AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The temptation to smash my fist into the wall was so strong I had to physically hold my arm back by cupping it in my elbow, and although I hadn’t consciously decided to move, I found myself in front of the sliding glass door that led out onto the pool deck.
“Thank you,” I said as calmly as I could muster.
I hung up.
I stepped out onto the heated balcony flooring, shutting the door behind me, the below-freezing winds battering me from all angles at this height. But I didn’t care.
I took a long, deep breath in.
And I screamed.
————
Surprising everyone but me, Andrew himself called for a board meeting the following morning.
Having signed over the authority for the private investigator to search Stone & Co’s data, I’d been dropped with more information overnight. I’d spent the three hours I’d had between waking and arriving in my office putting everything together into a perfect package, combing through each email Shaun had found, and compiling it.
I waited until the scheduled start time to leave my desk and make my way down the hall. There wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to be the first in the room—in fact, I was hoping to be the last, and as I pushed the door open, I found everyone hadtaken their seat around the table except Andrew. He stood at the front of the room. His laptop sat atop the podium, a cable poised to be plugged in.
“You’re late,” he said. “Fitting.”
“Is it?” I plucked a mint from the bowl in the center of the table and popped it into my mouth. “Why?”
His desktop screen projected onto the wall behind him as he plugged the laptop in. “Because you might want to just keep standing for this. I have a feeling you’ll walk out,” he chuckled. I laughed right alongside him, and he leveled his gaze at me, his brows furrowing in slight confusion.
“Ah,” I said around a mouthful of mint. “You going to show them all the photos your PI took of me fucking my girlfriend?”
His pale, freckled face turned ghostly white in an instant, his glasses just slightly too far down his nose.
“You know that’s illegal, right?” I continued, shoving my hands into my pockets to keep from punching him square in the center of his jaw. “Especially the one on the boat. You pull that up right now and I can hit you with a revenge porn charge.”
I could feel eyes on me from around the table, but I didn’t care enough to look.
“So greedy,” I chuckled. “Just couldn’t keep yourself from sending them to her father the moment you had them, huh? If you’d have just waited…”
“Adrian, …”
“No, no, me first.” I grinned at him wide enough to show him the mint between my teeth. “That was disgusting, you know that? Her dad had to look at that. Had to see his kid like that. Did I mention she’s pregnant? That was a lovely bit of stress to put on a goddamn pregnant woman.”
His throat worked as he ground his teeth. “I didn’t know that.”
“Unsurprising.”
“Andrew, you had photos taken of Adrian’s girlfriend? What on earth possessed you…”
“Shut the fuck up, Vicky,” he snapped, ripping the cable out of his laptop so hard that the podium shook beneath it.
“Aw, no.” I offered him a fake pout. “I thought you’d at least show us your emails to the ticketing agency telling them to rebook the same tickets for that conference upstate. What was it you said? We’ve reached out privately and given refunds to those affected, please open those tickets up for purchase again.”
Silence. Utter, ringing silence descended over everyone, the only sound that of Andrew’s breaths as he tried to steady them. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I clicked my tongue as I set my laptop bag on the table. “I’ve got them all on my computer if you’d like me to show you.”
“Is that true?” Vince, one of the quieter board members who really only spoke up if someone directly acknowledged him, asked.
“No,” Andrew scoffed.
“Yep,” I said. Slipping my laptop out and propping it open on the table, I pulled up the emails Shaun had forwarded me under Andrew’s glare. A soft squeaking sounded out as I slid the computer along the table toward Vince, the little rubber bits scratching on the wood surface. “See for yourself.”
