CHAPTER 44
Aaron
I woke up to the sound of a ringing phone.
It took a moment for me to come to my senses—as soon as I did, I reached for my cell, knowing what the call had to be about.
“Turn on the news.” It was all Patrick said.
I leaped out of bed, nearly running to the living room to do just that. The story was everywhere. Reed Kingsley led out of Madison Media Group headquarters with his wrists cuffed behind his back. Poor baby. He looked like he didn’t know what hit him.
“How’s it feel, fucker?” I asked, watching him with glee in my heart. “How’s it feel when somebody pulls the rug out from under you?” I couldn’t get enough of the story. Good thing it was on every single news channel on repeat.
My scandal was a thing of the past. What a relief.
I sat on the sofa, my feet up on the coffee table, basking in the glow of victory. It was nice. Very nice. Years of hating a person had finally culminated in his destruction. Just for what he’d done to me in the last week alone, he deserved what he got.
I noticed nobody made mention of the sexual harassment charges. I would have to ask Patrick about that. Were we keeping it in our back pocket as a trump card? Or had Patrick decided it was best to let it drop? I was looking forward to that most of all, I realized. Watching his character taking a nosedive in the public eye.
So the world knew he had lied about me. That was what they arrested him for. It didn’t take much for people to put two and two together, it seemed. The very day my chargers were dropped, Reed’s were filed. It wasn’t calculus. Just simple math.
And it was all the media needed. They had a field day. My phone started ringing and didn’t stop for a full two hours.
There were only a handful of people I would answer for.
“Oh, my goodness, Aaron! I can’t believe the way this has all turned out!” Jeanine sounded like she might be weeping.
“Are you all right?” I asked, laughing a little at her intensity.
“Am I all right? I should be the one asking you that question!”
“Me? I’m fine. Better than fine. It’s pretty sweet, seeing the tables turned like this.”
“I feel the same way,” she confided. “I’m just so glad your name is clear, now. I knew you were in the right.”
“And you stood by me. I won’t forget that,” I promised. “You deserve a reward.”
“Why, because I didn’t run off? That’s not the sort of thing to be rewarded. That’s just being a decent person.” I wondered why I hadn’t realized what a special person Jeanine was long before now.
“Have you heard from anyone in particular? Anyone I should know about?”
She waited a beat before answering. “You mean, have I heard from Kenzie?”
I sighed “Yes. Have you?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m sure that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care.”
“I know. It’s all right. I was just wondering if she had reached out to you.”
“Didn’t I hear that Reed named her second-in-command over there? Wouldn’t that make her the acting CEO?”
It never occurred to me. I was so dead focused on taking Reed down, I didn’t think about what it would mean for Kenzie. I laughed out loud at first, then went silent as I understood what a stressful time it would be for her.
“She doesn’t have the first idea how to handle something like this,” I mused.
“She’s stronger than you give her credit for,” Jeanine said. “And it’s not as though she wouldn’t have advisors around her. From what I know of Reed Kingsley, he needed an advisor to help him tie his shoes.”
I chuckled. “You’re probably right. It’s hilarious, isn’t it? He didn’t want to give her the credit she deserved, and now she’s sitting in his position. Life is funny sometimes.”
“Extremely,” Jeanine agreed, her tone dry.
“I’ll be in the office tomorrow. I have a few things I need to take care of today.”
“Take all the time you need,” she advised. “I think there are more than a few of your employees who need to think twice about the decisions they made while you were gone.”
I chuckled again. “You mean they’re going to come crawling back on their hands and knees?”
“Right.”
I imagined it. Sure they would, and they should. I was the best boss imaginable—that was what they all told me, at least. They could have given me the benefit of a little warning before they walked out. But no. They’d made their beds.
“Why wouldn’t I want to be there for that?” I hung up with Jeanine’s laughter still ringing in my ears.
It felt good to laugh again. When was the last time I felt truly open and able to feel things like that?
Oh, right. When I was with Kenzie.
I imagined her sitting at her desk, overwhelmed by work. People had to be losing their minds over there. Phone calls, requests from the media, panicked employees. I knew how that felt, only I was a little better prepared for it than she was.
Patrick called—another person I wanted to speak with.
I heard nothing but joy in his voice. “So? Everything you dreamed it would be?” I heard what sounded like celebration coming from the background, and I smiled to myself. Good for them. They deserved it, after the work they’d put in.
“More,” I said, laughing. “Although I didn’t see anything about the sexual harassment side. What happened there? Are we saving it for later?” I imagined holding it back, waiting until the reports died down a little, then releasing another bombshell to get the whole circus up and running at full tilt again.
“No, we’re not saving it. We had to drop it. That was part of the deal,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to let go of that, but it was part of his lawyers’ demands.”
“How so?”
“They said they would work with the press to get your name cleared, as long as we kept the harassment out of the media on our end.”
I felt like a deflated balloon, though I knew I had no reason to. I had still won. “Oh, I see.”
“I thought you would want it that way,” Patrick said. “I mean, you’re free and clear, now. You can get the company back on track. It shouldn’t take too long.”
“No, I agree. You don’t have to explain your motives to me. Thanks for working so hard on this, Patrick. You did me a solid.”
“Hey, you brought me to the Azores with you. That alone was worth the work.”
I chuckled. “Then I guess I should tear up your bill when it comes my way?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Live it up,” I advised, “because when tomorrow comes, I’ll have even more work for you.”
“Oh, not even a little time to rest and reflect?” Patrick quipped. I knew him better than to believe he would ever rest on his laurels. The man lived for work. Something we had in common.
“No time at all. There’s a matter I need your help on, and it might be a little delicate. It will be an ongoing project, let’s say.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow,” I promised. “I still have to make sense of what I want in my head. It’s all happening at the same time.”
“Understood. You relax, too. You’ve earned it, after all this shit.” His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “What about her?”
I rolled my eyes, sighing. “What about who?”
“You know who. Are you going to reach out to her, now that it’s all over?”
“How do you know she didn’t fall at my feet this morning, begging my forgiveness?”
“Kid, there are a lot of things I know about women. One of them is that they won’t fall at the feet of a man who’s just come out of jail in the same suit he was wearing when he went in.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Fair enough. And some of what I need you to do involves her, now that you mention it.”
“Oh, well, now I’m intrigued.”
“Tomorrow.” I hung up, feeling recharged, refreshed and ready for battle.
Life wasn’t anything without a battle, I decided. I needed something to fight for, something to win. Why bother, otherwise?
I made a phone call after that. I had to know what things were like at Madison, but it wasn’t like I could call Kenzie.
“What the hell did you do?” She didn’t bother to hide in an empty conference room or bathroom anymore, I noticed. I could hear people talking behind her, phones ringing.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “He was the one who leveled false charges against me. In defending myself, his crimes came to light. Now he’s the SEC’s problem.”
“Well, it’s everybody’s problem,” Stephanie complained. “We’re going nuts over here. People are crying, people are quitting. It’s a nightmare.”
How did she think things went when Reed had me charged? I wondered if she even listened to herself when she spoke.
“So I take it Kenzie’s not standing up to the challenge,” I said. I hated hearing it, hated saying it even more.
“Oh, no. Just the opposite. The girl’s got balls of steel. Everybody thinks so.”
“Really?” I grinned. “What did she do?”
“She already has the lawyers drafting a press release. She sent out a company-wide memo stating that none of us are to talk to the press under any circumstances and that we shouldn’t talk about our jobs even on social media. Absolutely nothing. If stockholders call, we’re to direct the calls directly to her office, and she’ll take care of it. The photographers and reporters have flooded the building all day, but she’s cool as anything.”
That’s my girl. She could do it. I knew she had it in her. She might not have known it, but it sometimes took a drastic situation to prove to us what we were truly capable of.
“People are still quitting, even though she’s putting up such a brave front?”
“Let’s face it. A lot of the guys Reed hired to work in upper management were buddies of his. They had a job in name only, otherwise they occupied office space barely enough to keep the wheels on their chairs from rusting up and falling off. That was pretty much it. When Kenzie made it clear, via email of course, that she wouldn’t take any of that and would review performance reports starting tomorrow, they started dropping out left and right.”
I threw my head back, laughing heartily. “I can just imagine how pissed off they were,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes.
“You don’t even know the half of it. If I never hear the word ‘cunt’ again, it’ll be too soon.”
“That, I don’t like,” I snarled. It was typical of the sort of man who would be friends with Reed, though. They were all the same—men without a hint of class.
“They’re gone, so they’re nothing to worry about. I think she really enjoys this, you know? I made it a point to walk past her office once or twice, and she sounds like she’s in it to win it.”
“She’ll win it,” I predicted. I was surer than ever of what I wanted to do. “Hey, thanks for everything you did,” I said. “Really. I don’t think you would be in any danger of losing your job now, since you have a new boss.”
“Good thing, too. No way I could keep looking into records without somebody finding out.”
“Hey, you went above and beyond. I’ll make sure to take care of you somehow.” I felt like I owed her something for the extra risks she took. For some reason, I was more committed than ever to making sure the scales of justice balanced out.
After I got off the phone, I checked the stocks for Madison. Just as a five-year-old could have predicted, the prices had plummeted throughout the day after the story broke. A shame they couldn’t have waited until after the trading day finished to take him in. I wondered how low it would go before the closing bell rang.
It was all working out just the way I wanted it to. Once the price of the stock dipped low enough, the company would be in dire straits. Panic would spread. Stockholders, those who were left, would be desperate for leadership.
While Kenzie might have been a perfectly effective leader, they didn’t know her name. She was a young woman without much legitimate experience. There would be no confidence.
That was where I would come in. First, I needed to talk to her. I would rather work with her than against her—if it came down to one or the other, however, I knew what I would have to choose.