Chapter 13
Art Tremblay was having a hell of a night.
It began at home while he was getting ready and his mother told him she had agreed to a settlement in the divorce.
The divorce, a long, contentious battle between Art’s parents that had gone on for nearly a decade, had Art splitting time between mansions in Bethesda and Potomac. More importantly, it prevented the family business from bringing on anyone else as a full partner.
Now that Art’s mom had agreed to a buyout, her share of the business would be held in trust for the children. Upon his eighteenth birthday, which was only a week away, Art would inherit a one quarter share of Tremblay Property Management LLC.
That share was worth four billion dollars.
Yes sir, four billion. B-b-b-billion, the youngest billionaire in the world. And that wasn’t all that was going Art’s way this night. Shortly before the dancing started, Kim approached Art with a “special assignment.” She could have chosen anyone in the ballroom to do it, but she chose him.
This new girl needs to be snuffed out tonight, Kim had said. You and Rosalyn are going to work together. On the last dance before intermission, you will be Nicky’s partner. As you come around the far side of the ballroom, Rosalyn will step into the aisle with a glass of wine in her hand. You are going to push Nicky into Rosalyn. Make it look like she tripped. Rosalyn will make sure the wine spills all over Nicky’s dress. Wait until the music is almost done before you act. The immortals come out after intermission. We want to give Nicky as little time as possible to clean up before they arrive.
It was a bold, frightening idea, pushing the new girl right into a wine spill, but Art was ready. What good were all those hours in the gym if he wasn’t? This was it. This was the moment when fortunes were made.
This was his own Bullhead Creek.
Bullhead Creek was a small village in the Adirondacks where, in 1935, a stroke of luck and a bold decision forever changed the fate of the entire Tremblay family. Art’s grandfather, Reginald Tremblay, was hunting deer in the forests on the northern edge of town. He’d been tracking a buck all day when he heard a moaning sound off to the east. Expecting to find a fox or other small prey caught in someone’s trap (and planning to steal whatever he found – the Depression hadn’t been kind to the Tremblay family), Reginald abandoned the buck he was tracking and followed the moaning sound.
He was half-way down the mountain when he realized the sound wasn’t coming from anyone’s trap, but instead from inside a rickety waterwheel shack on the far side of the river. Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Reginald crossed the river and pushed open the back door of the shack.
What he found inside was a little girl, no more than five, with bright orange hair, tied to a support beam. A dirty rag was stuffed in her mouth. Her forehead was covered in blood. It took Reginald a long time to untie all the knots that attached the girl to the beam, and before he was finished, the door swung open again, and a man stepped inside. He was naked, save a thick layer of mud that covered his entire body, almost like he had gone out into the forest and rolled in the muck.
The man, who, according to the way the story was told in the Tremblay family, “had a look of plumb crazy in his eyes,” turned to run. Reginald shot him in the back, and then again in the head after the man fell to his knees. Then Reginald took the girl to his truck, drove her down the mountain, and went to the police.
The girl was a young Renata Sullivan, daughter of one of the wealthiest families in New York, gone missing the night before from the Mohawk Summer Camp twelve miles down the river. Thirteen years later, Renata became the first girl from Thorndike Academy to get a visit in the night from Sergio Alonzo. Becoming an immortal member of the Samarin Clan, Renata was instantly made into a millionaire many times over, and one of the first things she did with her money was find Reginald Tremblay and set him up for life.
“When I look at Reginald, I see safety,” Renata said in a newspaper interview many years later. “I see the man who killed the bad guy and made everything right. I don’t just want to reward Reginald, I want to keep him close so I can always feel safe.”
Renata invited Reginald and his young family to move to the suburbs outside DC and oversee the security detail on the mansion she was having built. It was Reginald’s job to do background checks on every contractor who had access to the blueprints, every plumber, mason, and electrician who stepped into the home, every artist and craftsman who made the gorgeous house come together. When the mansion was finished, Reginald’s approved list of contractors became the full time staff of Tremblay Property Management (TPM), and he became the go-to guy not just for Renata, but for all the immortals living in and around Washington. Fabulous mansions like Renata’s required upkeep, maintenance, and security, some of which could be provided by the slaves, but some of which had to be outsourced. As devoted as the slaves were to their masters, their young, brainwashed minds weren’t capable of high level problem solving. Slaves were good for making dinner, keeping house, and tending to the landscape. Anything beyond that required someone with at least a modicum of free thought. Someone who could be trusted near the million-dollar paintings, the ancient relics, the centuries of secrets that might be hidden in an immortal’s mansion. Over time, TPM developed a background check that was more rigorous than those given by the military or the CIA. TPM contractors were expected to submit to regular “debriefings” in which an immortal would interrogate them to ensure all was on the up and up. TPM headquarters in Washington became an impenetrable fortress.
When Art’s dad took over the business in the late sixties, it was a multi-million dollar enterprise. Art’s father expanded the business even further, turning it into a full-service contracting firm that did anything and everything the immortals wanted. From private security to financial matters to accounting to home maintenance and upkeep – TPM’s trusted staff provided it all and was handsomely rewarded for the effort. By the time Art was born, the Tremblays were one of the wealthiest and most respected families in all of Washington.
And while Art now stood to inherit a good chunk of the wealth thanks to his parents’ divorce settlement, the respect still eluded him. The respect stopped with Art’s father and brother, who hoarded it all, leaving none for Art. It didn’t help that Art was a shrimp, and the first Tremblay in memory who wasn’t a natural outdoorsman. Art’s father made no attempts to hide his disappointment in his youngest son. Art got used to being bullied, not only by his classmates, but by his father. He internalized his father’s commands to “toughen up,” and “quit being such a girl.” No longer invited on the family hunting and fishing trips, Art took to the gym, where he thrust his anger into every bench press, and imagined his father’s face on the punching bag. The gym never made him any taller, or any tougher really, but by his senior year, it had made him buff.
Buff enough that Kim knew he was up to the task. Having pushed his way past Marshall Beaumont (and oh, wasn’t it nice to body check that asshole), Art now stood before Nicky Bloom, ready to be her dance partner.
He bowed, they greeted one another, their hands joined, and they were off. Their dance was Chopin’s Waltz in C-Sharp Minor. A few bars in, Art caught sight of Rosalyn, making her way into position, a goblet of wine in her hand.
Yes, indeed, things were looking up for Art Tremblay. It was a hell of a night.