AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This would not be the last unmasking of his misdeeds, I promised myself as I walked to work. One by one I would reveal the skeletons in his closet, and the world would finally see the real Dennis Benson. His fancy suit wouldn’t fool anyone then.
He deserved it all and more for what he’d done to me; what he’d done to my family.
Chapter 3
Dennis
The floors dingedby and the red numerals increased until the uncomfortably hot compartment finally opened on the top floor.
I turned left toward my office, and my phone dinged with a text message. I stopped to check it.
DAD: We need to talk.
Dad was the only one I knew who bothered to make sure his punctuation was correct on a text message. Talking to him was not at the top of my list right now.
My assistant, Cindy, was away from her desk, and before I even reached my office, I could hear Jay Fisher, our CFO, and Larry Zerfoss, my strategic marketing guy, going at it about this morning’s article. It would be the only thing talked about all day.
They were standing in my office, and they halted their argument mid-sentence when I entered.
I closed the door behind me and hung up my coat to cool off. “Morning.”
“Did you see theTimesthis morning?” Larry asked.
I took my seat and put down the paper. “Just did.”
“They make it sound like it’s our fault,” he complained.
I opened the paper. “I know.”
Jay nodded.
“It’s not fair, not fair at all,” Larry continued. “This is going to tank us.”
“What’s the damage so far?” I asked.
Larry checked his phone. “Fourteen percent down and still dropping.”
The stock market didn’t like surprises or bad news, and this was both.
I turned to Jay. “Have you read it?”
He nodded. “Several times and—”
Larry interrupted. “We didn’t even own the company when this was going on.”
I put a hand up to stop him. “I know.”
“Is there anything we can do legally?” I asked Jay.
His face telegraphed the answer. “No. I can’t see anything factually wrong, and that means there’s nothing to dispute.” He turned to Larry. “Unless I’m missing something.”
Larry took a breath. “It’s just the way they present it—it makes us look like the guilty party here.”
“It’s America,” Jay told him. “Spin is allowed. The First Amendment gives them freedom to print shit like this, twice a day if they want to.”
Jay’s answer was the same conclusion we’d come to after the previous article. We had no recourse with the paper.
I pointed to the byline. “Larry, where are we on finding out who Sigurd is?” Each of the articles had been penned by aSigurd—no last name, or no first, whichever it was.
