The Beautiful and the Wicked (32 page)

“But how did you do it?” Lila said, not feeling an ounce of pity for this pathetic man. “How'd you fake your own death?”

A glimmer came to Jack's eye. “That part was easier than I'd expected. Unlike my plans for destroying Warren Software, my own death was seamless. Once I decided that I had to die to be free, I started siphoning off money into a Swiss bank account with the help of my personal banker, Urs Hunziker. By September 2008, I had a billion dollars socked away under my new identity. But if I was going to die, I wanted it to be a spectacular event. The stuff the world would talk about forever. I wanted it to be legendary.”

Lila looked at Teddy with disbelief. She couldn't stand Jack's grandiosity, even in defeat.

“Walk me through what happened that night.”

“I had pints of my own blood drawn over the last ­couple months, which I brought on board with me, of course. I brought my mistress on board and drugged her heavily for days, keeping her isolated. I knew she'd be the perfect patsy.”

At Jack's mention of Ava, Lila felt rage build inside her. She struggled to keep calm as he continued. “I threw a giant party that night to make sure that ­people on the ship were both inebriated and away from where I would stage my murder. I sedated my mistress, then brought her to the deck with me. When she awoke she found me covered in blood and her holding a knife. It wasn't a bad plan.”

At least Lila now understood why Ava had been so out of it that night.

“But how'd you survive the water?” Lila asked, remembering the image of a bloodied Jack plunging a hundred and fifty feet into the dark ocean waters.

“Yes,” he said with a smile. He seemed to be basking in his cleverness. “That
was
complicated. For that, I needed the help of a ­couple good men.”

“Accomplices,” Lila said.

“Call them what you will. Even great men need a helping hand or two.”

“Asher and Ben,” Lila said. But it still didn't make sense. “But those two men weren't your friends. One made you a cuckold. While the other seduced your only daughter and tried to extort money from you.”

“Yes, you're right, but only about Asher. Ben
was
my friend. Is still my friend, even though it'll mean jail time for him now. His affair with Elise was all my idea. Call it an insurance policy against a costly divorce. I thought it would temper her judgment about my own extracurricular activities. This, of course, was before I'd cooked up my plan to make a new life for myself. But Ben proved himself so competent, so loyal, that I knew he was the only one I could trust with a secret this big.”

“And what about Asher?” Lila asked, amazed.

“Sadly, he did take things too far with Josie. But I thought it was important for my daughter to know that ­people weren't what they seemed. My little lamb needed to learn some difficult lessons, because she wouldn't have me looking out for her in the future. Still, Asher acted in a way that left me greatly disappointed in him, in both of them.”

Now that she was looking at events with Jack's twisted logic, they began to make sense. He used the last weeks of his life on the boat to teach all of the ­people in his life lessons that he thought were important—­about loyalty, honor, and forgiveness.

Jack continued, “Asher met me underwater with a submarine, and I went into hiding. The whole thing was very cloak-­and-­dagger. And went off without a hitch. I have to say I enjoyed it. And those men didn't suffer too much. I made them rich and, today, I made them world champions.”

“But what about Ava?” Lila asked. “Did she mean nothing to you?”

“Ava,” Jack said, dragging out every syllable. “She was beautiful. That I do remember. Beautiful and willing. But not much more. She seemed trusting, vulnerable, just what I needed. It was nothing personal. She was just collateral damage.”

Upon hearing this, Teddy looked at Lila nervously. True, Lila wanted to leap upon the old man and make him hurt. But she knew that wasn't the best way to exact revenge. He already felt like a victim, and Lila wasn't going to help him actually be one.

Jack continued, “The truth is I'm glad it is all over now. I'm tired of hiding. It's a hard thing watching the world go on without you, like you don't matter at all. Nothing in the entire world has made me feel worse than that.”

 

CHAPTER 31

A
N IN
TERNATIONAL MEDIA
storm erupted when the news broke that Jack Warren had faked his own death. The story only became bigger when it was revealed that he did so in order to extricate himself from a software spying deal gone wrong. Once the shadowy group of Brazilian kleptocrats at the heart of the scandal were forced out of the darkness, the story became only more explosive. But despite Jack Warren's predictions, he was never, ever labeled a patriot. Not once. None of the
New York Times
editorials, the Fox News segments, the mentions of him in a State of the Union speech, the congressional investigations, and the dozens of books written about the scandal called Jack Warren a hero to his most beloved country. History, it seemed, was still not on his side.

Nor was it on the side of anyone connected to Jack Warren. The fallout was massive. Warren Software's stock price went into free fall, basically bankrupting the company overnight. What Seth Liss hadn't lost in the market would surely go to lawyer's fees for all the class-­action lawsuits and government inquiries he was facing for the foreseeable future.

Thiago Campos and his lovely wife, Esperanza, had all their American assets seized and were extradited back to Brazil, where Thiago and his father would stand trial for spying and treason. After a quick divorce and a return to her maiden name, Esperanza recovered from the shame and shock of the whole affair on her family's estate in Bali, where she dove into kundalini yoga and began toying with the idea of starting her own line of handbags.

Clarence Baines was forced to resign, though he stuck by his story that he was one of the few forces of good in Jack Warren's troubled life. Hoping to return to public office, he self-­published a memoir called
The Confessions of a Conservative,
detailing his innocence in the Warren scandal and his plan for creating a new American utopia based on the political principles of Barry Goldwater. It was unanimously declared to be one of the most delusional pieces of writing the world had ever known. After leaving her husband, Charity went on to marry a politically ambitious man who owned a small but profitable chain of barbecue restaurants in southern Florida. She helped him successfully run for the Florida State Senate in the 2022 elections, happy to be, once again, a politician's wife.

Ben Reynolds and Asher Lydon were convicted on several counts of conspiracy and insurance fraud. Officials from the America's Cup officially expunged their names from all records. But Jack Warren's design innovations forever changed the sport of sailing, though no one would admit it out loud.

Daniel Poe dined out on his Jack Warren stories for the rest of his drug-­fueled days. The golden phallus went to auction again, this time resulting in a bidding war. It finally sold for $35 million to a buyer who asked to remain anonymous.

Elise Herrera (formerly Stadtlander formerly Warren) leveraged the shocking revelation about Jack to land yet another wealthy husband. British betting firms were giving five-­to-­one odds that he wouldn't make it to the year 2025. Edna, her faithful servant, remained by her side.

Sam Bennett, ever the opportunist, sold the story of her steamy affair with Jack Warren on
The Rising Tide
to a national tabloid for three hundred grand. In 2021, she starred in Season 28 of the moribund reality TV show
The Bachelorette,
where twenty waxed and gelled bachelors competed for her affections. Her engagement, marriage, and quickie divorce failed to grab the attention of Hollywood as she'd hoped. So she hawked her engagement ring to pay for some small cosmetic procedures she needed before returning to TV to work on her self-­diagnosed “love addiction” on yet another reality-­TV show, this one set in a rehab facility on a farm in Idaho.

Josie Warren, aside from becoming obsessed with a scintillating email correspondence with the freshly jailed Asher Lydon, gained years and years of material to discuss with the three different therapists continually in her employ.

Lila watched all of this unfold from a distance. What happened to Jack, Elise, Josie, Ben, or anyone else from
The Rising Tide
didn't really matter to her. What mattered was when Ava would finally come out of hiding.

After the news broke about Jack, Lila woke up each morning thinking that
this
would be the day that Ava came back home. After all, there was nothing left to fear. Every corner of the globe knew that she was innocent. But days passed. Then weeks. Nothing.

Ava was still gone. And as the weeks went by, Lila began to worry that her sister would never come back to her.

Luckily, Teddy was there. Always Teddy. For the first time in her life, Lila began to understand what it really felt like to count on someone, to know that he'd always be by her side. Since the afternoon when Jack almost gunned her down, she'd seen Teddy every day. She couldn't think of anyone on the planet whom she liked better. The fact that they alone shared the secret about her involvement in the Jack Warren case—­not counting Conrad and Jack Warren himself, of course—­only continued to solidify the bond that existed between them. It felt like the beginning of a new life, a life that wasn't as lonely as the one she'd been living for so long.

I
T WAS A
perfect day in Miami, and everyone in South Beach was outside enjoying the beautiful weather. Lila was home with her windows thrown wide open. The gentle breeze and the cheerful voices from the ­people walking along the strip gently floated in, along with the smell of the salty sea air. She was running late. Teddy was on his way to pick her up for their now-­customary afternoon lunch. She threw on a sundress and pinned up the bleach blond pixie cut she'd been anxiously growing out for the last six weeks since she traveled from the past.

Then she heard a knock on the door. Without turning around, she shouted, “Come on in, Teddy. Door's open.” Then she scrambled into her bedroom, searching for her shoes.

“Found them!” she exclaimed as she dragged a pair of red espadrilles from beneath the bed. But the moment she stood up, the shoes fell back down to the floor.

“Ava?”

Standing there in front of Lila, a duffel bag flung over her shoulder, was her long-­lost sister. “Is it really you?” Lila cried as she ran toward the beautiful, fragile woman whom she'd missed every day for a decade. She wrapped her up in her arms and drank in her scent.

“It's me,” Ava whispered, holding her sister tight.

“Thank God you're back.” Lila buried her face into Ava's neck. “Thank God.”

They stood holding each other, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, for what felt like hours.

When Ava pulled away, Lila felt her eyes on her, studying her closely. “Your hair?” Ava said. She paused, looking at her sister as she ran her hand through Lila's still short, white-­blond hair. “So, I wasn't crazy,” Ava said. “It
was
you?” she said. “Everything was such a fog that night, that terrible night, but your face was the one thing I remembered clearly. You saved me, didn't you?”

Lila didn't know what to say. She couldn't lie to her sister, but she also couldn't tell her a secret she'd promised Teddy she'd never spill.

“Okay. You don't have to answer. But . . . how is it possible?”

“I've seen so many impossible things since you've been gone. But you returning is the best one of them all,” Lila said with a smile.

“It feels so good to finally be home,” Ava said as she squeezed her sister until Lila thought she'd break. Lila saw that underneath the joy, there was so much sadness still in her sister's eyes. Lila grabbed her hands in hers and kissed her sister's tear-­soaked cheeks.

“Lila, I need to say something to you.” Ava closed her eyes and let out an anguished sigh. She looked at the ground. “I'm so sorry I wasn't here for you and Mom. And when I found out she died . . .” The words caught in Ava's throat, and she fell silent for a moment. “When I heard she died, all I wanted was to come home, to call you, to be there for you. But I was too scared. I didn't want to go to jail for the rest of my life. But there hasn't been one day that I haven't thought about you, and missed you, and wished I was right here with you.”

“Look at me,” Lila said. But her sister's eyes were still focused on the ground. “Ava, look at me.”

Ava slowly lifted her head. The two sisters' eyes met. “That's all in the past, okay?”

“Can you ever forgive me?”

Lila threw her arms around her sister, who began to sob. “Ava,” she whispered. “Of course. We're back together now. That's all that matters. Mom understood. We both always knew you were innocent. It was never a question in our minds.”

She felt Ava hold her closer as their grief and sorrow began the long, slow journey to forgiveness and love. Lila knew it would take time. But she had her sister back, and it was better than she had ever dreamed.

“Knock. Knock.” Lila looked up to see Teddy standing in the doorway with Conrad hovering close behind him. Her already radiant smile grew even brighter.

“Ava,” she said to her sister, taking her hand firmly in her own, “I'd like to introduce you to someone very special.”

“Conrad,” Teddy said as he reached out to shake Ava's hand for the first time, “I'm delighted to say it'll be three ­people for lunch today.”

“Splendid, sir,” Conrad said with a bow. “Just splendid.”