luxurious and pleasurable as possible. She dressed for dinner, and expected Max to do the same. Tonight she was wearing a full-length jade-green evening dress with a high neck and deep V that plunged down her back, almost to the start of her buttocks. It was a young woman's dress, but Eve could carry it off.

"It's nothing." Max forced a smile.

Eve examined her son's handsome face, its predatory, sensual features accentuated by the stark black of his tuxedo.

He's breathtaking. Not an ounce of his father in him. But how could a son of mine be such a terrible liar?

"I don't think it's nothing, Max. Tell me what's wrong."

Max hesitated. "It's Lexi. We had a team meeting today. She kept trying to shoot me down."

Eve's scarred, stretched eyelids narrowed. "Go on."

"She's got August Sandford eating out of her palm. I'm sure Jim Bruton wants to screw her, too." Max shook his head. "At first I thought the board was just humoring her with this internship. But now I'm not so sure. She wants the chairmanship as much as I do. She's smart."

"She's deaf, Max." Eve's voice dripped with disdain. "Are you telling me you can't outwit a girl who slurs her words like a drunk? Like a retard?"

"Of course not, Mother. I - "

"She's a slut! She's a joke!" Rancor poured out of Eve like pus from a boil. "Falling out of nightclubs at five every morning with her skirt pulled up around her hips."

This wasn't exactly true. Lexi might be promiscuous, and she might enjoy a party or twenty, but she was very conscious of her public image. Not that Max was about to argue. He loathed his cousin every bit as much as Eve did. The fact that he wanted her sexually only made his loathing stronger. Lexi was all that stood between him and Kruger-Brent. Between him and his mother's love. Lexi was trying to take Eve away from him. She was ruining everything.

Eve raged on. "You're not a man. You're a queer like your cousin Robbie. Like your father."

"No! I'm nothing like Keith."

"You don't have the balls to run that company."

"Mother, I do. I - "

"What exactly was today's meeting about?"

Max told Eve about his proposal to siphon more money into the Internet division, and Lexi's objections. Eve sat silently for a few moments.

"All right," she said at last, pushing aside her plate. "This is what we do."

Harry Wilder was on his third glass of claret at the golf club bar when the steward tapped him on the shoulder.

"Telephone call for you, sir."

"For me?"

He wasn't expecting any business calls. It was Saturday. His wife, Kiki, was shopping with friends and besides, she never rang the club. Perhaps something terrible had happened? One of the grandchildren?

"You can take it in the library."

Harry Wilder hurried into the deserted, oak-paneled room trying not to let his imagination get the better of him. Kiki was always telling him not to be such a worrywart. Professor Panic, that was her pet name for him.

"Hello?"

"I know about Lionel."

The voice was unfamiliar. Harry wasn't even certain if it was male or female.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Lionel Jakes. I know."

Harry Wilder felt his mouth go dry. His tongue began to swell.

"Who is this?"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten, Harry? Lovely Lionel? The way his cock felt in your mouth? The taste of his cum?"

"Jesus." Harry spluttered. "How do you...? We were children, for God's sake. Little boys. It was fifty years ago. I'm a happily married man."

Laughter. "Your wife knows about Lionel, does she? And Mark Gannon?"

Harry Wilder felt a painful tightening in his chest. Who was this person? How could they possibly know about Mark? He'd been dead for twenty years.

"What do you want?"

When the voice told him, Harry was incredulous.

"That's it? That's all? You don't want money?"

But the line had already gone dead.

Staring down at his empty bowl, he felt the familiar ache of hunger gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

"Mi piang por." It's not enough.

His four cell mates began rattling their spoons against their bowls in protest. Their normal ration of rice - one full bowl at breakfast and another in the afternoon - had been cut by two-thirds with no explanation for the second day running.

"Gla'p maa!" Get back! the Thai guard barked, and the men cowered back like dogs, their teeth bared but their backs arched in submission.

They were all white, all five of them. Samut Prakan Prison was full of child sex offenders, but the white men received the roughest treatment and had to be segregated from the other prisoners. This was good, because it meant they were five to a cell and not eight or ten like the Thais, who stank. Revolting animals. On the other hand, he suspected the whites were last in the food line. Getting the poorer-quality stew was bearable. Being starved of rice was not.

He closed his eyes and thought about America. Happier days. At other times, when he'd been fed, he allowed his mind to wander back to the Blackwell twins. Sweet Eve and uptight Alexandra. How perfect they'd been as young girls. How smooth, how tiny. He thought about the girl Lexi, Alex's daughter. Thanks to Federico, that wetback pussy, he never got to rape her. Not fully. Of course, there'd been hundreds of little girls since then: Thais, Burmese, Singaporian, all adorable, squealing virgins. But he still felt robbed.

I wanted that girl. She was promised to me. Three million dollars, and little Lexi with her thighs spread wide. And what did I get? Second-degree burns and the FBI up my ass.

Now, though, all he could think about was food. Like the pink elephants in Fantasia, the images danced through his brain: cheeseburgers dripping with ketchup and fat, chili, fried onions, marshmallows dipped in chocolate and peanut butter...

"Effing nips. They're trying to bloody kill us."

Barry, the most cadaverous of his cell mates, had deep sunken brown eyes and skin like paper hanging from his caved-in cheekbones. Barry was British, and referred to all Asians indiscriminately as "nips."

"I can't take much more of this. GIVE US OUR FUCKING RICE, YOU BASTARDS!"

Barry ran his spoon along the bars of the cell, shrieking and yelling like a madman.

Stupid fool. He's going to earn us all a beating.

The guard returned. He winced and covered his head, waiting for the inevitable blows to rain down. But instead, to his astonishment, a cauldron of broth was wheeled into the cell. The guards withdrew, leaving it there.

For a second, all five men stood frozen, staring at the steaming food as if it were a mirage. Dumplings bobbed on the surface amid a thin smattering of noodles. It smelled faintly of chicken, more strongly of cabbage. Then they moved as one toward the pot.

Someone called, "Don't spill it!" Then ten hands plunged into the boiling liquid. He fought like an animal for his share, cramming noodles and thin wisps of meat past his shriveled lips, reveling in the salty broth that scalded his tongue and fingers. When nothing but liquid was left, he grabbed his bowl and the others followed suit, gulping down every last drop into their distended, rice-deprived bellies.

In less than a minute, it was all gone. He crawled back to his corner, exhausted and, for a short, blissful moment, sated.

At first, he thought it was just cramps. He often got pains after a meal here, especially if rations had been scarce. But then he felt a stab so violent it made him cry out, as if someone were grinding razor blades into his appendix.

He looked across the cell at Barry. He was on his knees, vomiting.

Bam! Another razor blade. What the...? His back went into spasms, arching so violently it felt as if his neck would snap. Soon his entire body was jumping, contorting in a grotesque dance of death conducted by an invisible cattle prod that delivered shock after shock after shock.

They've poisoned us! The bastards have poisoned us!

He opened his mouth to call for help and a volcano of blood and vomit poured out of it. He heard shouts. The little Thai guards came running toward the cell, their short legs pounding the concrete in panicked stampede. Then a red mist came down and everything was quiet.

In the prison kitchen, the new pot scrubber waited till all the cooks had gone.

Something terrible's happening in the cells. Do you hear that? Let's go take a look.

Then he slipped out of the back door, as quiet and unnoticed as a cockroach, and climbed into the rear of a delivery truck.

Two minutes later the truck bumped through the prison gates, out onto the bustling streets of Bangkok. At the first intersection, the pot scrubber opened the doors and jumped out, disappearing into the maze of alleys and courtyards that he had known from boyhood.

When he was sure he was alone, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

Lexi stared at August Sandford in disbelief.

"I don't understand it. How did this happen?"

August bit his tongue. Which part? The Internet division getting its budget tripled overnight? Or me being kicked off the team?

Out loud he said: "I don't know. Harry Wilder got the budget changes past the board. Then he quit, appointed Jim Bruton to head up the team with Tabitha as VP. Next thing I know, I'm booted into the real-estate division."

"But it doesn't make any sense. You were the best-qualified person in that division."

Tell me about it.

"Doesn't it? I think it makes perfect sense to your cousin. Max is not my number one fan. He's been guaranteed a place in the Internet division when you guys graduate. Did you know that?"

Lexi didn't know. There was only one associate-level job available in the Internet division. Her job.

"Apparently you're scheduled to start in real estate. With me."

It took Lexi less than forty-five seconds to reach her father's office. Bursting in, too angry to speak, she began signing at Peter at a hundred miles an hour.

"What the hell are you playing at, cooking up a deal with Max behind my back?"

Peter played dumb. "Slow down, darling. No one's cooked up anything."

"You signed off on the Internet budget increase!"

Peter shrugged. "Harry Wilder made a strong case."

"It wasn't Harry's case, it was Max's. He wants to make a whole bunch of acquisitions, companies that he knows nothing about. It's madness. Wilder and the others are only backing him because they think he's going to be chairman."

Peter was silent. He'd made no secret of the fact that he did not want Lexi to take over Kruger-Brent. Had things been different with Robert, maybe he could have assumed the mantle one day. That was what Kate Blackwell had wanted. But Robert had chosen his own path. The idea of Lexi taking his place filled Peter with horror. She'd already been through so much. She had no idea what Kruger-Brent really was: a monster, a curse that swallowed people whole. Kate Blackwell had been consumed by it. Her son, Tony, was driven mad. Peter's own hopes and dreams had been sacrificed to the monster, for Alex's sake. But he wanted something better for Lexi. A normal life, a husband, children.

Lexi, however, had other ideas.

"August Sandford told me you've guaranteed Max a job in Internet. Is that true?"

Peter looked uncomfortable. "It was Jim Bruton's decision."

"You're the chairman, Dad. You knew that's where I wanted to work. They've dumped me in real estate, a total dead end."

"Listen, darling - "

"No, Dad. You listen. Just because you don't want me to become chairman, you think you and Max can bury me in real estate. Well, screw you and your little boys' club. It's because I'm a woman, isn't it?" Lexi was furious. "This is such bullshit. Kate Blackwell was a woman and she was the best chairman Kruger-Brent ever had."

"She was," Peter murmured. It couldn't be denied. "Master of the game. That's what people used to call her."

"Mistress," Lexi shot back. "Mistress of the game. Which is exactly what I'm going to be, whatever you or Max or any of the other sexist pigs around here think."

Peter watched her go, a whirlwind of righteous indignation, slamming his office door behind her.

She's so like Kate, he thought.

His heart was filled with foreboding.

Outside in the corridor, Lexi forced herself to take deep, calming breaths.

Real estate? Why not accounting? Why not the goddamn mail room?

The real-estate division was known to be one of Kruger-Brent's sleepier businesses. If there was a fiery center to the company, real estate was as far removed from it as it was possible to be.

Max thinks he can bury me alive in there with August. Out of sight, out of mind.

We'll see about that.

Lexi's cell vibrated in her pocket. New message, sender unknown. She read the four words on the screen. Suddenly nothing else mattered. Not Max, not Kruger-Brent, not anything.

She bolted into the ladies' room, walking straight into a cubicle and locking the door. Only when she knew she was alone did she read the text again, allowing her eyes to linger on the most beautiful sentence she had ever read:

The pig is dead.

Lexi's knees gave way and she slumped onto the toilet seat, tears streaming down her face. For years she'd allowed herself to believe that she'd shaken off the ghosts of her childhood, and the terrible things that had happened to her. Now she saw this for the fantasy it was. The pain would always be there. Always.

There could be no closure. Not in this lifetime.

Only vengeance.

Lexi savored its sweetness for a few precious moments. Then she dried her tears, erased the text from her phone and walked back to her office as if nothing had happened.

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