Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge Read Free Page A

had suffered a fatal stroke.
    Soon Lucky and Lennie were together, where they belonged.
    Olympia left behind a daughter from a previous marriage, Brigette, now nineteen and one of the richest girls in the world. Lennie was very fond of her although he didn’t get to see her as often as he would like.
    “I want you to meet Lucky when she’s here,” he said to Jennifer. “You’ll like her, she’ll like you. It’s a done deal.”
    “She won’t be interested in meeting me ,” Jennifer said modestly. “She runs a studio, Lennie. I’m just a second assistant.”
    “Lucky doesn’t care. She likes people for who they are, not what they do.”
    “If you say so.”
    “And hey,” he said, boosting her confidence, “there’s nothing wrong with being a second assistant—you’re working your way up. One day you’ll be directing. Is that the plan?”
    Jennifer nodded. “I’ve arranged for a car to meet your wife at Poretta Airport tomorrow,” she said, all business.
    “I’ll be in it,” Lennie said.
    “You might be shooting.”
    “Have them shoot around me.”
    “You’re in every shot.”
    “Fake it.”
    “I never fake it.”
    Yes. Lucky would definitely like this one.

2
    ALEX WOODS HAD A SMILE LIKE A CROCODILE— wide, captivating, and ultimately deadly. His smile held him in good stead with the movie executives he was forced to deal with on a daily basis. It caught them off guard, unbalancing the delicate power structure between writer/producer/director and studio honcho who could usually make or break any filmmaker—however famous and talented. Alex was a powerful presence, capable of making a lot of people nervous.
    Alex Woods and his lethal smile had written, directed, and produced six big-budget major movies over a ten-year period. Six controversial, sex and violence—drenched masterpieces. Alex called them masterpieces, not everyone agreed—although each of his movies had been nominated for an Academy Award and had never won once. It pissed him off. Alex liked recognition—a lousy nomination didn’t do it for him. He wanted the fucking gold statue on his Richard Meier-designed beach house mantelpiece so he could fucking shove it up everyone’s ass—metaphorically speaking, of course.
    Alex was not married—even though he was forty-seven years old, tall, and good-looking in a darklydangerous way, with compelling eyes, heavy eyebrows, and a strong jawline. No woman had ever managed to nail him. He didn’t go for American women, he preferred his female companions to be Asian and petite, so that when he made love to them he felt like the big, conquering hero.
    The truth was that Alex had a submerged fear of women whom he might in any way consider his equal. This fear originated from his mother, Dominique, a fierce Frenchwoman who’d dispatched his father—Gordon Woods, a moderately successful film actor who’d specialized in playing best-friend roles—to an early grave when Alex was only eleven years old. They’d said it was a heart attack, but Alex knew—because he’d been a silent witness to many of their violent fights—that she’d tongue-lashed his poor father to death. His mother was a vicious, calculating woman who’d driven her husband to find solace in a bottle of booze whenever he could. Death was his cunning escape.
    Shortly after his father’s funeral, Madame Woods had sent her only child off to a strict military academy. “You’re stupid—exactly like your father,” she’d said, her tone allowing no argument. “Maybe it’ll make you smart.”
    The military academy had been a living nightmare. He’d hated every minute of the rigid discipline and unfair rules. It didn’t matter, because whenever he’d complained to Dominique about the beatings and solitary confinements, she’d told him to stop whining and be a man. He’d been forced to stay there for five years, spending vacation time with his grandparents in Pacific Palisades while his mother dated a variety of