BLACKLIST
Copyright © 2020 by Geneva Lee.
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Quaintrelle Publishing + Media
www.GenevaLee.com
First published, 2020.
Elec. ISBN: 978-1-945163-41-8
Cover design © Date Book Designs.
Image © alesgon/Adobe Stock.
In Memory of Trish
Contents
1. Sterling
2. Adair
3. Sterling
4. Sterling
Five Years in the Past
5. Adair
6. Sterling
7. Adair
8. Adair
Present Day
9. Sterling
10. Adair
11. Sterling
12. Adair
13. Sterling
14. Sterling
The Past
15. Adair
16. Sterling
Present Day
17. Adair
18. Sterling
19. Sterling
The Past
20. Adair
Present Day
21. Sterling
22. Adair
The Past
23. Adair
Present Day
24. Sterling
Present Day
25. Sterling
The Past
26. Adair
Present Day
27. Adair
THE PAST
28. Sterling
Present Day
29. Sterling
THE PAST
30. Adair
Present Day
31. Adair
The Past
32. Sterling
Present Day
33. Sterling
The Past
34. Adair
Present Day
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Geneva Lee
1
Sterling
Rain splatters the succession of black Mercedes-Benzes and Bentleys arriving at the cemetery. Everyone in attendance pulled their most somber sedans out of the garage this morning. There are no flashy red coupes or ostentatious sport utility vehicles today. Rich people know how to put on a show, and today is all about show. But despite the dark clothes and the umbrellas, not a single tear rolls down a single face as attendees climb out of their cars and make their way toward his grave site. The rain cares more than anyone present, myself included.
A woman stumbles, her heel catching in the mud, and my arm shoots out to break her fall. She glances up, murmuring thanks. Everything is gray around us—the sky, the rain, the headstones. Even her copper hair looks almost silver in the clouded light. The world is a hundred muted shades of nothing, except her eyes. They are bright glittering emeralds against the day’s gloom. Even after five years, I’d know them anywhere. A lot has changed. I’ve changed. Maybe she has, too. But those eyes are the same.
Nothing registers on her face as she turns to accept the hand of her companion. He leads her to the front of the crowd, where she belongs. With them.
I skipped the service and the viewing. I’m not here to pay my respects. I came to see him put in the ground. I came to smell the dirt as it hits his coffin and seals the fate of the MacLaine family. Business can be attended to later. I want the pleasure of watching a man fade to nothing but a legacy—a legacy I intend to destroy. But that’s not the real reason I’m here. It’s a perk that I made it back to town in time for the funeral.
A priest says a few words. The rain continues to fall. When the ceremonial dirt hits the coffin, I’m watching the redhead. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away. I guess she didn’t change after all.
Adair MacLaine.
The only woman I’ve ever loved.
That bitch? She’s the real reason I came back.
An hour later, I pull into the paved, circular drive of Windfall, the MacLaine family estate, and hand the keys of my Aston Martin to a parking attendant. Judging by the slight bulge protruding from the left side of his cheap blazer, he’s doubling as security. He scopes out the Vanquish appreciatively before his eyes skim over my Italian wool suit, pausing at the Breitling on my wrist and sweeping to the black Berlutis on my feet. Nodding toward the house, he steps to the side. It seems the only identification they’re checking is material status.
That’s a mistake.
Mourners are distracted. Some by grief. Some by a preoccupation with social responsibility. The MacLaines suffer from the latter.
People hosting a funeral have blind spots. Ever wanted to see inside someone’s house? A funeral is a perfect opportunity. Thieves, paparazzi, and assassins all know it’s an in. Need to get to a high value target? Kill someone close, but easier to reach, and wait for their funeral.
Not that I killed Angus MacLaine. Even though I would have liked to. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
The former senator had no shortage of enemies. Some he’d made on his own. Others he had inherited along with the family newspaper empire. For every legitimate bit of journalism he had, he owned ten tabloids. His television networks ran more propaganda than an army recruitment office.
But it wasn’t his business practices that made me hate him—although they didn’t help his case. It’s that he was a soulless son of a bitch. Maybe he’d had a heart at some point, but he sold it for a fortune that amassed five billion dollars. Then he’d gone to Washington to protect it at all costs, like his father before him. That was then. This is now. And I’m the devil come to collect.
A smile crooks across my face as I survey the kingdom I’m about to take. The MacLaine estate sprawls as far as I can see in every direction. Thirty years ago, Angus MacLaine built it for a couple million dollars. Today it’s worth ten times that, and yesterday I bought the lien on it. I read once in an interview that he wanted his family home to recall the glory of the Old South without all the baggage of the past. I assume he meant slavery and the Civil War. It was just like a MacLaine to believe he could simply erase a problem. The architect had managed the feat, creating an estate that occupies fifty acres in Valmont, Tennessee—the most prestigious enclave outside Nashville. Stone columns rise from the veranda to support a second story porch that runs the length of the main house’s front. Unlike traditional antebellum homes, the house extends to wings on each side. The east wing houses the family bedrooms and private areas—places I
