The Proviso

OKH ENTERPRISES

SUCCESSION PROVISO

April 3, 1985

      Upon owner and president Oliver Lake Hilliard’s death, OKH Enterprises (hereinafter referred to as the Company) shall be managed by a chief executive officer appointed by the Board of Directors at will and whenever the need arises. The Company shall then revert to the full control and ownership of F. Knox Oliver Hilliard on December 27, 2008, his fortieth birthday, provided he has married and produced an heir.

Oliver Lake Delano Hilliard
Kansas City, Missouri
4/3/85

August 2004

      “Check out the way he walks. I wonder if he fucks as good as he looks?”
      Miss Justice McKinley looked down at the textbooks on the desktop in front of her and felt violated by the predatory tone coming from the woman in the row behind her. Really, she’d thought she’d left all this junior high queen bee business when she graduated from college, but apparently, some girls just never grew up.
      She was very beautiful, Sherry was, glossy black hair, very thin, very well dressed—and she knew it. She stood out in the lecture hall full of students who watched and listened to Chouteau County prosecutor Knox Hilliard’s bon mots in between student introductions.
      Sherry’s worker bees laughed and slid comments back and forth about Sherry’s tastes, most of which, in Justice’s opinion, were unprintable. Justice even flinched at one particularly nasty remark that she couldn’t avoid hearing, then the back of her chair was kicked and she tossed a glance over her shoulder in irritation.
      “Sherry,” Worker Bee Number One whispered, “stop it. She’s gonna get mad.”
      “What’s she going to do, read me Bible stories? Look at her! She’s drooling all over her pretty little dress. She wouldn’t know what to do with him if she had him.”
      Justice swallowed at the cruelty in the girl’s voice, the nanny-nanny-boo-boo singsong close in her ear, and she cringed at the whisper. “I bet she wants to fuck Knox Hilliard as much as I do. Pay attention, little girl.”
      It was a good thing Justice was in front of Sherry and her courtiers because her face flooded with color. She averted her gaze from Professor Hilliard and tried to cool the hot rage and mortification that welled up inside her. It wouldn’t have bothered her so much if Sherry hadn’t cut so close to the truth.
      Then it was the Queen Bee’s turn to introduce herself. She kicked Justice’s chair again and Justice blinked away stinging tears before looking up at the handsome attorney.
      “Miss Quails,” Professor Hilliard said, his deep voice resonating from the front row of the lecture hall all the way to the most remote corners of the back. “Your turn. What kind of law do you want to practice?”
      “Corporate,” she said shortly, “but what I really want to talk about is what you’re doing this weekend? All weekend?”
      The room held its collective breath at her brazenness and the professor stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Then a smile, quick and blinding, flashed across his face. Justice stared at him in awe, as she had for the entire two hours she’d been in this class. If Justice had ever needed to see an example of male beauty and masculine grace, Knox Hilliard was it. Too bad he was only subbing for the real professor.
      He began to chuckle as he came closer to Sherry and therefore, closer to Justice. “See me after class and I’ll see what I can arrange,” he murmured, his predatory tone matching Sherry’s perfectly.
      “Certainly...Knox.”
       He still chuckled as he continued with the next person down the row. Justice averted her eyes. Soon she heard, “And what about you, Miss McKinley?”
       Justice started, and looked up at him; he watched her expectantly. She could feel her face burn and she cleared her throat. Her nerve endings tingled and she felt slightly nauseated. “I—I want to be a prosecutor,” she said and then, to her horror, she added, “like you.”
       Sherry and her clique snickered openly.
       Surprise flickered in the man’s ice blue eyes and he smiled in kind bemusement. “Why?”
       Justice swallowed again. She felt as if she were on trial, as if her answer would determine her whole future. In three years, half the people in that classroom would be competing for the coveted coup of being hired and trained by Knox Hilliard. Yes, her answer today would determine her whole future.
       “I—I want to help people,” she began, caught up in the suddenly changing colors of his eyes and for a brief moment, she forgot all about Sherry. “I think that criminals...that they have too many rights. It’s too easy to hurt others for fun and profit.” She went on, gaining confidence in her opinion and strength in her voice as she always did when she spoke on something she believed in.
       “There’s no sense of right and wrong anymore. Um, personal property rights—meaning oneself and one’s belongings—were meant to be held sacred. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted. Life and valuables are cheap now, partly, um, because of the eroding family base and partly because the legal system doesn’t punish criminals well enough. I want to help make the law a deterrent again—to, oh, legally avenge those whose lives are violated by someone else.”
       Silence reigned throughout the lecture hall, and Justice could not quite meet the probing gaze of the professor. She stared at her books and tried to hold back tears of frustration and embarrassment.
       Then Sherry laughed. Her friends laughed. The room exploded in laughter—raucous, jeering guffaws aimed at Justice, who was only now aware that she had displayed an appalling naïveté for her entire class to see.
       This was going to be a long three years.
       “ENOUGH!”
       The roar was violent, livid, and thoroughly effective as it echoed off the walls of the abruptly silent room. Justice’s head snapped up to see Professor Hilliard leisurely stroll across the dais away from her, his hands in the pockets of his fine gray suit. His face was hard as he glared up at the rows and rows of open-mouthed students.
      “How dare you,” he murmured, his tone dangerous. His lazy syntax and country twang were gone. He spoke with precision, his diction flawless. His easygoing manner had disintegrated to hard cynicism in the blink of an eye and Justice stared at him, confused—his outrage had been so immediate, so effortless.
       “How dare you denigrate the career goals of a fellow student. I daresay none of you have thought that deeply about what you want and why you want it. None of you have displayed that kind of passion or expressed yourselves so eloquently that the room was enthralled with what you said. None of you were courageous enough to say what you really thought. How dare you sit on your pretentiously cynical asses and laugh at idealism. Idealism is what created this country; it’s what drives it; it’s what allows you to be here on daddy’s money.”
       He pointed to different sections of the room in turn. “You. You. You.” He began the trek back across the platform toward Justice. She caught the faintest whiff of an elegant cologne as he leaned alongside her toward Sherry. “And you, Miss Quails,” he purred, and it was not a nice purr.
       Justice gulped, glad she was not on the receiving end of the latent violence in his voice. “You can go fuck yourself, because I certainly won’t.”
       The collective gasp was palpable. Sherry stammered in confused outrage, even as Professor Hilliard’s regard softened and settled upon Justice who, with tears of mixed gratitude and mortification in her eyes, looked away from his large harshness and golden darkness.
       Fingertips under her chin gently forced her face around and up. She blinked to get rid of her tears before his clever ice—no, now dark—blue eyes saw them.
       “Do you believe in vigilante justice, Justice?”
       She gulped. “No,” she whispered.
       “What about theft versus crimes against the body?”
       “Property is to be held as sacred as the body and vice versa,” she responded in a voice made stronger after clearing her throat.
       “Revenge?”
       “No excuse.”
       “Biblical and all that.”
       “Yes.”
       “Black and white?”
       “No. Right and wrong.”
       Justice followed his line of reasoning without effort because she knew these things, believed these things, believed in the brilliance and genius of the Founding Fathers.
       They had touched, somehow, this experienced attorney somewhere in his mid-thirties and Justice, a twenty-two-year-old (today) law student who’d been in classes for a whole five days.
       His thumb drifted across her cheekbone as he stood looking down at her; Justice was only minimally aware of the lecture hall full of spellbound students. His mind connected with hers even as his fingertips connected with her skin.
       “Very good, Justice,” he murmured.
       She stared up into Knox Hilliard’s sapphire eyes and fell in love.

* * * * *

       Giselle Cox reached out and brushed the girl’s shoulder. She started, turned, nearly cowering in fear of whatever cutting remark she assumed Giselle would make, her hazel, almost amber, eyes wide.
       “You were very good in there,” Giselle said quietly, aware of the wary glances cast their way because she got attention wherever she went whether she wanted it or not. Today, she wanted it; no one who knew any better would bother this girl now that Giselle had marked her just by talking to her.
       Giselle inspected Justice closely. Her appearance needed some serious help. She was taller than Giselle by at least three or four inches. An early ’80s-type shirtwaist dress made of printed chintz with a wide white collar hid a body type Giselle could only guess at, but if the legs were anything to go by, she had a lot of potential.
       Her hair was a mess. It was a dull dark red mahogany color, frizzy, in a French braid that went to her waist and did nothing to contain the out-of-control frizz.
       Her face was odd. That was the only way Giselle could describe it. She had a strange color of foundation on as if she were trying to hide acne, but the skim coat of makeup was smooth, so she must be hiding freckles. That’d go with the hair. Too bad, too, because the girl had exquisite bone structure. Giselle was tempted to take the girl for a makeover just because she’d been so fabulous in class, but cracking open her chrysalis and letting that butterfly loose would have some serious and long-lasting complications.
       Heaven only knew, Professor Hilliard didn’t need any more complications at the moment, especially considering what had happened in class. For a variety of reasons, no one would believe for a moment his initial response to Sherry’s proposition had been anything other than an attempt to let her save face, but he’d be lucky not to get fired or sued—or both—over how he had spoken to her after that and then actually touched a student. The F-bomb in class, even.
       Giselle snorted. Professor Shit-for-Brains.
       No, better Justice look like this for as long as possible in case he was tempted to do something even more stupid.
       Justice continued to look down and she mumbled something Giselle couldn’t hear, then her eye was caught just over Justice’s shoulder. Knox stared at her from a staircase across the hall. He slid a cold glance over to Sherry and her brood who huddled together, their outrage palpable. Giselle looked at them, looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. He nodded once and left.
       Still mumbling. Dammit, she wished she didn’t have to talk to the top of the girl’s frizzy red head.
       “Justice,” Giselle murmured, dipping her body down so she looked up into the girl’s face. She smiled gently as Justice raised her head. “You just go about your business. Believe in yourself and your opinions. Have faith. I don’t know you, but I’m very proud of you.”
       Another encouraging smile, then she left the building.
       To lie in wait.
       “Sherry!” Giselle said brightly as the bitch came around a corner. “Can I, uh, talk to you a minute?”
       “Sure, Giselle!”
       Giselle’s lip almost curled at the girl’s delight at having finally caught her attention. There were only two reasons Sherry would know her name after only one week in class.
       Ten years older than most of the other students, Giselle was a third year on the five-year plan. It wasn’t the most prestigious position to be in, that was for sure, but given her age, the fact that she already had a PhD, and, oh, the fact that she and Professor Hilliard clashed loudly, publicly, and often, she garnered a certain deference—even from other professors.
       It also made her a target for crushes of both genders.
       Leaving her giggling friends under a tree, Sherry followed Giselle eagerly to an out-of-the-way spot in a thick stand of trees. Giselle turned only to find the girl backed up to a big tree, preening for her. She smiled seductively and approached her slowly with a swing in her hips.
       “I know what you want,” Giselle murmured.
       Sherry sucked in an anticipatory breath. “Really?”
       “You’ve made it clear enough all week.”
       Giselle reached out a hand when she was close enough to touch, and Sherry closed her eyes, waiting for Giselle’s kiss.
       Sherry couldn’t even screech when her head was snapped back against the tree, Giselle’s hand clamped around Sherry’s throat and squeezing just enough.
       “I’m going to tell you this once and I want you to make sure it gets spread around,” she whispered in Sherry’s ear. “Leave. Justice. McKinley. Alone. If I hear even a suggestion of a rumor that you, your skank patrol, or anyone else not even associated with you are giving her a hard time, you’ll regret it. I think the last place you want to be for the next three years is on my shit list. You’re so not his type,” she muttered, and with one last look of sheer disgust, she let Sherry go.
       She turned to run, but Giselle grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her back, whispering in her ear. “You make sure now, to remind people that they are to be nice to her. How’d you like to be on his shit list, too?”
       “No, no. I’m sorry. Please let me go,” she whimpered. “Please.”
       And Giselle did. She ran crying back to her friends, but no one approached Giselle with accusations of what had happened in the glade.
       Sherry left two weeks later, but Giselle continued to watch over Justice long after her impassioned speech was forgotten by all but three people.

1: THE FIRST WIFE

September 2004

      The Kansas City crime scene unit had had to dredge Leah Wincott’s body from a pond, so the casket remained closed. There was only one reason any bride of Knox Hilliard—especially one who had a child already—would turn up dead.
       Bryce knew he should probably stop sneaking glances at one particular mourner while his friend and client lay at the front of the chapel garnering her due respects. Leah’s death had too many implications to allow distraction, but he’d taken one look across the room and he could think of nothing but the woman who’d caught his attention.
       She sat in a darkened back corner alone, her arms folded across her delectable chest. In one hand, she held a Dixie cup filched from one of the funeral home’s restrooms. She took a sip, then stared down into it. She looked good in black. No, she looked like a queen in black.
       Anger, not sorrow. He didn’t know what kind of a relationship she had had with Leah, but he could feel the rage radiating from her in waves. By the time a funeral rolled around, most people had passed the anger stage of grief, or at least they hid it for the rest of the mourners. Not this woman; she seethed and her modest dress didn’t do a thing to mitigate her mood.
       He studied her from where he stood in the midst of a cluster of people who had shown up at Leah’s visitation to witness the last event in the debacle of the most awaited and debated wedding on Wall Street.
       Two weeks earlier, the OKH Bride, the woman who, with two tiny words would enable one man to inherit the majority shares of a Fortune 100 company, had been snatched from her dressing room and murdered just before she could say “I do.”
       Still the woman he watched sat slumped in her chair, her expensively shod feet resting on the folding chair in front of her. Dull blonde corkscrews cascaded just beyond her shoulders. She had already plowed her fingers through them several times in a futile effort to keep them out of her eyes. Finally, she huffed, set her Dixie cup down on the chair next to her, reached up, and began to braid her hair back.
       Bryce sighed. He wished she hadn’t done that. On the other hand...
       The black velvet of her short bodice shimmered subtle gold and stretched over her breasts. His nostrils flared, just a bit, at the thought of stroking gently over one of them, pausing to flick at her nipple with a thumb.
       Her knee-length silk-and-chiffon skirt had risen until the hem caught on something indiscernible about her thigh that was distinctly out of place. It took him out of the moment of sexual fantasy and into the realm of sheer curiosity at what would require one to wear a heavy black strap around one’s thigh. He couldn’t think of a reason at the moment, but it didn’t matter. She’d finished braiding and she returned to her previous attitude: slouched, her arms folded, scowling at the floor.
       An older woman in black passed behind her, pulled her fingertips lightly across her back in what seemed to Bryce a loving caress, and said something to her when she looked up.
       Now he could see her face in its entirety and he sucked in a breath. He’d seen her before, in a Pre-Raphaelite painting he remembered studying in freshman humanities more than twenty years before. Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who demanded equality with Adam and left Eden in a snit when he refused.
       Bryce had never forgotten that tale, nor the painting. The idea that Adam had had a wife before Eve had shocked him to his core at the time. Further, the particular point of Lilith’s complaint against Adam had aroused Bryce painfully. As he watched the warm, breathing Lilith across the room from him, he didn’t have to wonder if she’d demand to be on top.
       He wondered how she’d go about demanding it.
       The older woman had stopped speaking and waited for Lilith’s response. Her mouth tightened and she looked away, off into nothing, thinking. Finally, she glanced back up at the woman, nodded once, and spoke. He could read her lips.
       Okay, Mom.
       The mother walked away with a pat on Lilith’s shoulder. As she arose, her full skirt caught again, on the chair this time, and he sucked in a sharp breath. More to the point, what would require a woman to wear a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol strapped to her thigh at a visitation, under a cocktail dress, with no other trappings of law enforcement? The black lace of the top of her stocking only added to the arousing effect of the odd juxtaposition of delicate lace and lethal steel.
       This Lilith had him harder than Collier’s painting.
       Dammit, she mouthed as she swept her hand down her body to straighten her dress and cover the gun. The black-and-gold fabrics flared and shimmered when she turned from him. Her ridiculously high heels forced the muscles of her legs into sharp relief and his eyes widened at the latent power he saw there when she strutted away into the dark recesses of the funeral home until she disappeared.
       He hung back, loath to follow her. He raised his left hand to feel his face, the burn scars that disfigured him, mocked him, kept him from approaching women because he hated the flinching, the fake politeness.
       Monster.
       He’d overheard that frightened whisper long ago when the scars were still relatively fresh, and though it didn’t make him angry anymore, it did serve to remind him of his sin, the punishment for his sin.
       The image of that woman, Lilith, dangerous, muscular, on her knees in front of him, his hand clutched in her hair, her mouth around him, flared in his mind. He thought he’d never catch his breath.
       His feet took it upon themselves to trace her path, following a hint of a perfume he knew would belong to a Lilith: spice and flowers with a hint of sex. Far away from the chapel, toward a small, dimly lit room at the other end of the building, he rounded a corner and heard a delicate female voice, filled with anger.
       He stopped, ducked back a bit, listened.
       “Say it, Knox.”
       A sudden whoosh of air. “Okay, okay,” came a man’s voice. Knox Hilliard’s—the fiancé of the woman in the casket. “You were right. I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Giselle, you don’t know how sorry I am.”
       Giselle.
       Not Lilith. His disappointment was deep and sharp, but she made it disappear with the unexpected sorrow in her whisper. “Oh, I’m sorry, too, Knox. I shouldn’t have said that.”
       There was a pause, then the sound of rustling fabric. Bryce risked a peek around the corner and saw her engulfed in Hilliard’s arms, his face in the crook of her neck, her arms wound around his shoulders and her fingers curled into his hair.
       “Come home with me tonight,” he murmured, one hand undoing her braid and the other splayed across her buttocks, crushing her to him. “Please. I need you.”
       Bryce’s heart thundering in his chest, he pulled himself away from the tableau in front of him and dropped back against the wall. His mind churned through the implications of that even as the silence lengthened, only to be pierced with the soft sounds of kissing.
       He didn’t wait to hear her response. Nauseated, he pushed away from the wall and stalked out of the funeral home.
       That Leah Wincott, Bryce’s friend and client, had died for the sake of a man who had a mistress—it angered him.
       That Bryce wanted a woman he didn’t know, who wouldn’t be interested in him anyway, the mistress of Leah’s groom—it enraged him. Lilith, succubus.
       That the man between Lilith and Leah was Knox Hilliard, well... Bryce felt thoroughly, inexplicably, betrayed.
       Again.

2: ROMEO & JULIET

      “One night,” Knox whispered into her mouth as their kiss softened.
       In the aftermath of Leah’s death, with all the attendant guilt and grief, Giselle understood that he needed her. She couldn’t say she didn’t need him that way, too, but...
       “You know what I’m going to say,” she murmured, pulling away from him. She placed her palms on either side of his tanned, ruggedly handsome face and looked into his ice blue eyes. She studied him and for the first time noticed how he had aged under the weight of constant stress. Thirty-five going on forty-five. “If we ever have sex, it can’t happen because of something like this. We’re not teenagers anymore and it’s about fifteen years too late for us. All you want right now is comfort sex and I won’t do that. I deserve more, especially from you.”
       He sighed.
       “Besides, what about last month?”
       He pulled away from her and stared at her warily. “What about last month?”
       Her mouth pursed. “You know what about last month. I was there, remember? You took one look at that girl and you were a goner. I don’t know how you planned to work that out with marrying Leah, considering your excruciating monogamy, but you weren’t subtle about it.”
       “I am not going to discuss that with you right now. Maybe not ever.”
       Giselle watched Knox pace in utter turmoil, but she had her own guilt to deal with; she could have prevented Leah’s death if she’d followed her gut.
       Honey, thank you, but I don’t need a bodyguard. I’m the most high-profile woman in the country right now and Fen wouldn’t dare have me killed. Once I’m married to Knox, Fen won’t have any reason to try to kill you again.
       Leah, I don’t have a good feeling about this.
       Giselle! Put that gun away and stop pacing. If you can’t do that, leave. I’m about to get married in front of five hundred people. I don’t need your fidgets on top of mine.
       But—
       Out!
       Okay, you know what? I’m going to go get Knox.
       You do that.
       Leah’s rich south Texas drawl still echoed in her head, even after two weeks. Giselle had no doubt that Knox loved the woman in the casket. She also didn’t doubt that his guilt over her death was now exponentially worse: not only had he taken Leah’s side of the argument but...
       “Now you’re stuck with the added guilt of falling in love with a woman you weren’t getting married to and can’t have anyway.”
       He flinched.
       “And you want me to kiss your wittow owwie and make it all better.”
       “Yes, I do,” he shot back. She found herself pulled into his arms again, his big hand wrapping around the back of her thigh, pressing her into his arousal, her skirt gathering over his wrist as he stroked upward. They kissed with the confidence and familiarity of thirty years of history.
       Knox didn’t do much for her, but she had her doubts as to the existence of what she really wanted. Thirty-four and at the breaking point of her quest for celibacy, finally giving in and making love with the man who’d spent half his life being her boyfriend would be...convenient, an incredibly elegant solution to every issue that surrounded them.
       Temptation rose within her, though only on an intellectual level. At this point in their lives, their circumstance, it didn’t much matter that his arousal for her was conditioned reflex. Why should she expect him to give her what she couldn’t give him?
       “Now, see, that’s the answer to the problem right there.”
       The kiss ended abruptly with that smug pronouncement from the doorway and Giselle groaned as she turned and walked away from Knox and the man who had sought them out.
       “Fuck you, Sebastian,” Knox snapped.
       “No, fuck her,” Sebastian drawled. “Marry her. Knock her up. I don’t care in which order that happens. Start adoption proceedings. Something.”
       Knox sighed. “Dude, I don’t need this right now. I’m burying my fiancée.”
       “Yeah, and we’re going to be burying you next since Giselle won’t actually die when she’s torched and shot.”
       That prediction held quite a bit of truth, so Giselle said nothing. Knox, too, remained silent.
       She looked at her cousin out of the corner of her eye as he stared between her and Knox. Sebastian, at thirty-eight, was six-foot-two of classic black Irish, yet his trademark scowl exuded darkness and danger. His handsome face did nothing to mitigate his sinister air.
       “We’d kill each other before a year was out,” Knox muttered after a long moment.
       Giselle nodded. “That’s true.”
       “You two have been together on and off since before you knew what tongues were for. Lots of people get married with less than what you have. Fen’s never going to believe you won’t end up together, so the only way to keep Giselle safe is for you to marry her. If she’s married to you, he won’t be able to go after her again without getting the entire KCPD up his ass. You hide behind the FBI, so let her hide behind you. Everybody’s safe and happy until the turnover of OKH to you.”
       Giselle’s throat clogged and she wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilled to her soul. “Sebastian,” she murmured over her shoulder, “just for one moment, think about the child we’d have to have to fulfill the proviso, will you? Leah came with a daughter, so that was the perfect solution. Marriage I could live with just to win the game because nothing would keep us from getting divorced as soon as possible. But a child? No. Whether we had one or adopted one would make no difference. It would bind us together for the rest of our lives. I love Knox dearly, but not that much and not that way.”
       “That about sums it up for me, too,” Knox added.
       “Oh, that explains the groping.”
       “Let me put it this way,” Giselle said, her patience strained. “I refuse to have or adopt a child on such mercenary terms. It’s immoral and it would make both of us whores, so there really is no point to getting married at all.”
       Sebastian said nothing for a moment, then, “Well. Now that you put it that way.”
       “You know what?” Knox said. “Forget OKH. I don’t want it.”
       “What do you mean, you don’t want it?” Sebastian asked slowly.
       “I have no interest in it and it’s not worth the price.”
       Giselle turned to gape at Knox.
       “Uh, Knox,” Sebastian said after a moment of stunned silence, “you’ve spent your entire life preparing to take over that company when you turn forty. When, exactly, did you have this change of heart?”
       “The minute I became the Chouteau County prosecutor,” he snapped. “I can’t manage shit. I put people in jail and I teach. That’s all I’m good at.”
       “That was eight years ago. Could you not have told us this sooner?”
       He groaned. “I didn’t know how much I dreaded it until I was waiting for the wedding to start. I never got cold feet about getting married. I had cold feet about having to take a job I’m not suited for and don’t know how to do. Now I have to take it because Fen’s killed two people to get it and keep it.”
       Giselle raised her hand. “Uh, hello?”
       “Suck it up, princess. You’re still alive.”
       Sebastian’s mouth tightened. “There are exactly two immediate solutions to the problem, neither of which you—or Giselle—are willing to carry out. So, of course it’s up to me to bail your ass out.”
       “Nobody asked you to, so don’t act like you’re the martyr of the piece.”
       “Well, I’ll be damned if I sit back and let him continue to walk all over you two like he did Oliver and Leah without consequence.”
       “Sebastian,” Giselle said, impatient. “None of this is Knox’s fault. I don’t understand why you’re taking it out on him. And he did try.”
       Sebastian grunted. “Well, that’s true. Knox, I’m sorry this is happening to you. However, since it is happening to you, you now have two options: Cut and run or stay and fight. Staying and doing nothing isn’t an option because he will not trust that you don’t want OKH anymore. How you fight is up to you, but what you’re doing hasn’t worked, so think of something else.” Giselle leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “Either kill the bastard or let Giselle do it. She’s earned the right to it at this point.”
       She’d certainly fantasized about it often enough.
       “Whatever gets done to him, I have to do it,” Knox muttered.
       “But you’re not doing anything,” Sebastian returned. “That’s my point.”
       Neither Knox nor Sebastian said anything for the longest time, which was uncharacteristic. Giselle opened her eyes and looked from one stubbornly set face to the other. Knox finally opened his mouth but when nothing came out, he closed it with a snap. Giselle watched him speculatively, wondering if he would tell Sebastian he’d fallen in love with another woman just a month before.
       Knox caught her look and glared at her in warning. Sebastian witnessed the exchange and awaited an explanation, but neither she nor Knox felt like enlightening him. Yet.
       Giselle huffed. “You,” she said, pointing at Knox, “go back to your crooked little outfit up there in Chouteau County and act like the corrupt bastard that you are. Whether you want your inheritance or not, the only way you’re going to get out of it is by being dead. You,” she said, pointing at Sebastian, “business as usual. Any which way this turns out, you win, so I don’t understand why you’re bitching and moaning over a smattering of extra paperwork that Jack’s taking care of anyway. You would’ve done this a long time ago if Knox had come to his epiphany earlier.”
       “Congress.”
       “Don’t use that as an excuse. There’s not enough brawn back there to string you up, much less brains. I daresay if you do get called up, you’ll find the whole thing a lark.” She pushed herself off the wall. “I’m going home. I’m tired.” Giselle strode toward the door, expecting that Sebastian would move out of her way. He did, but he raised an eyebrow in a futile attempt to intimidate her.
       “And what are you going to do, my lovely?”
       “You don’t need to know.”

* * * * *

       “Don’t move.”
       The distinguished silver-haired gentleman halted at the cold round pressure at the back of his head. He stiffened when Giselle wrapped her delicate hand around his throat, thumb and middle finger pressed just deeply enough into his carotids to keep him still.
       She leaned forward so that her mouth brushed his ear.
       “You are alive by the grace of Knox Hilliard, who has requested in good faith that I not kill you,” she whispered conversationally. “If you try to have me killed again, if you attempt to kill Knox at all, if you pull any more stunts like killing any future brides, I’ll consider that a breach of good faith on your part. I should blow your head off for murdering Leah.
       “Consider: I didn’t die in the fire your goons set. I didn’t die when your goons shot me. I’m alive and both of your goons are dead and barbecued—and the prosecutor was happy I did him the favor of cleaning up after him. So instead of being in the ground, I’m here. With you. Your security hasn’t a clue and the only thing keeping me from putting a bullet in your head right now is Knox. Have you learned nothing about me over the last thirty years? Do you really think you can take me on and win?”
       She felt his gulp against her fingertips.
       “I didn’t think so. Good day to you, Fen. Oh, I almost forgot. Mom said to tell you Thanksgiving dinner’ll be at her house this year, two o’clock sharp, as usual.”

3: READY-MIXED CONCRETE COMPANY, 1935

      “Bryce, are you okay?”
       Bryce sat in his leather chair looking out over the city. High up in One KC Place, corner office, all glass, he could see for miles—so very apropos for a pit bull of a trial lawyer.
       He pursed his lips as he held his fingers steepled under his chin, feeling more like a teenaged boy with his first crush than a thirty-eight-year-old mover and shaker.
       “I’m fine,” he muttered, answering his assistant’s question without turning. He didn’t mind Arlene’s nosiness. It was nice to have a woman care about him, fuss over him, even if he did pay her to do it. His housekeeper did that, too. Her daily harangues about his need for a wife always made him smile and shake his head. This morning, however, he found no amusement in it whatsoever.
       Lilith.
       He’d spent the last two nights googling that damned painting, studying it, re-reading its history and provenance and myth, comparing it to the woman who’d made him fantasize about things he hadn’t bothered to fantasize about in five years. It was part of the permanent collection in a gallery in England; he knew he had no hope of buying it, but he’d sent an email of inquiry anyway. Just in case. No one had responded.
       Giselle.
       Arlene snorted. “Fine, my ass.” Normally that would’ve pulled a grin out of him. Today...no.
       Knox Hilliard’s lover.
       “Here’s your Wall Street Journal. Leah’s all over it.”
       Bryce spun around and snatched it out of her hand, then snapped it open.

OKHE bride murdered, groom suspected

      He skimmed the first couple of paragraphs until his attention caught:

Fen Hilliard, current CEO of OKH Enterprises, was questioned in the matter of Wincott’s death, but released after several hours. No evidence has been found to connect either Fen Hilliard or Knox Hilliard to her murder, but investigations of both continue in light of Knox Hilliard’s questionable reputation in his community and Fen Hilliard’s apparent motive.

      “I think Knox did it,” Arlene offered.
      Bryce grunted. “He had no reason to,” he murmured, “but Fen sure as hell did.”
      “Fen Hilliard would never do something like that,” Arlene said, low, her voice so full of anger it shocked Bryce. He looked up at her, puzzled. She went on. “Fen Hilliard signs the paychecks of half my family. He rescued OKH when we thought it was going to go under and he saved us. He’s a good man, a generous man.”
      Ah, yes. Kansas City’s knight in shining armor. Fen had taken the rattletrap die cut and metal machining company his brother Oliver, Knox’s father, had built, saved it from failure, and turned it into a billion-dollar success. He’d also married Knox’s mother after a not-so-respectable mourning period, which always made Bryce’s eyebrow rise. The entire metro saw Fen Hilliard as a kind and caring man, and adored him for his generosity to his employees and the community—
      —a modern version of Boss Tom Pendergast, straight out of 1930s Kansas City. Unlike Pendergast, however, Fen didn’t have a monopoly on government concrete contracts, nor could he use the Kansas City police department as his personal errand boys, nor did he have enough political power to put a man in the Senate.
      Bryce did tend to forget that his opinion of the CEO of OKH Enterprises differed greatly from everyone else’s. Bryce shouldn’t have been surprised at Arlene’s vehemence. She idolized Boss Tom, too.
      “And,” she added, “I would think you of all people would know better than to assume someone’s guilty just because everything points in his direction.”
      His eyebrow rose at that, just enough to let her know she’d gone too far. Her mouth tightened and she turned to walk out of his office. He would’ve fired anyone else for saying that, true or not.
      He went back to his paper.

      According to the terms of the proviso Knox Hilliard’s father had secretly approved and slipped into the corporate charter just days before his death, Knox Hilliard’s inheritance of OKH Enterprises is guaranteed so long as he is married and has a child by his 40th birthday.

      When WSJ asked Fen Hilliard what these terms meant for his leadership, he said, “It’s my great pleasure to safeguard my nephew’s inheritance for him. I’m looking forward to the handoff so I can pursue other opportunities and maybe go fishing.”

      There is some concern that Fen Hilliard’s decision to take the company public some years ago has actually made an end run around the proviso, but legal experts who have studied the clause have come to the consensus that Knox Hilliard will be entitled to the majority shares the company holds for itself and will be its de facto CEO at that point, and that his claim would hold up in court if challenged.

      However, if Knox Hilliard does not fulfill the terms of the proviso, Fen Hilliard will remain at its helm indefinitely.
      To complicate matters, Knox Hilliard’s cousin, financier Sebastian Taight, suddenly began to acquire OKHE stock at a steady pace two years ago. Taight is known across the country for his “Fix-or-Raid” protocol with regard to troubled companies that hire his consulting services. What he plans to do with OKH Enterprises, whether Knox Hilliard inherits or not, is unknown and Taight has refused to comment.

      To date, Knox Hilliard’s wedding and announcement of a birth are the most anticipated social events on Wall Street and financial quarters across the country, especially as the deadline, Knox Hilliard’s 40th birthday, looms. If he fulfills the terms of the proviso, his net worth could increase by as much as a half billion dollars.

      Bryce didn’t think Fen should’ve been released so easily from questioning since he had so much to gain from Leah’s death. Lucky bastard. No, not lucky. Scheming, thorough, untouchable.
      Just like Knox.
      Bryce’s lip curled with cynical resentment. Bryce had spent days in interrogation for the murders of his wife and four children because he’d had so much to gain from his wife’s death. He’d been charged and his criminal trial docketed before the fire investigator had come back with the evidence that cleared him.
      No, Knox hadn’t killed Leah; he had everything to lose, but it wouldn’t matter. Every lawyer in town joked that the FBI had been back and forth to the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office so many times, the Missouri Department of Transportation had to repave that section of highway every six months.
      The successor to an already corrupt prosecutor’s office and blatantly continuing the tradition, Knox lived under the FBI’s microscope. Despite that, he had a reputation as the best prosecutor in the ten major counties that made up the Kansas City metro area. His true talent, though, lay in turning baby lawyers into courtroom lions; his name on an attorney’s CV guaranteed a stellar career path. Under Knox’s leadership, the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office had evolved into a residency program for litigators whose tales of corruption and dirty money had yet to be substantiated by the feds.
      Knox Hilliard: Suspect Number One for his bride’s death on the basis of his reputation alone, which preceded him all the way to Washington.
      In a sidebar:

      Yesterday, OKHE stock price plummeted in the wake of another of Sebastian Taight’s mass buys. The SEC is expected to disallow any more buys by Taight if he does not account for his voting record as a majority shareholder. In addition, there are some murmurings on Capitol Hill about the legitimacy and legality of Taight’s raids.

      Senator Roger Oth (R-Penn.), Taight’s most vocal opponent, said today, “He and businessmen like him need to be brought to heel by someone with some power. As far as I can see, Congress is the only entity with that kind of power.” Before being elected to office, Senator Oth was the CEO of Jep Industries, a company Taight dismantled after having been hired to restructure and streamline its operations. Taight would give no reason for his decision to break Jep Industries.

      And Sebastian Taight was the monkey wrench in the power play between OKH’s current CEO and its heir. Venture capitalist Taight had his fingers in so many pies, nobody could keep track of them all; he even speculated heavily in art. Wall Street had given up trying to figure him out years ago. Though scrupulously honest, he had a reputation for taking any leverage where he could get it, being completely ruthless about it, and remaining silent to the press. The drumbeats on Capitol Hill calling for Taight’s head got a little louder every time he thumbed his nose at the SEC, every time he refused to explain his Fix-or-Raid policy. His aggressive takeover of OKH had sharply increased the Senate’s interest in hauling him before a panel hearing.
      Taight had the power to crush both Fen and Knox Hilliard and to all appearances, he had begun the process. Until the night of Leah’s visitation, Bryce, along with the rest of the financial industry, had assumed Taight to be on the warpath with both Hilliards, but now…
      Before Lilith—Giselle—had caught his eye, Bryce had observed Taight shouldering up with Knox, giving him support, not leaving him to face the cream of society (Bryce couldn’t really call them mourners) alone. The men were cousins, but they acted more like brothers. No, Taight wasn’t at war with Knox, which only left the question of why he wanted OKH so badly he was willing to destroy it to get it away from both Fen and Knox—and why Knox treated him like a brother anyway.
      Fen Hilliard, Sebastian Taight, and Knox Hilliard, three of the most brilliant men in the Midwest, were a family very publicly at war. Whatever else had gone wrong in that family, their collective genius couldn’t be dismissed.
      Bryce’s email dinged and he glanced at it to see if it required immediate attention. The art gallery that had Lilith. His eyes widened and he clicked on the subject line.

Subject: Lilith

Dear Mr. Kenard,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding Lilith by the Hon. John Collier. We regret to inform you that the painting is not for sale. Please let us know if there is anything else we may be able to help you with.

M. Stevens,

Curator

      Though Bryce knew he wouldn’t have been able to have it at any price, disappointment still struck him behind his breastbone. He went to a website he’d bookmarked and pulled up Lilith. As he stared at it, he wondered what it would take to possess the real one, the one in the little black dress who answered to the name of Giselle.

4: NO STATIC AT ALL

October 2004

      Justice bounced along the rutted driveway toward the farmhouse, her old car’s struts unable to absorb the shocks. Truly, she didn’t know how much longer it could take the eighty-four-mile round-trip commute from River Glen to the University of Missouri at Kansas City three days a week. If she believed in a God at all, she’d be on her knees the other four days begging for its longevity, at least for the six semesters until she graduated from law school. With any luck, she’d continue to be able to arrange her schedule as well as she had this semester—
      —even if that meant she wouldn’t have Professor Hilliard, who, she had learned, taught Tuesday and Thursday classes almost exclusively if he taught at all. She needed those two days during the week to work, to the point that it might be non-negotiable.
      Once she had parked in her usual spot, she sat for a moment, taking in her lifelong home as if she had never seen it before, compared and contrasted it to the fine old neighborhoods surrounding UMKC. Then there were the relatively new subdivisions south of KCI airport along I-29 at the northern edges of Kansas City…fine new houses of the type she would never live in.
      She sighed.
      The dilapidated farmhouse, indistinguishable from any other plain white-clap­board-clad gothic farmhouse across the Midwest, listed on one corner. That could never be repaired without shoring up the foundation and she couldn’t possibly hope to raise that kind of money. The yard was barren, packed dirt bisected by a poorly maintained gravel drive; her father used it to park worn out and rusting farm machinery.
      The corrugated steel barn to the east of the house displayed a lace of rust, the animals it occasionally housed their only real income.
      The wheat fields would give a poor crop; Justice had wanted to plant corn, as she suspected a good yield could be sold to an oil company for ethanol, but her father had dismissed her idea. Those fields were worn out—and the wheat proved it—but her father also wouldn’t hear of letting her turn the cattle out into them. Certainly, it would be more economical to let them eat the wheat than pay for harvesting.
       Very good, Justice.
      She bit her lip, looked at the ragged wheat, then to the south where the cattle grazed, then back to the wheat and made an executive decision. She flipped open her cell phone and called a neighbor, explained what she wanted to do, and arranged to swap chores. She would mow his fields if he would combine and bale hers. Her father would have to live with it, though she knew she’d have to tread lightly and present him with a fait accompli.
      That done, she mentally went over the list of other things she had to do this afternoon and evening, then sighed, seeing her future in the past that lay before her in all its pathetic glory. Hopefully, she could bring it back a little once she graduated from law school and had a regular income.
      Justice got out of her car and walked into the house, hearing the familiar squeaks in the bare floorboards beneath her feet on the way to the kitchen. Despite what her father thought, it had not been foolish to spend so much money on the appliances that took up most of the otherwise primitive kitchen: a used Viking with six star burners, two ovens, and a warming drawer; an older Sub-Zero double refrigerator; and two fairly new freezers.
      Her father’s anger had more to do with what she hadn’t bought than what she had, even though his complaints subsided when she demonstrated how fast they had paid for themselves. Still, he didn’t really know how much she made because she spent it as fast as she got it: tuition, books, cell phone, aircard, gas, car insurance and repairs. The beef sales funded the farm, but her meal delivery business funded her education.
      She had very little left over and she couldn’t afford debt she wouldn’t be able to repay on a junior assistant prosecutor’s salary, much less as a defense attorney if she were forced to it. If she could get through law school without having to take out student loans, she would be very proud of herself.
      No one else would be.
      She filled a large pot with water and set it to boil, then turned on her mother’s old tape deck; the silence got to her and she battled it with the music she’d found in the attic, cassette tapes her mother had stashed away before she died. It was in those boxes Justice had found the music of her heart: Rush. Nugent. U2.
      And the music of her memories of her mother: Earth Wind & Fire, Carole King, Doobie Brothers.
      She pressed play and heard Bette Midler’s voice.


       “Some say love…”
       Justice hid in the endless shadows of the barn listening to her mother sing a cappella while she milked cow number two. Justice would have helped her, but she would stop singing if she knew anyone listened and oh, Justice did so love to hear her mother sing.
       She had never heard this song before, which she deduced from the lyrics must be called “The Rose.” She bit her lip at the words, suddenly feeling a sadness emanating from her mother in a thick wave. Where had it come from? Her mother was never sad; always light, always smiling, Justice’s mother was the prettiest woman Justice had ever seen.
       Suddenly she stopped singing and murmured, “Where is that girl? It’s gone five.”
       “Here, Mama,” Justice said, stepping into the barn proper, as though she had just come from the house. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
       A smile, quick and warm, lit her face. “Good morning, Iustitia. Will you turn on the radio, please?”
       She didn’t want the radio. She wanted whatever was in the tape player, which happened to be Hall & Oates.
       “Thank you, baby. Cows three and four need to be milked yet.”
       Libby McKinley didn’t see any reason to name any animal that provided food, money, or clothes. The dogs had names because Justice’s father had insisted, but the barn cats didn’t. The only animal Justice had been allowed to name was her own cat, Pontificate. She hadn’t known what that word meant at the time, but thought it a neat word when she’d heard her mother say it to her father.
       He hadn’t known what it meant, either, so he’d stormed out of the house.
       A week after Justice had heard her mother singing sad songs in the barn, she had almost tumbled over into sleep when she felt the familiar depression of the bed. Her mother snuggled up to her and it only vaguely occurred to Justice that she had been sleeping with her a lot more lately.
       “Iustitia,” whispered her mother in the dark of her room, her body warm and soft against her, “you have no idea how badly I want you off this farm.”
       Justice didn’t understand that. She loved the farm, the work, the chores, even the animals, though her mother didn’t know she thought of some of them as pets. “Why, Mama?”
       “Because this is not the place for you. You have a keen mind and I want you to use it for something besides mindless, endless chores. You’ll be old before your time.”
       “I don’t understand.”
       “Of course you don’t and you won’t until you’re stuck where I am. I want you to remember this, Iustitia. I want you to remember that I wanted you educated, off this farm, doing something grand and making a mark in the world. That I wanted you to have a philosophy and stick with it, believe in it, even if it’s not mine.”
       That struck Justice as a funny phrasing. “What do you mean, ‘wanted’?”
       “Do you know how old I am?”
       Of course she did. Everyone knows that about their parents. “Twenty-three.”
       “Yes. Do you know how old your father is?”
       “Forty-one.”
       “Do the math, Iustitia. How old was I when you were born?”
       Justice gulped. She would be fourteen in five years. Did that mean…?
       “That’s right. I don’t want that for you. I want you to understand that having children when you’re young is a trap—not that I regret having you because I love you dearly and I wouldn’t trade you for a seat in the Senate—but I want you to make a name for yourself, something grand and wonderful. The earlier the better. Promise me this.”
       Justice didn’t understand her sense of urgency, her insistence. Thinking back, everything her mother ever did or said had paved the path to this moment.
       Something bad was going on.
       “What is it, Mama? What’s happening?”
       “I don’t know, Iustitia. I just— I don’t feel well. I need you to remember this and remember that I wanted you to get an education, to leave here. Whatever you do, do not be stupid like I was and let a man sucker you. You don’t belong here. I don’t belong here. If I had listened to my father, well…”
       Upon looking at her mother in her casket two years later, it occurred to Justice that she had never looked prettier or younger: twenty-five and not a day older than that. Justice had never seen her like that. The doctors said she had a heart attack, but Justice didn’t believe that. Twenty-five-year-old mothers didn’t have heart attacks.
      They do if they were born with a heart problem, one doctor told her bluntly when she had challenged him with an eleven-year-old’s certainty of medicine.
       “Come, child,” said an old man she had never met, his hand heavy on her shoulder to steer her away from the rest of the mourners. “I want to talk to you.”
       She wrested away from him. “Who are you?” she whispered.
       “Your grandfather. Libertas’s—er, your mother’s father.”
       “I don’t know you.”
       “No, but you will. Perhaps I won’t fail you like I failed your mother.”
       They sat together in a corner, talking. Well, not conversing: Her grandfather speaking, Justice listening. Absorbing the things he said, understanding more of what her mother had tried to teach her, but had not fully understood herself because she hadn’t had time to before Justice’s father had seduced her, gotten her pregnant, and been forced to marry her or go to jail.
       Justice had known none of this until that moment.
       And at that moment, her father chose to make a scene, yelling and screaming about what her grandfather had done to him, and how dare he attempt to glom onto Justice for his own evil purposes.
       But Justice found comfort in her grandfather’s teachings and so she did chores in the barn and waited until after her father had gone to bed. Her grandfather would come to her in the dead of night with books of histories and documents and theories and fables. The hayloft became Justice’s classroom and her grandfather her professor.
       Then he, too, died and left her with no one but her father, who didn’t know what she did when he wasn’t looking and didn’t care—as long as she wasn’t “messing around with books, because books don’t do nothin’ but put ideas in your head. This is your home and I’d just as soon you stay here and take care of it with me.”
       “Okay, Papa,” she whispered, seeing all her mother’s and grandfather’s hopes burn off like an early-morning fog in ten o’clock sunshine. “I will.” He was all she had in the world now.

      “That’s enough of you,” Justice muttered as she killed the sad music before her mood tanked. But she had to push the eject button on the tape deck several times before it would obey, and her humor gradually worsened each time it refused. She had very little patience with the thing, preferring instead to play the mp3 files on her laptop, but the tape player was one of few precious links to her mother.
      Her plan was simple: Fulfill her mother’s and grandfather’s aspirations for her and still keep her promise to her father. She juggled so much now that having only one regular job to work around would be a respite.
      She’d wanted to be a prosecutor because her grandfather thought it a noble profession, but in order to help with the farm after she got a job, she only had two counties to choose from: Chouteau and Buchanan. The Clay and Jackson County seats were too far to drive every day. She had always figured this reality into her plans and had known nothing about the Chouteau County prosecutor until that day two months ago, when he had defended her, validated her, touched her.
      Even had she been inclined to think about breaking her promise to her father, leave the farm, go somewhere else, that was out of the question now. If the Chouteau County prosecutor wouldn’t hire her, she’d work in legal aid just to work in that courthouse.
       I daresay none of you have thought that deeply about what you want and why you want it.
      She swept her fingertips across her chin where Professor Hilliard had touched her so gently and smiled dreamily.
      She turned on talk radio and knew by the voice coming out of the speakers that it was four o’clock. If she timed it right, she could cook all evening to get her week’s orders filled and write while chili and stroganoff simmered.
      Her spirit lightened considerably when she sifted through the mail and found the latest National Review. She flipped through the pages quickly to find the article she had written and submitted on a lark, bolstered by one man’s faith in her opinions.
      She had never expected it to be published.
      She had also never expected to be asked to write more.
      The water boiled and Justice got to cooking in earnest. She assembled a plate for her father, who picked it up, fished a can of beer out of the refrigerator, and walked right back out of the kitchen without a word.
      How long Martin McKinley would pout about her schooling this time, Justice couldn’t guess. It had taken him three months into her undergrad for him to speak to her. She shrugged. Sometimes it bothered her that his silence, intended to punish her, didn’t bother her.
      Two hours later she had enough of a break from cooking to crack open her laptop, make the rounds of her favorite political blogs, and post a few comments. Her email chimed.

Subject: Come aboard!

Reply-to: hhew@townsquared.org

Justice,

We’ve been following your comments for a while and we just read your piece in the National Review. We think you have a lot of potential as a columnist and we’d like to invite you to become a permanent contributor at TownSquared.

Let us know!

Cheers,

The TownSquared Crew

      She gasped. Giggled. Squealed, even. TownSquared was the biggest conservative blog on the ’net and they wanted her to write for them?
       Very good, Justice.

5: HOT, LOOSE & CLEAN

April 2005

      Giselle put her backpack on a remote corner of her desk, careful not to dislodge the piles of papers and microcassette tapes that littered it. She sighed. It just couldn’t happen that folks would respect her space and the clearly marked IN box she had set up to reduce just such clutter.
      She hated clutter.
      After collecting a bottle of water from the fridge, she set herself to putting her night’s work in order. Not as much as it looked, once it was in a nice, tidy pile, but it didn’t take into account the digital dictation on the server. If she finished early, she could go home to [...]