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CHAPTER 4
    I rene Morhardt’s priorities were simple. She lived in a decent house in Forest Hills, had a few close girlfriends and two teenage children. She intended to protect these priorities from the preening, self-entitled coward she had married.
    â€œShut up!” she shouted at Samantha and Timothy in the back seat as they crossed the bridge from the city, heading home after Felicia’s party. Her shrill tone worked and it had an added benefit: Patrick winced as it cut through his skull.
    â€œIs that necessary?” His knuckles went white where his hands gripped the steering wheel.
    Irene ignored the question. “She’s gong to bury you this time, you know.”
    Patrick released his death grip and slammed his palm against the dash. “What the hell would you have me do? Mom wants this doll.
She’s
the driving force behind it.”
    â€œOh, for Christ’s sake, Patrick, give it up with a little dignity, would you? Ann’s been playing your mother like a fiddle. Stop whining about it and
do
something! Because I’m here to tell you, if Ann does pull this off, you’re done. You’ll be just one more pencil-pushing rat in her maze.”
    â€œI can’t take over the project,” he said. “Ann’s got it under lock-and-key.”
    â€œThen
stop
the project!”
    Patrick pulled into his driveway with a sigh of relief that he had made it without being stopped. He should have eaten something at the party.
    He turned the key in the car’s ignition and sat as Irene and the kids poured out of the Volvo wagon. When the doors cracked shut, he winced. Then Irene was rapping her knuckles on his window. Patrick turned the key in the ignition again to lower it.
    â€œWhat?”
    She bent to look in at him, her long auburn hair tumbling forward. He’d loved her hair once.
    â€œIf you let Ann do this, Patrick, I swear I’ll leave you without a dime to your name. I’ve had enough of watching you wag your tail every time your mother looks your way. The old bitch isn’t going to
give
you anything, don’t you get that yet? You don’t have a birthright where she’s concerned. She thinks you’re a fuck-up.” She straightened. “And she’s right.”
    Irene stepped back from the window and stalked toward the house. She was a maestro with orders, he thought, laying them down with an aggrandized flick of her wrist, with no idea of the clever effort they required. She was relentless.
    Stop the doll? Not likely.
    But he had two very good reasons to do so, Patrick thought—although Irene had only mentioned one of them. His mother would rhapsodize the ground Ann walked on if she succeeded with this. And if Ann fell on her face, what good would Felicia’s disapproval do him if the company came down in the process?
    He felt trapped, caught between a rock and a hard place. The old him would have known what to do. Too many competitors crashed and burned over one promotional item. Thoughts of Hart Toy doing the same crowded his brain, now swelling painfully into a throbbing headache. He wished he had the ability to stay off the booze. He didn’t graduate magna cum laude from McGillUniversity because of his good looks. Sobering up would give him the opportunity to prove his true value to the company.
    He could make president if Ann failed with this. But he would be president of … nothing. Hart Toy would be borrowing heavily just to lift the damned doll off the ground. And then, with the vagaries of the industry, of the buyers and the merchandise managers and—God forbid—the whims of the purchasing public, anything could happen. They could be washed up in the space of a year.
    Patrick watched the lights in the lower level of his home flick off. A moment later, a golden glow appeared in his own bedroom window. Irene was finally upstairs. He turned the car off for a second time and went inside.
    In the den,