PART I
PROLOGUE
NINE YEARS AGO
“Oh, Annie,” Bruno Pedace said, grief heavy in his voice.
Annie Donohue stopped trying to halt the flow of her tears, which dropped torrentially onto her silk blouse. She looked down at her lap while she kneaded a handkerchief in her hands, shuddering sobs racking her body.
“Why didn’t you come to me? I could have put a stop to it. I’m a partner of this damned firm; not some flunky.”
She made a snuffling noise and cleared her throat. It took several seconds for her to speak. She looked up at Bruno, held his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes to her lap again.
“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “He would have fired me. I need this job. You know that. What would I do with four kids at home and no husband?”
“I never would have let Sy Rosen fire you,” he said.
She scoffed. “You’re a partner, but Sy Rosen is the managing partner. What could you do against someone like him?” After a beat, she added, “Look what they’re planning to do to you. They’re turning everything over to the SEC in two days, after the markets close on Friday.”
Her sobs began again. Bruno sat behind his desk and waited for her to compose herself. When she did, she looked up again, this time meeting his gaze.
“Rosen told you all of this?”
She blurted a laugh, but there was no humor in it. She said, “A bottle of wine and a little massaging of his ego is all it takes for Sy Rosen to divulge his deepest, darkest secrets.” She shook her head, a sour cast to her mouth. “I’m sick about this, Bruno.”
“Tell me again everything he told you.”
“He said the SEC is investigating all the Wall Street firms for fraudulent mortgage securities transactions. He knows that the company won’t be able to stand up to the scrutiny of such an investigation. The sub-prime mortgage securities the firm created were full of false data. None of the loans in those deals should have ever been made. Rosen is livid about your opposition to Rosen, Rice & Stone underwriting those fraudulent securities. That’s one of the reasons they’re setting you up to take the fall.”
“One of the reasons?” he asked.
“Yes.” She swallowed hard, looked into his doe-like brown eyes for a moment, then stared into the middle distance. “He said you were born to be a victim. I remember exactly what he said about this.” She huffed a mighty sigh. “He told me, ‘Bruno Pedace is the perfect patsy. His own wife was sleeping with one of the partners.’ ”
When Annie stopped talking, Bruno said, “What else?”
“The senior partners have forged documents to make it appear that you put the mortgage deals together, that you knew the loans were bad, and that you believed you could get away with it. Rosen said they’d make the case that you hoodwinked the managing partners by doctoring the data about the mortgages.” She groaned, then added, “They’ve created emails and internal memos in which you supposedly set up the scheme to defraud the partners and our investors. Your name and signature are all over those documents.”
Bruno stood, came around his desk to where Annie sat, and took hold of her arm. He helped her to stand and told her, “I want you to go out to your desk, go about your business, pretend that nothing’s happened.”
“They’ll know I told you.”
He shrugged. “That’s probably right, Annie. But if they fire you, I want you to call Jim Kennedy. He’ll file a sexual harassment suit against Rosen and the firm that will fix you for life. The moment Rosen hears from Kennedy, he’ll want to settle with you out of court. You understand?”
She nodded. “What are you going to do, Bruno? You could go to prison.”
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out.”
“I’m sorry, Bruno. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Annie. Go on now. I’ve got some thinking to do.”
She moved to the office door, but as she gripped the door handle, she turned and said, “Rosen’s dangerous, Bruno. He’ll do anything to protect himself and the firm.”
After Annie Donohue left his office, Bruno considered his options as he paced. He could go to the SEC and tell them what he knew, but, based on what Annie had told him, the senior partners had constructed a trail of false documents that would be difficult if not impossible to disprove. And if he stayed and fought the ultimate charges, his assets would be wiped out, and there was no guarantee he’d win in the end. As far as his assets went, the vast percentage of his personal wealth was in his stock in Rosen, Rice & Stone. There would be no way he could liquidate that interest.
He concluded that he had only one option: run. A terrible pain hit his stomach, as acid had filled it. Running is what I’ve been good at my entire life, he thought. Annie’s correct. Rosen is a very dangerous man. He’s not above having me killed.
He stopped pacing, took his cell phone from his suit jacket pocket, and called his T.D. Ameritrade broker.
“Herman, it’s Bruno.”
“Hey, Bruno. How’re things?”
“All’s good. How quickly can you liquidate my account?”
“All of it?”
“Yes. I have an opportunity to buy a larger percentage of the firm’s stock. It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up.”
“Everything’s in marketable securities. I can probably sell everything today, depending on what price you want on your holdings.”
“Sell everything at market.”
“You could get hammered doing that.”
“Just do it, Herman. Then transfer the proceeds to my bank account. Get it done today.”
Bruno terminated the call, then snatched a set of keys from his desktop and walked quickly to his office door. Calm down, he told himself. He opened the door and moved slowly through the waiting area. He smiled reassuringly at Annie, then looked straight ahead as he exited into the hall, went to the emergency staircase, and descended three floors to the vault.
CHAPTER 1
“Mama, are you trying to kill yourself?”
Maybelle Jenkins frowned. “Sugar, you gotta stop harassing me about eating. I’ll eat when I feel like it.”
Janet Jenkins stared down at her mother and felt an ache in her heart. She remembered how tall and beautiful the old woman had been. How people used to say Janet was the spitting image of her blue-eyed, auburn-haired, long-legged mama. That Maybelle was the most beautiful woman in all of Mississippi. Even down to the freckles on her perfect nose, her neck, and shoulders. Now, she towered over her mother, who seemed to shrink a bit every year, looking more like a sack of bones. Only when she smiled—a rare occurrence—did Maybelle resemble the woman she’d once been.
Despite her frustration and worry, Janet Jenkins smiled. The strains of Mississippi flowed through her fifty-seven-year-old mother’s speech in a sing-song cadence that reminded her of growing up in the south. Then she shuddered as though a cold breeze had hit the back of her neck. The mellifluous sounds of her youth were about the only things she didn’t regret about those early years.