That’s my life, Mariella thought, flowing away from me.
Mariella felt Joe take the paper from her hand and his eyes scanned the document. He whistled, carefully folded the statement again, looked at her, and his single fuck bounced off the walls of the reception room.
“Joe?” Mariella looked at him. “What’s going on?”
Joe took her hand and held it between both of his. “Well, that helps me with the decision I’ve been struggling with.”
Mariella frowned. “What decision?”
“About how much to tell you and when.” Joe raked a hand through his hair. He looked to where her children were standing on the balcony. “Let’s go outside, and we’ll sit down and have a conversation,” Joe suggested. “There are—” he hesitated “—things to be said.”
She didn’t want to hear; she didn’t want her life to change. She wanted Harrison to wake up, her life to go back to what it was. But that wasn’t going to happen, not today. Mariella nodded, straightened her shoulders and forced her legs to walk toward the balcony, toward this new life that she neither wanted nor requested.
* * *
Mariella sat down on the closest seat and stared out to sea, looking for the boat that she’d caught a brief glimpse of earlier. It was nowhere to be seen. A hundred million dollars in a bank account she knew nothing about? God, had Harrison become involved in something shady, like money laundering or drugs? His Vegas hotels operated casinos, and he routinely came into contact with men from the other side of the financial tracks. Had someone lured him into a deal that colored outside the lines? Harrison’s ambition was the driving force in his life, and he’d never outgrown his desire to prove himself to her, to out-rich his in-laws. He could now buy and sell the Santiagos a few times over, but the ambition and the drive for money hadn’t abated; if anything, they had strengthened over the past decade.
Mariella stroked the fabric of Harrison’s jacket, which she’d draped across her knees. Thinking she might’ve missed something else, she searched the other pockets of his jacket, which were empty, except the side pocket, which contained, as Dr. Malone said, his wallet. She flipped through it, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Around a thousand in cash, his no-limit credit cards, his driver’s license. Nothing else. It was clean, uncomplicated. Everything that her life, at this present moment, was not.
Joe gestured to the outdoor furniture and called out, “Sit down, everyone. I think we need to talk.”
Mariella frowned at his stark-with-worry face. She watched as he poured wine for her and Elana from the bottle in the ice bucket on the white cast-iron table. The men each took a beer, and they sat down in a rough circle.
Mariella placed her glass on the table in front of her and linked her hands around her knees.
“Obviously, this has been a horrible time, and we are all deeply worried about Harrison, but there is still much to discuss,” Joe said, his voice rough with emotion.
Mariella nodded, his blunt attitude pulling her out of her shocked state. “Business stills needs to be handled, and decisions still need to be made. We need to discuss how that’s going to happen.”
Joe cleared his throat. “Before we get to that, there is something you should know.”
Here it comes, Mariella thought. The train was gathering speed...
Joe withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket of his slouchy linen jacket, and she realized it was the bank account statement she’d found in Harrison’s jacket pocket. It was a measure of her state of mind that she hadn’t realized that Joe had taken possession of the document. Joe handed the envelope to her, and Mariella slid it into the long side pocket of her limited-edition Fendi bag.
“What’s that?” Gabe asked, always observant.
Joe raised his eyebrows at Mariella, and she knew that he was leaving to her the decision to tell the children about the bank account or not. Her instinct was not to tell them, to shield them from this latest bombshell. She also wanted to try to work out why Harrison had kept the bank account a secret and, hell, whether there were other secrets she wasn’t privy to. Her children would ask questions she couldn’t answer. No, it was better that they remain in the dark about the king’s ransom gathering interest in their father’s name. Dammit, Harrison.
Before lifting her head to look at Gabe, Mariella dropped her sunglasses over her eyes, not willing to take the chance that Gabe would read her eyes and know that she was about to, deliberately, deceive them.
She bit the inside corner of her cheek and saw Gabe’s eyes narrow. What should she do?
“Let’s not get bogged down by irrelevant details and focus on what we can control,” Joe suggested. “We need to talk business.”
He’d seen her indecision, and Joe, practical and protective as always, was trying to change the subject. Mariella sent him a grateful smile. “You’re right. We do need to talk about what happens if Harrison takes a while to heal. Did Harrison discuss a contingency plan with you, Joe?”
Joe rubbed his jaw. “Did he discuss one with you?”
Mariella shook her head. Joe knew, as well as she did, that her husband thought he was invincible. “He thought he’d live forever. The thing is, we need someone to make the hard decisions, the day-to-day decisions. Obviously, seeing that I helped Harrison build this business, and Joe is his longtime business partner, we are best placed to do that, with Gabe’s help. I will have my PA draft a memo to all our senior staff telling them that.”
Joe held up his hand, and Mariella stopped talking. “That’s not going to happen, Mariella.”
“What do you mean?” Mariella asked.
Joe looked resigned but resolute. “I asked you whether he discussed any plans with you. I didn’t say that he hadn’t made plans. He did, and you have no power to change those plans or even give input into those decisions.”
To Mariella it sounded like Joe was speaking Mandarin. What could he mean? Of course she would always have a say in what happened at Marshall International. She traveled with Harrison as they established a business footprint internationally, opening venues in Tokyo, London, Paris. It was their company—she and Harrison had made it together. She was at every ground breaking, at every nightclub opening, at every opening night at new restaurants. Hell, their oldest and most iconic nightclub was called Mariella, in honor of her. She and Harrison were a team; they had been for thirty plus years. “I don’t understand.”
“Clearly,” Luc said, resting his elbows on his knees. “Neither do I, so I’d suggest that you start explaining, Joe.”
Joe narrowed his eyes at her eldest child. “I understand that you are worried about your father, but I’d like to, gently, remind you that I don’t take orders from you, Luc.”
“And I’d like to remind you that I’m as invested in this business as anybody,” Luc replied.
“Now, that’s not true,” Joe said, his tone genial, but Mariella heard the note of steel under the easy words. “You work six days a week at your LA practice. Rafe consults, on a very ad hoc basis, but he is in no way fully involved, either.”
“I work for the company,” Elana jumped in.
Joe reached across Rafe to pat her knee, not bothering to reply. Mariella knew what he was thinking—Elana playacted at work, doing the minimum amount to keep her from being fired. Of all of them, only Gabe showed true dedication to the company, and his blood was hers, not Harrison’s. But he, at least, knew what he was doing at Marshall International.
“I’d feel a lot more comfortable if one of us