Chapter 27

Zach

I knew exactly where I needed to go. There was no doubt in my mind who had set this up for me, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with this.

It didn’t take long to arrive at the real estate offices for the company. I hadn’t been out here in a while, a long while. I hadn’t needed to, because I’d been so confident that the man I’d left in charge would take care of things for me. As it turned out, I was completely wrong.

There was only one person who could’ve fucked things up for me like this, only one person who had the reason to. I thought I could trust him, but Craig Vector had proven me wrong.

It took me half an hour to arrive at the offices, seething as I pulled to a stop. I clenched the wheel between my hands, trying to calm down and failing miserably. I stepped out of the car, pushed back my sleeves, and headed to the door. Pulling it open, I was faced with another nervous-looking secretary. Craig must’ve hired a new secretary because I didn’t recognize her and she definitely didn’t know who I was.

“C-can I help you?” she asked, clearly unnerved by my aggressive march to her desk.

“Where’s Craig Vector?” I demanded, and she glanced over her shoulder toward a meeting room.

“He’s actually meeting with someone right now,” she replied apologetically. “If you’d give me your name. I’ll have to ask you to wait a few—”

“I’m not waiting,” I snapped, heading to the room. I left her scrambling to stop me when I burst through the door. Craig looked up at the commotion and then froze in front of the board he’d been gesturing to when he recognized me. His already light complexion went an even paler shade of white, and the other people in the room glanced around to see who had come in and disturbed them. When they realized it was me, they got to their feet at once.

“Some privacy, please,” I ordered, stepping aside so they could head out the door. They all hurried out, one behind the other, and left me alone with Craig.

“Zachary.” He greeted me, attempting to keep his voice neutral, but failing. “What are you doing here? Can I help you with something?”

“You can,” I replied, clenching my fists at my sides. How dare he look me in the eye and pretend like he didn’t know what I was doing here? I’d much rather he just told me the truth.

“Take a seat.” He gestured to the recently-vacated chairs around the conference table, but I didn’t move.

“I don’t need to sit.” I was shaking with anger. “I need you to explain why the fuck the IRS is snooping around in this department.”

“I’m sorry.” He held his hands up. “You know you’re the only one who could—”

“I’m not the only one, Craig,” I threw back, cutting him off. “You could easily have fudged the numbers, couldn’t you? You could have changed something.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Yes, you fucking do,” I snarled, the words coming out of me with more force than I’d intended. “You’re the only one who could’ve fucked this up for me, and don’t pretend like I don’t know that. Just admit it.”

“There’s nothing to admit,” he replied smoothly, a little too smoothly given the circumstances. “I’ve done nothing but support this business since I started and frankly, I’m disgusted you would accuse me of attempting to undermine—”

I tuned him out then because everything he was saying sounded too carefully rehearsed to be anything but bullshit. I rolled my eyes and turned away from him, gathering my thoughts, getting ready to attack again. I couldn’t let him win. Not after everything else going wrong in my life. No, this time, I needed that win for myself. And I knew exactly how to nail him.

“It’s about the promotion, isn’t it?” I snapped, finally cutting him off. He fell silent for a second.

“I haven’t even given it any thought since it happened,” he replied loftily, but it was clear from his tone of voice he was lying through his teeth.

A year or so earlier, he’d been up to take over the real estate division of the company. However, I’d decided to hang on to it for the time being. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but something in my gut told me I should keep control of it as long as I could. He’d been pissed; it meant he lost the upgrade in responsibility and salary. It never occurred to me at the time, however, he’d attempt to destabilize the entire company over it. I could hardly believe I was accusing him of blackmailing me, but I knew that’s what had happened. There was only one person who could have fudged those numbers, only one reason why the IRS might have come calling in the first place. He had deliberately sent up a red flag, something that told the Feds that someone was cooking the books in the business. In my business. I didn’t realize how much he held that against me, that he was bitter enough to risk his own job just to scrabble back some of the power he felt I had taken from him.

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” I paced back and forth in the conference room. Craig’s eyes followed me, not pulling his gaze from me. I wanted to hit him, just to get the feel of his eyes burning into me off.

“Zachary, everyone understands you’re not doing so well and haven’t been for a long time.” I turned around, glaring at him. His tone was so fucking patronizing I could have decked him right then.

“Don’t you dare use that against me,” I snarled. “I know what your fucking game is. I know the kind of shit you pull on people.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeated, his face impassive. “I just know that people have said you’ve been paranoid and obsessive and this seems to be an extension of that.”

“Don’t pretend like you have a fucking clue about what I’ve been through, Craig.” I was pacing now, like a jungle cat. He was trying to mislead me, to make me doubt my own thoughts. What he didn’t know was that he was dealing with a master. I’d done enough of that by myself in the last six months. I wasn’t going to let him get in my head. I didn’t need any of this shit. But I couldn’t back away now, not when I’d gone this far. Not when there was so much to lose.

I turned away from him again. Even the sight of his face was enough to send a blinding rage darting through my entire body. After everything I had worked so hard for, everything my father had worked so hard for, this man was standing in front of me and telling me I was crazy. I hated it. I hated him. I hated myself for letting things get this far, for stepping back too far and allowing this man to get his greasy fucking fingers all over what we’d worked so hard to build.

“Just tell me the goddamn truth.”

“I am telling you the truth,” he assured me, shaking his head. “I don’t know why you’re having such trouble accepting that.”

“If you just tell me the truth, we can figure this out. We can back this down,” I pleaded with him. “There’s other stuff going on at the company, and we can tie it in to that, we can convince them you were made to do this. You won’t end up in any trouble. I just need you to tell me what’s going on, and we can move past this.”

“There. Is. Nothing. Going. On,” he replied, pronouncing each word out as though I were incompetent. And that was it, that was all I could take. After everything I’d learned that day, I felt as though my head was going to explode, and it all seemed to zero in on this moment, on this man, on this person I trusted with such an important part of my business. I had let him mislead me for God knows how long. I reached forward and grabbed him by the collar.

“Craig,” I snarled in his face one more time, and he paled even further. Up close, he was pathetic, more pathetic than I had ever been. He was practically quaking.

“Security!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, a little bit of spit landing on my face with the force of his words. Before I could jump away from him, hands on my back pulled me away, drawing me back toward the door. What the fuck were this many guards doing here? There was no way they needed this many. Maybe he’d expected something to go down. That was the only explanation.

Security pulled me back toward the door, past the secretary who looked frozen with fear. I didn’t make eye contact with her. I was humiliated, enraged, impotent. This was a building my father had put together, part of a business that would never have existed if it hadn’t been for my family. And I was being tossed out for trying to get answers.

This was an injustice, a bigger one than I’d ever imagined. The intruder treatment was so shocking that it pulled the plug on my fury. With the last bit of my sanity intact, I knew when to quit. The muscle they had in security overpowered me, they hauled my ass through the lobby and dumped me on the sidewalk like I was a drunk in a two-bit dive. They paused, eyeing me, making sure I accepted that I’d been kicked out of my own goddamn business. As much as I wanted to turn around and kick Craig’s ass, it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, but jail. I shot them both dark looks, brushed off my suit and headed to the parking lot.

I climbed into the car, leaned forward, and pressed my face against the wheel. Everything I did to contest this case confirmed their view of me as a crazy son of a bitch. Nice going, Rose. I walked right into their shit. This had all been perfectly planned to make it seem as though I was the one sailing completely off the rails, as though I was beyond crazy and couldn’t be trusted with the business. And the macho crazy act I just pulled played right into their hands. I couldn’t escape it. I’d been played. But I needed to find a way to turn things around or else I’d lose the business, and my father’s legacy, once and for all.