"Okay, what do you want me to do?"

"For the time being, ask for a postponement of any ruling."

"And then what?"

In answer, Matt picked up the phone and called Vanderwild. "What's Bancroft selling for?" he asked Peter, and when the other man answered, he said, "Start buying it. Use the same technique we used when we decided to acquire Haskell. Keep it quiet." He hung up and looked at Tom. "I want you to check out every member on Bancroft's board of directors. One of them may be for sale. Find out who he is and what his price is."

Not once in the years they'd been together, in the corporate battles they'd fought and won, had Matt ever resorted to anything as indefensible as bribery. "Matt, you're talking about plain bribery—"

"I'm talking about beating Bancroft at his own game. He's using influence to buy votes on the zoning commission. Well use money to buy votes on his board. The only difference between what he's doing and what I'm doing is the medium of exchange. When I'm through with that vindictive old bastard, he'll be taking his orders from me in his own boardroom!"

"All right," Tom said after a hesitant pause. "But this will have to be handled very discreetly."

"There's more," Matt instructed, walking into the conference room that adjoined his office. He pressed a button on the wall and the mirrored panel that concealed the bar slid silently away. Matt jerked a bottle of scotch out of the cabinet, poured some into a glass, and took a long swallow. "I want to know everything there is to know about Bancroft's operation. Work with Vanderwild on it. In two days I want to know everything about their finances, their executives. Most of all, I want to know exactly where they're the most vulnerable."

"I gather you intend to take them over."

Matt tossed down another long swallow of his drink. "I'll decide that later. What I want right now is enough stock to control them."

"What about Southville? We've got a fortune invested in that land."

A mirthless smile twisted Matt's lips. "I phoned Pearson and Levinson from the car," he said, referring to the Chicago law firm he kept on retainer, "and told them what I want to do. We'll get our rezoning and we'll also make a handsome profit from Bancroft's."

"How?"

"There's the little matter of that Houston property they want so badly."

"And?"

"And we now own it."

Anderson nodded, took two steps toward the door, stopped, and turned back. Hesitantly, he said, "Since I'm going to be in the front lines alongside you in this battle with Bancroft, I'd like to at least know how it got started in the first place."

Had any of his other executives asked that question, Matt would have verbally flayed him. Trust was a luxury that men in Matt's financial stratum couldn't afford. He had learned, as others who'd made it to the top had also learned, that it was risky, even dangerous to confide too much to anyone. More often than not, they used the information to garner favors elsewhere; sometimes they used it simply to prove they were truly a confidant of a famous and successful man. Of all the people he knew, there were only four whom Matt trusted implicitly: his father, his sister, Tom Anderson, and Joe O'Hara. Tom had been with him since the old days, when he was getting by on daring and guts, building an empire on a foundation of audacity and hunches—and very little real capital. He trusted Anderson and O'Hara because they'd proven their loyalty. And, to a certain extent, he trusted them because, like him, they didn't come from privileged backgrounds and fancy prep schools. "Ten years ago," Matt replied after a reluctant pause, "I did something Bancroft didn't like."

"Jesus, it must have been pretty damned bad for him to keep up a vendetta all this time. What did you do?"

"I dared to reach above myself and to intrude on his own elite little world."

"How?"

Matt took another swallow of his drink to wash away the bitterness of the words, the memory. "I married his daughter."

"You married his— Meredith Bancroft? That daughter?"

"The very same," Matt averred grimly.

When Anderson gaped at him in stunned silence, Matt added, "There's something else you might as well know. She told me today that the divorce she thought she got eleven years ago wasn't legal. The lawyer was a fraud who never filed the petition with the court. I told Levinson to check that out, but I have a hunch it's the truth."

After another moment of stunned silence, Anderson's agile mind began to function. "And now she wants a fortune as a settlement, right?"

"She wants a divorce," Matt corrected, "and she and her father would like to ruin me, but beyond that, she claims she doesn't want anything."

Tom reacted with angry loyalty and a bitter, sarcastic laugh. "When we're through with them, they're going to wish to God they hadn't started this war," he promised, heading for the door.

When he was gone, Matt walked over to the windows and stood looking out on a day as bleak and dreary as his soul. Anderson was probably right about the outcome of all this, but Matt's sense of triumph was already dissolving. He felt... empty. As he stared out at the rain, Meredith's parting words revolved around and around in his mind: You're not fit to touch Parker's shoes! He's ten times the man you are! Underneath that tailor-made suit you're wearing, you're still nothing but a dirty steelwork-er, from a dirty little town, with a dirty, drunken father!

He tried to blot those two sentences out of his mind, but they stayed, taunting him with his own stupidity, forcibly reminding him again of what a fool he was where she was concerned. For years after he thought they were divorced, he had not been able to drive her completely out of his heart. He had worked himself half to death to build an empire, driven by some stupid, half-formed plan to come back someday and impress Meredith with all he'd achieved and become.

His mouth twisted with bitter self-mockery. Today he'd had his chance to impress her: He was a financial success; the suit he was wearing cost more than the truck he had owned when they met; he'd taken her to a beautiful, expensive restaurant in a chauffeur-driven limousine—and after all that, he was still "nothing but a dirty steelworker" to her. Normally, he was proud of his origins, but Meredith's words had made him feel like some slimy monster dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant swamp, a monster who'd exchanged his scales for skin.

It was nearly seven p.m. when he finally left the building. Joe opened the door of the car, and Matt slid inside. He was inordinately tired, and he leaned his aching neck against the back of the seat, trying to ignore the faint scent of Meredith's soft perfume that lingered in the car. His thoughts drifted to their lunch, and he thought of the way she had smiled into his eyes while she talked to him about the store. With typical Bancroft arrogance she had smiled at him and asked him for a favor—a quiet, friendly divorce—at the same time she was publicly humiliating him and privately collaborating with her father to ruin him. Matt was perfectly willing to let her have her divorce, but not quite yet.