Magdalene by Moriah Jovan Read Free Book Online Page A

meet...
    Justice McKinley. She was the May to
Hilliard’s December. Only a year older than my eldest daughter, she
seemed like such a sweet girl in person, with her freckles and
short, bouncy auburn curls, fashionable glasses perched on her
pixie nose, all trumped by a perfect hourglass figure dressed to
utmost advantage. But her utterly telegenic beauty hid a cutting
wit she used to slice and dice—on national TV—politicians who
displeased her. I would relay this meeting to Clarissa tonight in
excruciating detail and enjoy watching her writhe in envy.
    Giselle Kenard. Her muscular little body
hung nude in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On canvas, she was
gorgeous, with long flaming curls accentuating her agony. In
person, though, she radiated humor and I could not guess her age.
Her ice blue eyes betrayed her blood ties to both Hilliard and
Ashworth, and her rather dull honey-colored curls—caught up in a
yellow-ribboned ponytail—made her cute. Barely. My taste in women
does not run to barely cute.
    Her husband, Bryce Kenard. Now, he shocked me. The burn scars that matted half his face gave him an
animal sexuality that cloaked him like an aura. He had the most
beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen in a man. I couldn’t imagine
what a man like that saw in a woman as mousy as Giselle, and I
wondered if he could be lured away from her.
    Eilis Logan, whom I’d also only seen as a
nude on canvas. Taller than I, zaftig, with shoulder-length blonde
hair, one green eye and one blue eye— It was too bad that she would
be my natural enemy in this little project.
    And finally, her husband, King Midas,
Sebastian Taight, the object of my curricular fascination and my
predecessor in unconventional corporate-restructuring methods. He
was perfect in a carefully unstudied GQ way, black Irish
from his white-tinged black hair to the same ice blue
eyes.
    He had noticed my scrutiny of his wife, and
glanced between us, then smirked.
    “I think not,” Eilis murmured dryly.
    “No?” Sebastian drawled low enough so only
the two of us could hear. “Eilis sandwich?”
    She raked me from head to toe. “Tempting.
But...no. I don’t share.”
    “Damn,” Sebastian and I said at the same
time. And all three of us laughed at a joke everyone else was
straining to hear.
    “Too bad it took an imperial order to get to
meet you, Cassie,” he said, holding his hand out. “Another month or
two and I would’ve stormed your office.”
    And with one handshake, I knew I’d earned
the respect of a man who respected very little. “I find it’s not
always good to know too much about one’s idols.”
    “That’s true. Your dad was one of mine.” I
stiffened. “I was...disillusioned.”
    Ah, yes. If he had followed my father, he
would have known what happened to him. It had never occurred to me
that King Midas and I might have learned from the same master;
thus, my affinity for Taight’s style had nothing to do with
serendipity and everything to do with familiarity.
    “Relax,” he murmured with a warm smile. “I
didn’t summon your father. I summoned you.”
    I nodded and took a deep breath.
    Intriguing, yes, this clan of entrepreneurs,
philosophers, artists, and lawyers with some strange fraternity I
couldn’t pin down—
    Then Ashworth introduced me to Mitch
Hollander.
    Ordinary. An ordinary man in his mid-forties
who felt comfortable in his own skin, comfortable with who he was,
and comfortable with his ordinariness amongst the cadre of extra ordinary people in the room. He was athletic, with a
broad chest and shoulders, and stood an inch or two over six feet.
He had short, thick sandy hair that curled slightly. His eyes were
an unremarkable blue.
    I couldn’t stop staring at him, and the rest
of the people in the room faded.
    He shook my hand in an odd way, with his
left hand covering our clasped right hands, but it had no hint of
sexual intent and, in fact, he seemed to be above such base human
needs. A Mormon bishop, akin to a