"I guess I’m going to have to ask him." Margrit turned the idea over in her mind, wondering if there was a way to use the connection between her former boss and her new one to wriggle free of the employment agreement she’d entered. The idea of blackmailing Eliseo Daisani made her huff a tiny laugh.

Rebecca returned to the couch to take one of Margrit’s hands. "You’re better off staying away from Eliseo if you can. I don’t mean to suggest you can’t run your own life-"

"Yes you do." Margrit nudged her mother’s shoulder. "You always think you know best."

"That’s because mothers do," Rebecca said with a prim sniff. "It’s easy to get caught up in his world, is all I’m saying, Margrit. Wealth carries its own kind of glamour."

"Mom, I didn’t exactly come from the sticks. You and Daddy make a lot of money."

"We’re paupers compared to Eliseo’s financial empire. Trust me." Rebecca’s voice turned wry. "I know how much he’s worth. It’s no secret I want you to do well financially, but once you’re part of Eliseo’s world you never really break free of it again." Her voice held an odd note, sending curiosity surging through Margrit.

"What do you mean? You haven’t dealt with him since then, have you?"

"Not personally, no, but I can never forget, either."

Margrit swallowed the confession of her impending employment, and felt another shock of guilt. It was too large a change, too close to Russell’s death, for her to seriously contemplate, much less share. Daisani had promised her a little time; she’d take it before admitting to her friends and family the new direction her life was heading. There was still some small chance she might find a way out of the commitment, though that, too, made her uncomfortable. Daisani was right, and the circumstances under which she’d suggested working for him hadn’t changed. Only everything around them had. "I’m still going to have to talk to him. Tony’s found some information in Russell’s case files that…well, it’s what made me come here to ask you about Russell’s ties to Mr. Daisani."

"Really. And I thought it was just a social call." Rebecca’s smile faded, leaving concern in her brown eyes. "I want you to be careful, Margrit. It’s easy to agree to things you’ll later regret when talking with Eliseo."

Margrit laughed. "I’ve noticed that. I’ll be careful, Mom, I promise. Thanks for looking out for me."

"It’s what mothers do." Rebecca stood, glancing toward a clock. "I don’t mean to send you away, sweetheart, but I have a meeting in a few minutes."

"It’s okay. Thanks for seeing me." Margrit climbed to her feet and gave her mother another hug, then excused herself with a wave.

A twenty minute cab ride brought her back to Daisani’s corporate headquarters. Margrit nodded to the security guards on her way in, and one waved her over. She cast a glance at her watch before crossing to him.

He slid a key across the security desk. "Mr. Daisani sent this down for you after you left this morning. Said you’d be needing it. It’s for the elevator bank," he explained.

Margrit felt her expression clear, then cloud again. "Must be nice to be that confident. Thank you." She palmed the key and nodded toward the other guard, then went to examine the elevators. A moment of fiddling opened the doors of one with a chime, and she stepped inside with a resigned sense of inevitability. Her reflection in the polished brass walls showed just that, and Margrit shook herself, putting on a better game face. When the doors slid open again, the mirrors showed a well-dressed, confident young woman stepping out of the elevator. Vanessa’s office was abandoned, though voices came from a room at the opposite end of the floor from Daisani’s office. Mouth pursed, she walked in without knocking, and Daisani stood up from a boardroom table with a smile. Half a dozen other men stood as well, less friendly than curious.

"Margrit. Excellent, we were just about to get started. Gentlemen, this is my new assistant, Margrit Knight. She’s a top-notch lawyer, so don’t bother getting clever with your contract language. Margrit?" Daisani smiled again and gestured to a seat to his right, an obvious place of honor at the head of the table.

Bemused, Margrit nodded, said, "Gentlemen," and sat down to riffle through the stack of file folders at her seat.

Within seconds she wished her mother was there. Thirty years of experience in dealing with finances would have been helpful in understanding the fine details of the paperwork she’d been presented with. Margrit stuck a pen in the corner of her mouth, chewing it as she studied the contracts. Part of her wanted to giggle, more from relief than real humor. She felt as though she’d walked into a theatre performance and was expected to know her lines and stage directions without knowing the story. Knowing that Daisani was manipulating her with the situation brought a gurgle of irritation that was mostly buried by the sensation of playacting.

Unexpectedly, her first priority was getting through the meeting without embarrassing herself or her employer: she could deal with the rest of it later. Discussion went on around her, Daisani and the others flipping through papers and arguing over points she only half listened to as she perused the files with as much concentration as she could muster.

Down the table, one of the businessmen watched her surreptitiously, his hand palm-down on the table and held studiously still. Margrit finished skimming through a contract, seeing nothing that sent up a mental warning, and turned to the next file, whose front page was dominated by a brightly colored pie graph that made her think of board games. A muscle in her watcher’s hand jumped and he stretched his fingers again, then broke into laughter with the rest of the businessmen, the result of a half-heard self-deprecating joke Daisani made. Margrit drew out some scratch paper and tapped her pen against the pad, smiling absently when he glanced her way, then returning to the files. Eventually she heard him say her name, and looked up with a blink.

"You’ve ignored us entirely for nearly two hours, Margrit," he repeated. "Would you care to join us now for a celebratory lunch? I think we’ve broken out the details to a sufficient degree by now."

"I don’t think you have." Margrit shifted her papers into a different order, digging up the pie-graph file and two others, then rapping her pen on the scratch pad, where she’d left a pageful of arrows and notes. "They’re written to obscure it, and they do a good job, but these three reports and the contract riders are all moving to buy options on the same company. Different branches, which is why it’s hard to see, but this is the risky one, a media development project for a new cable station. Lot of capital needed there, and it’s shaky, which is why it looks like a good sale. But it’s got a couple of widely diversified backers, one in the corporation’s oil industry and the other in clothes manufacturing. They sweeten the pot to take on the risk of a failure with the cable station, but if I’ve got these figures right they leave the corporation with holdings that are just shy of majority numbers. It’s slick, but the legal department should have caught it. You might want to check and be sure everybody’s still on your payroll." Margrit squeezed the back of her neck. "I’d say celebrating is premature."

Daisani curled a slow smile and stood. Everyone, including Margrit, followed suit, and Daisani opened his hands in mock apology. "Forgive me, gentlemen, but it appears there’ll be no deal today. I’ll be back in touch after a new legal team’s examined everything." Insufferably polite handshakes went around, more than one of the businessmen giving Margrit a sour look as they left the room. Daisani turned to her, eyebrows elevated. "Well?"

She sat down again, rolling her head to loosen her neck. "The tall one down the table from me was watching everything I did. He twitched and tensed up when a couple of those reports were discussed, so I started looking for the smoking gun. You could’ve lost a lot of money."