Boston, Massachusetts
April 17, present day
Elizabeth Reardon Brewer sat at her new desk and spun in her chair. The excitement of a new day fizzed and popped inside her as if champagne ran through her veins. Through the window, the sun reflected off Boston Harbor in glimmering shards. She had completely redone the office from the lighting to the carpet. The scent of her father’s Montecristos was subsumed by fresh paint and the faint fragrance of gardenia from her Bvlgari perfume. She had scrubbed the stench of the Boys’ Club interior; the office was clean, angular, modern, minimalist. It said loud and clear, shipping isn’t what it once was and neither is Brewer-Reardon International.
Though fresh out of Harvard Business School, Elizabeth had gladly stepped up after her father’s second heart attack—and much less publicized mismanagement scandal. In her early thirties, she had been old for her class, not the oldest, but among them. After Harvard undergrad, she had spent the intervening years making contacts, exploring alternative avenues of revenue, and gaining experience. She had also started work on her pet project. The next phase of that project, the subject of the delightfully surprising conversation with M. Reynard the day before, was the source of her near-giddiness.
From a very early age, Elizabeth’s great-grandfather John Reardon had instilled in her a love of art. He would take her to the Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Gardner Museum, The Institute of Contemporary Art. They would travel to New York to visit The Met, The Guggenheim, and MOMA. Elizabeth’s favorite, however, was the time they spent in John and Bridget Reardon’s private gallery in their sprawling Brookline mansion. Each time before they entered the hidden room, John Reardon would squat down to eye level and meet Elizabeth’s gaze. Remember, Elizabeth, this place is our secret. You and I and Nana Bridget are the only ones who can know. Not even your mam and da. Elizabeth would nod enthusiastically and step into John Reardon’s magical secret gallery.
To this day, Elizabeth didn’t know if John’s art collection was more beautiful and prized than any other, but it certainly felt that way to a young girl. Furthermore, as she grew up and went on school field trips and studied art on her own, she began to suspect the provenance of some, if not all, of the art in that secret room; that only made Elizabeth love it more. So while Elizabeth was learning about manufacturing bottlenecks and supply-side economics, she was reestablishing her family’s underworld connections and envisioning her own secret gallery. She knew exactly the pieces that would fill it, but not yet. First things first.
She needed to take charge at Brewer-Reardon and right the ship. Her brother Edwin Howard Brewer V, “Pen” in tribute to his suffix, certainly couldn’t manage the task. Like everything else about him, his name was a source of tremendous pride and privilege that derived from no effort or accomplishment on his part. He was beautiful and dumb. It seemed the siblings had reversed roles. Pen would marry well and look stunning at charity events and society galas while Elizabeth would run the company.
She was not a great beauty, and she was reminded of that fact nearly every day by her mother, Imogen Reardon Brewer. Usually with a backhanded compliment: Bitsy, what you lack in looks, you more than make up for in brains. Bitsy, you look lovely. You really make the most of what you’ve been given. Her mother didn’t seem to realize that she and her father were the ones who had given these looks to her. She had her father’s weak chin, her mother’s aquiline nose, and her paternal grandmother’s beady, dark eyes. Her looks had spawned her boarding school nickname, a name which had caused her unfathomable anguish: Crow. She’d endured it though, killed the parts inside of her that ached and wept. In college, she shed both “Bitsy” and “Crow” and became simply Elizabeth. She had grown her lustrous black hair out from the practical bob, and it had done wonders. She still looked like a bird, but at least now it was a raven.
Her first order of business was to clean house. She fired anyone in upper management she suspected would undermine her efforts. She had been made to feel inadequate by blue-blooded men her whole life, and it was time for a little payback. She fired men who had gotten their jobs in strategic moves or bartered deals or personal favors—men with given names like “Granger” and “Henderson” and surnames from the passenger manifest of the Mayflower. She promoted people who were forward-thinking and results-oriented. She chose employees with the same qualities she looked for in her lovers: young, ambitious, and malleable.
With her team in place and her personal trainer warming her bed, she was almost ready to begin overhauling the company. Restoring it to the indomitable force it had been when her great grandfather, John Reardon, had started Reardon Import and Export in 1942. The country was at war back then. John Reardon was lucky in that his greed happened to align with the good guys. That was not always the case. The man wasn’t loyal to red, white, and blue; he was loyal to green. He supplied US troops, shipping everything from medical supplies to tanks. Then, for nearly three decades, he shipped anything that needed to be transported without care or conscience. His upbringing in the Irish mob had taught him a thing or two, but for the most part, he kept his own hands clean.
From John, the company had been passed down to his son Eoghan Reardon, Elizabeth’s grandfather, and from Eoghan to his daughter Imogen’s husband, Win Brewer. Elizabeth’s father, Edwin “Win” Howard Brewer, IV was a golf course CEO of the worst sort. He took over the company twelve years ago after serving as President since his marriage to Eoghan Reardon’s only child, Imogen. He changed the name under the guise of merging his family’s own flailing Brewer Manufacturing with Reardon Import and Export. As far as Elizabeth could tell, that was the extent of his accomplishments. He bled the company dry, allowing his board-member buddies to pad expense accounts, and even, she realized as she’d examined the books, embezzle. When she brought the evidence of gross mismanagement to her grandfather, Eoghan, he arranged for the “retirement” of Win Brewer without incident. Elizabeth was next in line, and she intended to tap into her Irish mob DNA to restore Brewer Reardon to its former glory. By any means necessary.
Elizabeth spun away from her glass desk to look out over Boston Harbor. In a way, she was grateful for her sycophant, patrician father. The reason her Irish ancestors had fought so hard was that they saw what was possible. Elizabeth saw what was possible, what her father had squandered, and she meant to rebuild it. She welcomed the challenge. On the legitimate side, she was plugged into a gold mine. The one thing the biggest companies in the world all had in common: the need for shipping. The other side of the business, the darker side, was just gravy.
Things were clipping along nicely, allowing her to focus her efforts on her other project. Lucrative, yes, but not in any real way. She was quite simply going to restore her birthright.
The early morning call from Monsieur Reynard informing her that the package had been delayed did not trouble her. Elizabeth rightly assumed that Reynard had taken his sobriquet from the crafty fox of lore, and, over the years, he had lived up to it. She would let him handle whatever problem had cropped up with his mysterious delivery. For now.