Chapter Twenty-Five
Jacob
“Do you know why you’re here?”
I stood behind my desk, my face carefully arranged into a completely neutral expression. After the last couple of hours, I wanted to shout. Wanted to punch someone. Wanted to throw something right through the goddamned window. But I had to play this properly to make the best situation for myself, my company, and Vanessa.
Damon Schwartz had just entered my office, and he stared back at me, his face impassive. “I’ll admit I was surprised to hear from you. I assumed you were hoping to appeal to my nicer side to avoid these charges,” he replied. “But I think we both know your company is going down, Jacob. My guys are still combing through all of your servers, all of your accounts, and we know for a fact that there’s some dodgy shit happening here. We’ll find our proof eventually. Only a matter of time.”
I gave him a thin smile. “You’re absolutely right. There’s definitely some dodgy shit happening here. Insider trading, embezzlement, and so on.”
Damon’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened with shock at my admission. “What?”
“You and your guys are pretty useless if you haven’t already found what you’re looking for,” I went on. “All you have to do is check our company email servers and look at my account’s activity in March of last year to find the evidence you’re looking for that shows that some sort of insider trading could’ve been going on. And in terms of the company’s main business accounts, if you dig deep enough into the Lawson account, you’ll see clear evidence of fraud and embezzlement. I suppose it was easier for me to tell, given that I know the ins and outs of every trade we do, but still….you guys have been rather slow.”
Damon’s brows shot up even further. “I…I don’t understand. Why the hell are you telling me this?” he asked. “Guilty conscience finally get to you?”
I shook my head. “No. Not at all. I only found out myself after a couple of hours of digging. It seems we’ve both been played, Damon.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ve been played,” I repeated calmly. “I know you’ve never liked me, Damon. That’s fine. I never liked you much either, and a certain someone has used that old rivalry against us to force you to come after me. A certain deputy CEO of mine.”
“I assume you’re talking about Greg Sistero,” he replied stiffly.
I nodded. “He’s the reason you and your SEC buddies decided to start coming after me, right? He went to you, told you that dodgy shit was happening at the company. Made it sound like it was me doing it all. Made you want to launch an investigation into me. Is that right?”
Damon nodded as I spoke, confirming what I already knew. Ever since Vanessa had sent me that photo of Greg looking all buddied-up with Damon at a financial gala last year, I’d known something was up. They were friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, despite Greg always telling me he hated Damon, which immediately made me realize what had really been happening this whole time.
“That really appealed to your sense of justice. You thought I had to be pretty fucking dodgy with my dealings for even my own best friend to betray me,” I went on. “And on my end, he did the opposite. Acted like he was on my side. Told me you were probably coming after me out of some petty sense of jealousy stemming from all the way back in college. He pretended to be with me through it all, and I played right into his hand. I was even about to step down and hand the reins over to him, seeing as he’s my deputy CEO, because I thought I could trust him. He insisted I stay at the head, but not for long—it really didn’t take much of a conversation to convince him to take over for a while. Because that’s what he wanted the whole time. He wanted me to think it was my idea to decide to step down, just so I wouldn’t suspect him. But this whole time, he’s been trying to bring me down so that he can take over my fucking company while I get smeared in the media and thrown into prison on fraud charges.”
I knew I was right about all of this. This entire time, for this whole last year or so, Greg had been against me, because he’d obviously grown tired of only being second in charge. He wanted it all; he wanted what I had. And he’d gone after it.
Hard.
He’d defrauded our investors and skimmed money off certain accounts. He’d befriended Damon and set me up for his own crimes to put my name under suspicion and eventually force me out of my own company when the evidence for that was discovered by Damon and the SEC. He’d also been the one to leak information and plant all the rumors in the media to discredit me. He’d even dragged Vanessa into it by having her smeared in the media as well, just to hurt my reputation with the general public even more with the whole nanny sex scandal.
He’d had access to her laptop the other day when Vanessa and I were in the kitchen, and he already knew we were together, so he’d probably quickly gone through it while he could, hoping to find intimate photos or something similar. He’d really hit paydirt when he found Vanessa’s little article. That—along with the photos he’d obviously gone out and taken of us at the aquarium, seeing as he’d known we were there together that day and already suspected something—was enough to create a nice little media sex scandal about me.
“It’s your word against his,” Damon said, still seemingly unfazed by everything I’d just laid on him.
“He played you. It was him the whole time. I’ve just spent the last few hours combing through our accounts. Through everything. It’s all been set up to make me look guilty.”
Damon gave me a clear look of disdain. “Again, you can’t prove that. Seems like you’re just realizing how much trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, so you’ve concocted this wild story to get me on your side.”
I sighed. “Like I said earlier, I know we’ve never liked each other, Damon. But let’s put that aside. I think I can prove it was him. Pretty easily, too. I just need your help.”
He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “You need my help, huh?” he said with a snort of derision. “The great Jacob Baldwin needs my help.”
I looked him right in the eye. “Yes,” I said firmly. “We might never be friends, Damon, but I think you’re actually a solid guy deep down. I think you probably started working for the SEC for a reason—because you like to see justice. You want to put federal criminals behind bars where they belong. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you just help me, you’ll see that I’m right, and you’ll get to nail a real criminal. All I ask for is another half an hour. That’s all.”
He was silent for a long time, and then he held out his hand for me to shake. “Half an hour,” he repeated as I took his hand and firmly shook it. “After that, I make some calls and get my guys to check out those accounts you just told me about. And when that happens, it’s all over for you. Unless you can actually prove it wasn’t you responsible for all of it.”
“I can. Just do what I say for the next few minutes. Got it?”
He was silent again for a moment, and then he nodded. He even cracked a thin smile. “Got it.”
***
"What’s going on?”
Greg peered at me from the other side of my desk, his face the picture of innocence. I gritted my teeth, unable to believe I’d fallen for his shit for so long. I’d really thought he was my friend, and between the two of us, Vanessa and I had suspected almost everyone else in our lives except him—her father Daryl, that gossip column editor Jaina, even her best friend Emma (although that last one was just me). They were all completely innocent, and the real bad guy had been staring us in the face the entire time.
Only a few more minutes, I told myself. Just a few more and this will all be done.
“Damon Schwartz was just here,” I said. “He just left. You won’t believe what bullshit he tried to spin me.”
“What?”
“He tried to tell me that it was you who tipped him off about all this fraud and insider trading shit. You.”
Greg’s expression changed to that of a deer in the headlights for just a split second. It was almost imperceptible, but I still caught it. “Shit….what?” he replied. “Jesus, that smarmy little prick will stop at nothing.”
I almost smiled, knowing that Damon could hear every word of this—he was standing behind a big wooden cupboard door on the far side of my office, capturing every word with a recorder. It was such a Nancy Drew grade-school method of catching someone out in their bullshit, but hey, it fucking worked. Greg had already stepped in it by trashing Damon and calling him a smarmy prick, which wasn’t exactly going to keep Damon on his side. All I needed to do now was to get him saying something incriminating. I had to play this very carefully.
“You know what, though….I think he’s right,” I said coolly.
Greg’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
“I actually sat down and went through all of our accounts this afternoon. Found a lot of incriminating shit by digging deep enough. All set up to make me look guilty, of course, but you forgot one major detail. I can tell from the info the IT department gave me that you used your own computer—with my login details, of course. Which could’ve worked for you, because all you had to say was that I just went and used your office to do it. But you forgot about last year when we had those extra security cameras installed in the halls, after that guy broke in. You forgot there’s one directly across from your office door. All those emails, all that account activity on the servers…we can see exactly what days—and more specifically what times—it all happened. The CCTV footage will show that only you went into your office at those days and times.”
I was full of shit, of course. We had had extra security cameras installed in the halls last year after an incident at the office, but there were none near Greg’s office. I was just bluffing, and I had to count on my own acting skills to pull it off.
My expression didn’t falter at all as Greg’s face turned ashen. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I said. “Before I call the police and the SEC, I just want to know why, Greg. Why and how you could do this to me after everything I’ve done for you.”
Greg’s eyes narrowed, and he set his jaw in a firm line. I knew I had him. He believed the bluff that I really had concrete proof against him in regards to the make-believe security cameras, so he had nothing to lose by answering me honestly. “You had everything,” he finally said. “And I was fucking sick of always being second. You take home millions while I only get six figures a year. You get all the recognition when I work just as hard.”
“So you admit it,” I said, shaking my head. “You really did all this. You really skimmed all that money off the Lawson account. Not to mention all the insider trading shit. It was all you, you slimy piece of shit. You fucking scumbag.”
I was goading him now; trying to get him to actually say it out loud.
It worked.
He practically exploded, and his face turned red and twisted into an expression of malice. “Why the hell not? Why not take a bit extra for myself? I didn’t hurt anyone. No one noticed. So why not do what I can to take what should be mine? I’m just as good as you. I deserve it. I deserve this whole fucking company!” he shouted.
“That’s interesting.”
Greg whirled round as he heard Damon’s voice. His face was pale again, and his forehead was lined with confusion.
“Lucky I managed to get all of that on here,” Damon continued as he stepped toward us, holding up his recorder.
“What….wait…you were…” Greg couldn’t even form a coherent sentence as he wildly glanced around the room, trying to figure out where the hell Damon had come from. “I…I can explain. Damon, I…”
“Don’t bother,” Damon said frostily. “I’ve got all I need here. My guys are right outside to take you in.”
Greg didn’t even try to run like so many other criminals had done before him. He simply sank to the ground like a pathetic child and whimpered. I almost felt bad for him, but I couldn’t after what he’d done to hurt me. And more importantly, what he’d done to hurt Vanessa, who’d been innocent in everything and never deserved to be dragged into all of this shit.
At least it was almost over, though. Once everyone knew that Greg had been behind everything dodgy within the company and that my nose was actually clean, the whole nanny sex scandal bullshit would likely blow over along with it, and my little girl and I would be free and clear to do what we wanted. Sure, there’d always be a few pricks out there who’d judge us, but fuck ‘em.
We deserved to be happy.
Damon nodded at me as he pulled Greg to his feet to escort him out to the arresting officers who he had waiting outside. I nodded back, knowing there was a mutual respect between us now. We might never see eye to eye on certain things, and we might never be friends, seeing as we’d disliked each other for years, but Damon had turned out to be a decent guy underneath it all. He’d only come after me because he genuinely thought I was up to dodgy stuff, not because he was jealous and wanted to take me down for no reason.
But it was all over now, thank god. I could finally breathe for a second.
My cell phone was vibrating like mad in my desk drawer, and it had been for a while now. I opened the drawer and glanced down at it, arching my brows with surprise when I saw the caller ID. It was the father of Tommy’s best friend Dylan. Tommy had been staying at their house for the last few days while all this media shit had been going on, just to keep him out of the public eye, but he was meant to come home today after school, so I had no idea why Dylan’s parents might be calling me now.
“Alan, hi,” I said, answering the call. “Did Tommy accidentally leave something at your house?”
“No,” he said. There was more than a hint of frostiness in his voice. “I was just wondering when you were going to come and get him. I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “I don’t follow. Tommy’s there with you now?”
“Yes. The school called me a while ago. Apparently no one came to pick him up. They tried Vanessa, but she didn’t answer, and they tried calling you but you didn’t pick up either. So then they called us to come and get him, thinking he might still be staying with us for the time being.”
My stomach lurched. “Vanessa was meant to get him today. She’s very reliable, so I have no idea why she wouldn’t show up,” I said, my heart thudding as I wondered what on earth was going on. “I’m so sorry, Alan. I had no idea this was happening. Would you be able to keep Tommy there for another hour or so while I try to find out what on earth has happened to Vanessa? I’m very concerned now.”
He sighed. “Sure, I can do that. I’m sorry, it didn’t occur to me that something bad might’ve happened to Vanessa,” he said. “Tommy is pretty engrossed in this new dinosaur movie with Dylan anyway. They’ll be set for hours.”
“Thanks so much, Alan. I really appreciate it. Please tell Tommy I love him, and don’t say anything about Vanessa just yet. Not till we know what’s happened.”
I ended the call, my heart still racing, and I immediately dialed Vanessa’s number. She didn’t answer any of the five calls I made in quick succession, and when I tried the house phone, no one answered that either.
Where the hell was she? Why wouldn’t she have shown up to collect my nephew from school? It wasn’t a matter of simple confusion over dates and times—we’d had a very clear conversation earlier where we’d discussed the fact that Tommy was finally coming home today, and that he needed to be collected from school. She wouldn’t simply forget to do it.
Usually, my instinct would’ve been to find her and give her a hard spanking for letting something like this happen, but this was different. Something was wrong here. Something had happened to her. Something bad.
This was confirmed when I tried the house phone again, and the housekeeper finally answered. “Hello, Baldwin residence.”
“Frida, it’s me. Is Vanessa at home?”
“No, Mr. Baldwin. She left to pick Tommy up at two-thirty. I assumed she took him somewhere with you afterwards, because no one’s been home since.”
My heart sank. Shit. So Vanessa had been on her way to get Tommy when something happened to her. I’d been right; she hadn’t simply forgotten. “Thank you, Frida. I have to go.”
I was about to call the police to see what I could do about finding Vanessa when my secretary came in. “Sorry, Jacob. I know a lot’s going on right now, so I’ve been holding all your calls, but this one is important,” she said, her face etched with worry. “Line two.”
I sat down and picked up my office phone, my heart racing even faster now. “Yes?”
“Mr. Jacob Baldwin?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“My name is Officer Chris Gomez. I’m sorry to call like this, but I have some unfortunate news for you. Are you sitting down?”
I steeled myself and said yes, and when the police officer began to speak again, my heart shattered into a million pieces.
Just when I’d thought my troubles were mostly over, my worst nightmare had come true. They’d found Vanessa’s car smashed head-on into a pole on the side of the road…
And she was gone.