Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict by Thomas T. Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

have adequate controls …”
    “I thought she was honest. I thought your father and I had an honest relationship, an understanding. I was merely pointing out business opportunities—”
    “For which you were collecting a finder’s fees, yes?”
    “Well, yes,” she said. “But that was—”
    “Over and above the value in construction work that our investments enabled your company to obtain. Is this not one hand washing the other?”
    “Well, technically, but you—”
    “With us, it is no different. We cannot survive simply on the percentage returns from those investments. On the interest paid. There must also be incentives, gratuities—what do the English say? ‘Emoluments.’ Mariene was our agent to arrange and collect those emoluments.”
    “But in the United States—excuse me, the Federated Republic—such incentives are called ‘graft.’ They make everyone nervous. They involve the police and the courts. The head of my Legal Department is now investigating, and she’s a straight-arrow type, squeaky clean—not at all Italian in her outlook. So I need you to back off on the entitlements. And I need to stop bird-dogging your investments. I can’t take any more finder’s fees, because—well, because it looks bad.”
    The cell signal was quiet for a moment. The younger man’s face appeared frozen on her screen. “It is too late to put the genie back in the bottle, Contessa.”
    “You must trust me on this. We have to cool it while Mariene’s little stunt at bid rigging goes to trial and gets resolved.”
    “You don’t understand,” Carlo said. “Things are already in motion. We have hooks set all over the West Coast. You are merely the bait fish. You can’t swim away now. We own a piece of you.” With that, the carrier cut off and her earpiece went dead.
    So Callie sat up brooding and stubbing out imaginary cigarette butts, wondering how she could extricate herself from her dealings with the di Rienzis, or at least shield her company from the toxic side effects.
    * * *
    Antigone Wells was following her morning makeup routine at the dressing table. After carefully dabbing on foundation and powder, smoothing in blusher, lining her eyelids, brushing in shadow, and applying mascara to her lashes, she leaned in toward the mirror, turned her lips out in a tiny pout, and dabbed on her favorite hot-pink lip gloss. On the third pass with the applicator stick, her face suddenly changed before her eyes.
    The familiar, everyday face she knew and had been cleaning, moisturizing, and cherishing for years disappeared as if a mist had melted away. Her real face, the everyday face she wore to the public, the skin she was wearing now, became stunningly apparent. It started with the area around her mouth. Her lips radiated a network of tiny wrinkles. The corners of her mouth disappeared against two deep folds that started up around and along either side of her nose. Her eyes looked out of deep pockets whose underside failed of being lined and livid only because of the concealer and powder she used. Her cheeks sagged. Her jawline slumped into the beginnings of a double chin.
    Age has finally caught up with me, she thought sadly.
    Wells had known for years—really, for a couple of decades—that she could no longer pass for a fresh-faced girl of twenty or even thirty. But still she had accounted herself a handsome woman, needing only a touch or two of color and gloss to bring back the image of the girl she once was. Now all that greasepaint and powder looked thick and garish, hiding nothing and instead calling attention to itself, like a mask, like a clown’s makeup.
    It was true that John seemed to like her face well enough. When he looked into her eyes, she saw no hint of speculation, disappointment, or remorse. But would this present face be enough to hold him? She remembered that, at the beginning of their relationship, he would occasionally by mistake call her “Tippi”—confusing her with a film actress