Brilliant Read Online Free PDF

well-heeled potential clients. I mean, if Mr. Radcliffe thought Owen’s accessories were flashy, I truly cannot even begin to imagine what he would have thought if he’d gotten a look at Tina.
    And she adored Owen. She climbed all over him like a monkey, like a little girl on a favorite uncle, like a woman-child on a sugar daddy, which was fine in private, but she pawed him no matter who was watching. And Owen couldn’t or wouldn’t stop her. It was pretty amazing. She called him Daddy.
    I was astounded by the parade of famous models and movie stars who called him, or whom he called, constantly, and with whom he had quick flings. By quick, I mean like between courses at lunch. Whatever it was he did to them, they liked it. They kept coming back for more. He was some sort of human animal sex magnet.
    He counted on me to keep these ladies straight with his schedule, and then right out of the blue, he’d instruct me to break off an affair.
    “Forgive me for being impertinent,” I said to him one time, “but I don’t think you can exactly call this an ‘affair.’ ”
    “Excuse me?”
    “These are not affairs, or even liaisons. I think an affair connotes a relationship where the two parties have met more than three times.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I just don’t think you should call these little get-togethers ‘affairs.’ I’d call them ‘proceedings.’ Or ‘incidents.’ That would be more appropriate.”
    He studied me like I was an idiot. I didn’t care. He needed to know these things. “Very well,” he finally said. “Would you be so kind as to break off the ‘proceeding’ with Letitia.”
    “Of course, sir. Consider it done.”
    Then I would call the girl with a last-minute cancellation and a heartfelt apology, which would be immediately followed with the delivery of a gift from one of Brace International’s manufacturers of luxury goods—a pashmina cashmere shawl from the Cesarina Mittando fashion house, or a crocodile handbag from Percoco Leather, or sometimes a combination of the two. It was the least I could do. I only sent liquor from Lividia Spirits, Nottingham Whiskey, or Père Patrice Champagne to business associates. No former girlfriend had received a car from the Panther Automobile Company, or a yacht from Geo Shipbuilding.
    In spite of my disdain, I felt myself being seduced by Owen’s charm, or charmed by his seductions, I’m not sure which, but I was being pulled inexorably onto his team. I found myself wanting him to succeed because I truly enjoyed fielding calls from the world’s richest people and most powerful leaders—heads of state, companies, and banks, who sometimes sought, sometimes offered, advice or money. Some of them were beginning to learn my name.
    At the bottom of all this, though, was the money. I was transfixed by the money. Not only by how Owen was pouring it into Ballantine & Company, buying top experts by raiding other houses and offering exorbitant salaries, freshening up certain aspects of our fusty image, and restoring and renovating our three-hundred-year-old building, which still had hundred-year-old plumbing and wiring; but also by how he juggled the finances among all his companies, constantly shifting funds among them to maintain solvency. Every single one of them—clothing, luggage, wine and spirits, cars and yachts—was in a Code Blue financial situation. They were the highest-end, highest-quality goods available, but unfortunately, the size of their institutional marketing budgets generally equaled the size of their sales. It was a textbook, business school example of how paying to keep up an image can be a self-canceling exercise to the bottom line.
    The interest and principal payment demands from the banks were courteous but constant, demands Owen met by playing a high-stakes shell game that hinged on his ability to demonstrate to his stockholders and bankers a strong balance sheet of the parent corporation, Brace International. Fortunately the