Chapter Four. "The sale of the Kirchner painting has brought us some breathing room." Josh Soifer indicated a seven-figure entry on the complex financial report

"The sale of the Kirchner painting has brought us some breathing room." Josh Soifer indicated a seven-figure entry on the complex financial report spread out on the desk in his office.

He was his father's son, Mason thought, glancing up at him, a man with an affinity for numbers. Three generations of Soifers had been Cavender accountants, but Josh eschewed the dull conservatism of his forbears in both dress and attitude. Today he wore a sleekly tailored three-piece suit that flattered his sartorial, male-model good looks. His wavy brown hair was cut in a casual style that seemed at odds with his serious expression, but Josh was a man who excelled as naturally at tennis as he did in the boardroom.

Mason had agreed to this meeting, more or less expecting him to tell her they had to accept Vienna Blake's insulting offer. But instead, Josh was talking about a three-year redevelopment plan as if it were feasible.

"If the economy wasn't heading into recession we could probably reduce our debt and trade our way back into the black over the next two years," he summarized after dragging her through various charts and projections. "We're very well positioned because of the way we've diversified. With the Internet companies Lynden set up, we finally have vertical integration for the electronics brands and the auto accessories. Income almost tripled last quarter."

"It's not enough to save us," Mason said. "Although I can see it expands our liquidation options. But it's just too late."

"You're right. Even if we keep trading, all we'd be doing is servicing debt. Which is why," he flipped pages to the balance sheet of a company she'd never heard of, "your brother took a gamble on this."

Mason propped a hand beneath her chin and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. "We own a company called Azaria Technology?"

Josh looked faintly apologetic. "I wanted Lynden to tell you, but he had this fantasy about presenting you with a fait accompli...the family fortunes restored. Azaria is the key."

"Named for our mother?"

"He thought it was appropriate."

Mason stared down at the bottom line and the growth projections. "Are these numbers for real?"

"Actually, they're conservative." Josh's excitement added a higher note to his voice.

"What does Azaria produce? Please tell me we haven't gone into weapons of mass destruction or something."

"Don't think we didn't consider it," Josh said with bland irony. "But you know Lynden. He couldn't handle the ethical vacuum, or the bad press. We're not the Blakes."

Mason laughed and they shared a few seconds of silent grief. Then Josh took a small plastic container from his pocket. He tipped the contents onto a leather binder in front of them.

Mason picked up one of the glittering stones. "Diamonds?" She had a horrible flash of Lynden setting his scruples aside to deal with criminals and terrorists, buying conflict stones as a fast moneymaker.

"Yes and no." Josh handed her a loupe. "They're cultured diamonds."

"Fakes?"

"No, they're as real as a mined diamond. Identical tetrahedral carbon crystal structure. Same optical qualities. Just as hard and brilliant. But the raw crystals are grown in a lab instead of forming naturally underground."

Mason wasn't sure how to react. She didn't know much about diamonds except that big, flawless ones were very rare and mining them was often a shameful enterprise that would make her think twice about buying one to impress a woman. She'd never regretted the sale of most of the heirloom jewelry she should have inherited. Her father had needed the money.

She examined one of the stones under the loupe, not sure what she was looking for. "I think I see a flaw."

"Exactly," Josh said. "There a tiny inclusion in that stone, proof that it's natural, not some artificial compound engineered to look like a diamond."

"And we made these stones?"

"Yes, you could say we're diamond farmers. We send most of the rough to Mumbai to be cut, but the premium stones go to Antwerp." Josh picked up a squarish diamond and held it to the light. "That's a two carat Radiant Cut. A mined diamond like that one would normally fetch around eighteen thousand dollars. Our price is less than five thousand."

"Why would anyone want these instead of the real thing?"

"Azarias are the real thing," Josh repeated. "And even though fancy colored diamonds are popular, most women still want white. With an Azaria, they get more bling for their buck and a guilt-free diamond. It's the way of the future."

Mason replaced the gem on the binder and studied its companions. "This could be huge."

"De Beers is nervous. They've only had to fight cubic zirconias, Moissanite, and so on. No one has been able to produce cultured white diamonds in quantities that make commercial sense."

Bewildered by the whole idea that her brother had a secret business venture, let alone the process itself, Mason asked, "How do we farm them?"

"Your batshit-crazy cousin Pansy made it happen."

"We hired Pansy?"

Mason's head was spinning. What else didn't she know about her brother's dealings? After their father died, Lynden had taken over as head of the family business in the oldest son tradition followed by the Cavenders. Mason thought the responsibilities would do him good and they'd made a bargain. She would deal with cleaning up after the past and he would work on building a future. So, while he developed new business opportunities and courted a rich future-wife, she ran Laudes Absalom and handled the nightmare of reorganizing and downsizing various Cavender Corporation enterprises and assets.

She'd purposely kept her distance, trying not to tread on Lynden's toes, but she hadn't anticipated he would cut her out of the loop entirely. The decision to hire their ex-convict cousin should have been made jointly. Pansy wasn't a close relative; the Cavenders applied the term "cousin" loosely to anyone descended from Thomas Blake Cavender. Pansy had been born under a cloud, the only daughter of an illegitimate Cavender. Her mother had fallen into a deep depression after the birth and hanged herself, and the orphaned Pansy was duly cared for by relatives. Brilliantly clever, she'd ended up at MIT, where she fell in love with another science nerd who broke her heart. When he came to a sticky end in suspicious circumstances, Pansy was arrested for his murder. The state only had circumstantial evidence and had cut a deal after the family pulled some strings on her behalf. Pansy had served six years for involuntary manslaughter.

"Lynden felt sorry for her after they let her out of prison," Josh said. "She had nowhere to go, so he put her in the factory. She was sleeping out back and cleaning the place, then she got interested in the process so he let her work as a tech. We were only producing industrial-grade stones at the time. The rest is history."

"She would have had a great career if she'd stayed at MIT," Mason said.

"She's doing okay at Azaria. We made her chief developer. She likes the title."

Mason took a moment to move beyond an odd feeling of hurt that Josh knew all of this because he and Lynden worked together so closely. She wished she'd been the one to share his excitement over the new business. She also felt guilty that she hadn't made more of an effort after Pansy was released. Lynden had brought her to Laudes Absalom for a few days during the breeding season and said he was taking care of her. Mason had been so busy with the horses she had barely exchanged a word with either of them. Perhaps Lynden had intended to tell her about Azaria then.

"I'll give her a call next week," she said sadly. "We didn't get a chance to talk at the funeral service."

"She'd like that." Josh gathered up the diamonds and extracted a hefty document from the binder. "In case you're interested, she prepared this technical report."

"Science isn't my strong suit."

"Mine either. I asked her to write up something for us laymen."

"Hence the title." Mason indicated the contents page. "'Diamonds for Dummies.' Very executive-friendly."

"Pansy thinks you and I should go back to school and get a real education if we can't understand something as rudimentary as this."

"Sayeth the woman with the 170 IQ." Mason grinned as she read the summary.

According to her cousin, the technology Azaria used replicated outer space, where stars burned out and formed crystallized carbon cores like the white dwarf scientists had identified in the Centaurus constellation. By blasting carbon atoms at low pressure and very high temperatures onto a seed crystal inside a special chamber, the deposits formed a rough diamond. The process sounded so easy Mason wondered why everyone wasn't doing it.

"Is this our own patented technology?" she asked.

"We're working on it," Josh said. "There are competitors using similar methods. Chatham and Gemesis have been making colored diamonds for a few years. They're easier to grow and very profitable."

"But colorless stones make more sense for us?"

"Absolutely, if we can produce them in a viable quantity. None of our competitors has figured out how to grow large white diamonds, so we're poised to grab a significant market share."

"What's our business plan?" Mason asked.

"Basically we need a factory that will hold up to five hundred diamond-growing machines built to Pansy's specs."

Mason turned to the section where Pansy had provided details of her invention. She expected to see something NASA would be proud of, but the chambers looked remarkably simple. She examined the technical specs closely and concluded, "We can CAD her prototypes and build these ourselves."

"How? The car accessories plant is at full capacity."

"We still have the Johnstown factory."

"An abandoned shell in a podunk town."

Mason hesitated. "Not exactly."

"Are you telling me Cavender Steel isn't quite as dead as I think it is."

"Let's just say you and Lynden weren't the only ones doing your own thing." With a faint smile, Mason explained, "I had to lay off our last sixty men a year ago and there was no work for them in the town.

I couldn't give the damned factory or the plant away. The place hasn't seen maintenance in thirty years and the equipment's old-"

"And was supposedly sold for scrap." Josh tapped his fountain pen on the binder. "What's going on?"

"I let the workers use the factory and the equipment to set up their own small businesses if they wanted to. Some of the men are making steel kitchen sinks in trendy shapes. And there's a team doing patio fire pits. It's great."

"You're not charging any rent?"

Mason shrugged. "The place was only going sit there and rot."

"So, the security guard we're paying to stop vandalism is actually watching a bunch of our former employees make barbecue furniture?" Josh rolled his eyes.

The guard in question was another laid-off Cavender Steel worker. "Things are going pretty well," Mason said. "So I was thinking about partitioning the space and setting up additional small business units."

"Assuming we don't sell."

"No one wants a disused steel mill, not even the Blakes."

The Rust Belt was scarred with vast abandoned factories, the grim ciphers of a prosperous past. A few had been converted to visitor attractions but most presided like ghouls over the industrial decay around them. Mason's father hadn't allowed the Johnstown factory to fall into ruin. He'd never accepted that because China paid its workers peanuts and was willing to let its citizens live under a shroud of toxic emissions, the U.S. would never be able to compete in core industries like steel. Even to the end, he'd believed that the Cavender Corporation would survive and its steel business would somehow become relevant once more, and he had almost proved it by winning a big government contract connected with the Iraq war.

Thanks to the Blakes, the contract didn't pan out and Mason knew her father realized it had been his last chance. If he'd laid off his workforce ten years earlier and moved Cavender's entire manufacturing base to another country, the corporation would have been thriving instead of going broke. He would have been able to lower his bid and not be undercut. But Henry Cavender had been too stubborn to take advantage of the government incentives for large companies to move their jobs offshore.

Mason could understand his dilemma. For all his faults as a family man, her father had been intensely loyal to the people who worked for him. Many had parents and grandfathers who had been Cavender employees and Henry felt responsible for them. In the end, letting them down had literally killed him.

Mason shared his sense of moral obligation, and reading the business plan for Azaria made her almost light-headed with hope. The global rough diamond market was worth about twenty billion dollars and De Beers controlled seventy percent of the supply. Lately their stranglehold had loosened and they were no longer the only game in town. There was room for other players. If Azaria could guarantee supply and consistent quality, they could do exactly what Lynden had envisioned and restore the family fortunes. Mason would be able to re-employ numerous staff she'd had to let go. She was stunned at the potential of the venture. Perhaps the Cavender curse was nothing more than superstition. Her brother, it seemed, had been on the brink of proving that they could put the past behind them.

"The engagement ring market is for white, high-clarity stones." Josh continued to explain their market advantage. "The average guy is trying to put the most bling he can afford on his lady's finger. The big issue will be keeping pace with demand."

"Can we get any help from the bank?"

He shook his head. "The concept would blow their minds, and besides, in this economy, they're only interested in getting their money back. Lynden was working on a venture capital deal when...the accident happened. There's a party coming up in New York City later this month. He was going to firm things up there."

"Who's he talking to?"

"A Russian billionaire, Sergei Ivanov. A gangster trying to launder his cash."

"So, I should go to this party and see if he's serious."

Josh hesitated. "I know it's not your scene, but you're the one with the name."

"As if being a Cavender matters anymore. Times have changed."

"Don't underestimate the power of the Cavender mystique." Josh's tone was pensive. "Lynden knew how to capitalize on it."

"And you think I need to do the same." Mason groaned at the prospect. She loathed schmoozing and the thought of attending parties claw-deep in Manhattan socialites made her ill. Lynden went to all the important ones, making sure he took a prestige date, usually an insipid society girl bewitched by her own refection. But with him gone, and the need to woo a potential investor, Mason was going to be stuck with the nightmare of the charity season in New York.

"The Ivanovs seem to be shut out of certain events. That's a big disappointment to them," Josh said.

"In other words, two million bucks buys them the right invitations, and Azaria is just a bonus."

Josh smiled, confirming her worst fears. "Think you can be persuasive?"

His doubt was evident, and Mason could understand why. Normally she only went to the most significant social events every few years to quash rumors that she was either dead or locked up. The Whitney Gala next month loomed largest among the bashes she loved to avoid, but it was the ideal gathering to dangle in front of an upwardly mobile investor normally excluded from the invitation list. The Cavenders were long-term donors and automatically had a place at one of the most desirable tables. To procure an invitation for a new-money Russian and a wife who was probably a sable-draped former hooker would be a challenge, but Mason knew the promise of her own seldom-seen presence could tip the scales.

"I can make it happen," she said with a pained grimace.

"The alternative is getting in bed with De Beers." Josh sounded unenthusiastic.

"Instead of waiting for them to crush us?" Mason could see why the diamond giant would want a piece of the action if cultured diamonds were going to make serious inroads on the market.

"Diamond prices are all about supply and demand," Josh said. "The fewer high-grade stones out there, the higher the prices. De Beers controls huge stockpiles and a vast distribution machine. They could kill us in a price war."

"So what we need is a rich partner and a stockpile of our own," she said. "Not a partnership with our worst enemy." Two could play the De Beers game. If Azaria had a virtual monopoly and only released limited numbers of their cultured stones, they could keep the price up.

"Everything we produce for the next six months has already been ordered," Josh said. "We have more orders but we can't increase production without more plant."

"How much capital do we need?"

"We could swing it on two million up front. Pocket change, really."

"But we owe the bank twenty and we're not earning enough to service those loans, let alone fund Azaria."

"In a nutshell, yes." Josh hesitated. "Plus we're out another ten million for the pension fund."

Mason looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

Josh shuffled through his papers and produced a set of figures. "The numbers you've been seeing...they're bullshit."

Mason scanned the page in bewilderment. "I don't understand. "Are you telling me Lynden borrowed money from the pension fund?"

"There was no option. He thought if we could make this work you wouldn't need to know."

"You and Lynden hid this from me for the last two years?"

Josh had the grace to look ashamed. "We hid it from everyone. We've fled false returns and sent false statements to employees."

"Oh, my God. Lynden stole the money from our employees?"

"No, nothing so simple as that. We created an investment entity that allowed the fund to take a temporary shareholding in Azaria, with buyback provisions for you and Lyndon."

Mason rested her head in her hands. If Azaria failed there would be no way she could buy back that investment. "How many people are depending on us for their retirement?"

"Hundreds."

Mason wiped the perspiration from her forehead. Her damp hair clung to her hand and she realized she was shaking. "What are we going to do?"

"There's an offer on the table," Josh reminded her in a cautious tone. "We could offload the Cavender Corporation to Vienna Blake, pay the bank as much as we can, keep Azaria, and gradually buy back that shareholding."

Mason lifted her head and met his eyes. "Over my dead body. That bitch made a big mistake when she killed my brother. I want her to pay."

"I understand." Josh hesitated. "But please just think about it. We could simplify everything...get lean and mean."

"No." Mason gathered up the paperwork and the bag of diamonds.

"I know she's involved in the accident. I just need some time to prove it. Has that P.I. turned up anything useful?"

"Only what the police already told you. Vienna was out of town when it happened and there's no sign of foul play. The FAA report says engine failure."

Mason snorted in disgust. She'd read the report and it was inconclusive. Something had to have caused the loss of power. For a few minutes, in Vienna's office, she'd almost believed her protestations of innocence, but lying was in the Blake DNA. "There's nothing that family won't sink to, and with Lynden's engagement coming up there was a motive. Tell the P.I. to look harder."

Josh toyed with his pen, his face reflective. "It could be over, Mason. If you both decided to call it a day. You could take the offer and walk away, and she would be the one stuck with the mess. Think about it."

"I will, but I need you to buy me some time." Mason knew from the look Josh gave her that he thought she was only delaying the inevitable, but she had to give the investigator a chance to dig dirt. The Blakes had enemies. If she could get something on Vienna, even some dubious accounting practices that could interest the IRS, she would finally have a lever. And in the meantime she had to obtain the financing for Azaria.

"I'll send the right signals," Josh said. "She'll probably be willing to work with our timetable so long as she thinks she has us on the ropes and you're going to cave."

Smiling bitterly, Mason got to her feet. "I don't think that'll be a problem after today's showdown. She definitely thinks I'm losing it."

"You're lucky you weren't arrested," Josh said.

"Interesting, isn't it, that she didn't want the police involved? She's hiding something. That's obvious."

"I think you're reading too much into it." Josh smoothed his cuffs absently. "Vienna Blake isn't stupid. With an offer on the table, she wouldn't want you in jail, all pissed off."

Mason could see his logic, but she didn't buy it. "No, she's up to something. I can feel it. If anything happens to me, the cops won't have far to look."

Josh met her eyes. "Are you saying you're worried for your safety?"

Mason hesitated, not wanting to sound like she was afraid. "I'm on my guard."

"Chill." Josh adopted a casual, confident tone, transparently trying to reassure her. "She thinks she has this won. Why would she resort to dirty tricks now?"

Mason had asked herself the same question. "I don't know. Maybe because we've been doing this all our lives. Maybe because she needs more than a signature on the bottom line of a contract to feel like she's won."

He was unconvinced. "Have you ever thought that she might want this to be over? And maybe that's why she's made another offer...so you can both move on."

To an outsider, it probably sounded that easy, Mason thought; after all, she and Vienna were two adults. Why not just decide to call it quits? Did either of them even know why their families were still fighting-did it matter anymore? She reminded herself that she'd watched her brother draw his final breath, and but for the grace of God, she would have died with him. Part of her wished she had, but instead she'd walked away with nothing but a concussion and a few cuts and bruises.

She stifled a sob at the memory of Lynden's eyes in the seconds before they glassed over. "The Blakes have ruined us, Josh. They as good as killed my father and now my brother, too. I can't let her get away with it."

"I'm sorry," Josh murmured.

"All I have left is my honor." Mason dragged her knuckles across her eyes. "If I give in to Vienna Blake, I'll lose that, too."