Christopher Smith - Fifth Avenue

“So, am I. But you’ll figure that out if you last long enough, Zack.”

Her words had no affect on him. “This must be difficult for you,” he said. “I can’t imagine having to prepare for opening night when your sister’s funeral will be the morning before.”

He let a beat of silence pass. Leana could almost hear his mind working, could almost feel the precise movement of gears as he tried to find ways to tear her down.

“I want you to know that if you’re not up to it, that if things become too much, I’d be more than happy and willing to deliver this speech for you.” He held out his hands. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here. I was practicing it when you came in.”

Leana finished reading the speech, not surprised to find that it was eloquent and well written. She handed him the cards. “I did notice,” she said. “But that won’t be necessary.”

“But the press will be here,” he said. “They’ll be expecting you to be at your best.”

“And I will be,” Leana said. “Don’t concern yourself with it.”

For an instant, the compassion in his eyes dissolved into something darker, and then they became carefully neutral. “With all due respect, I don’t see how you could be at your best. You’ve gone through a terrible shock. The entire staff and Louis Ryan are concerned about you. I don’t think it would be wise of you to face our guests and the press when I could do the job just as well.”

Leana lifted her head. In him she saw a man who would cut his own mother if he thought it would get him this position. “Mr. Anderson, I’m going to be frank with you. I was hired by Louis Ryan to manage this hotel. You weren't. Instead, you were hired to be my assistant. If you continue questioning my authority, if you continue to lecture me, you’ll be looking elsewhere for work. Is that understood?”

“I was just trying-”

“Shut up. Please, just shut the fuck up.”

Leana looked at her watch and wondered if Mario had returned to the restaurant.

“My office,” she said. “I assume I have one somewhere in this building. Take me to it.”

Her office was enormous.

It was located on the hotel’s fortieth floor and it faced downtown, toward The Redman International Building.

As Leana stepped inside, she noted with interest the illumined Sisley paintings on the forest-green walls, the cream damask sofas and elegant red velvet chairs-each arranged in a way that suggested a designer’s precision-before moving across the faded Persian carpet to her desk.

Anderson remained in the doorway. “Does this suit?”

Leana sensed by the terse sound of his voice that his ideas, his tastes and his sweat went into the design of this office. She had a sudden image of him standing in the center of this room, an artist using his mind as a palette, working tirelessly with a team of professionals until his vision was realized.

She knew, knew that he hoped this office would one day be his and she couldn’t help feeling a little pissed off because of it. “It’s a bit much,” she said. “I mean, look at it-it’s overkill. It’s unbalanced. It lacks imagination. It suggests that whoever did this is trying to impress instead of trying to get their work done. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t.”

“That’s understandable,” Leana said. “I grew up surrounded by this sort of shit. My father’s a billionaire, my mother likes to spend money. A lot of it. It’s obvious you came from something more pedestrian than I did, so I get that being surrounded by all these little treasures might be meaningful to you. Still, for me? Boring.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’m sorry, too. But it doesn’t work. It’s kind of awful. It’ll do for now, but only until I can get my own team of designers in here and gut the place.”

She saw the steely hardness in his eyes, the slight change in the set of his jaw and sighed. “I mean, honestly,” she said. “We’re a hotel, not a museum. Whose idea was it to hang all of these fucking Sisley paintings?”

When she was alone, she sat in the leather wingback behind her desk and found it nothing like the leather wingback of her childhood days, the comfortable leather chair that had been in her father’s office and smelled so distinctively of his cologne.

She felt a sudden pang of regret and wished they hadn’t argued earlier. She should call him now and apologize, she thought. She should swallow her pride and tell him that she was sorry, that she loved him and wanted his support and his friendship.

Still, when she reached for the phone, it was not her father she dialed. It was Mario’s restaurant.

Oddly, there was no answer there and it was the lunch hour. As she leaned back in her chair and looked across at her father’s building, it occurred to her that Tuesday would not only be her day, but her father’s as WestTex became Redman International’s. She wondered how that would feel, wondered if the realization of her dream would be as sweet as she always thought it would be.

Somehow, she thought, without her sister here and without her parents approval, it would be quite different. And she wondered again if she’d made a mistake by accepting this job.

It wasn’t until later that evening, while at home and relaxing on the sofa with Michael, that she turned on the television to CNN and learned of the explosion that killed two members of the De Cicco crime Family.

Antonio De Cicco heard the bitch before he saw her.

In the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital, he was sitting at Mario’s bedside, holding his hand, when he heard her voice coming from beyond the closed door. She was firm in her demands to see his son, reminding those doctors and nurses on duty that her father built a children’s wing on this hospital and that if they didn’t let her see Mario now, she would have their jobs by the end of the night.

Angrily, Antonio looked away from the network of tubes coursing through his son’s body and knew that because of Leana Redman, he had lost his daughter-in-law, lost the Family’s trusted lawyer, who was his cousin, and nearly lost his son.

The pain he felt earlier dissolved into fury and resolve. He would crush her, just as he promised Lucia he would.

And yet he couldn’t-at least not here. If he made any scene, any threats in public, there would be witnesses-and the D.A., a man who for years had been waiting to lock his ass behind bars, would be on him the moment Leana Redman was murdered at the opening of The Hotel Fifth.

He sat in thought for several moments, now only dimly aware of the bitch’s presence and her frequently raised voice, before making his decision and reaching for the call button at his son’s side.

He pushed it and waited. When the nurse arrived, he caught a brief glimpse of Leana Redman before the door to his son’s room closed. She was standing at the nurse’s station, her back to him and she was gesticulating with her hands, arguing with one of the doctors.

“Yes, Mr. De Cicco?”

With an effort, Antonio stood and became aware of the trepidation in the young woman’s eyes. “I hear a woman shouting about my son,” he said calmly. “What’s the problem?”

The nurse seemed perplexed. “It’s Leana Redman, sir. She wants to see him.”

“And you won’t let her. That why she’s shouting?”

The woman nodded. “Only the immediate family is allowed to visit.”

“Then throw her the fuck out.”

The woman moved to speak, but then hesitated. “It’s her father,” she said. “He’s done so much for the hospital. We’re afraid that if we do-”

“She’s disturbing the patients,” De Cicco said evenly. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna allow that?” He saw that’s exactly what they planned to do and felt a sharp pulse at his temples.