Ruthless

Extremely wealthy Wall Street businessman Horace Woodruff Vendig - Woody to his college friends - is hosting a lavish by invitation only soiree at one of his mansions to make the official announcement of him donating said mansion to charity promoting and in the name of world peace. His extreme wealth belies his less than humble beginnings and the troubled family life of his childhood. The soiree attendees that know him well, which include friends and friends-turned-enemies and/or adversaries, know inherently that the donation is not for the philanthropy as it appears on the surface, but for some financial gain whatever that may be. The invitation to those former friends is in part to maintain an appearance of being a person of upright moral character and in part in the old adage of holding one's enemies close to one's chest. The person who he has known the longest in the room is engineer Vic Lambdin, a friend from childhood and former business partner. As each of those friends turned enemies are introduced, Horace's life story is told in flashback. Horace, Vic and Martha Burnside, the latter two who led comfortable lives unlike Horace, were inseparable as children. Out of circumstance, the Burnsides took Horace in for the latter third of his young life despite his own parents still being alive. As they grew into adults, Vic and Martha were seen as being a couple, albeit unofficially, while Martha ended up choosing Horace, who in turn had fallen in love with her. As Horace was provided with one opportunity after another by those that could ,in his sincerity and affability, he began his climb to the top, each rung of the ladder achieved by increasingly cutthroat measures, by stepping on those that helped him, leaving them behind. Those people include his romantic interests, Martha not immune, by choosing women that could help him in achieving that wealth. This evening is only complicated by Vic bringing his current girlfriend, Mallory Flagg, who Horace had never met but who he cannot help but notice an uncanny resemblance to Martha, arguably the only woman he truly loved, that is until now.