Page 127 of I’ll Be Watching You

Had Peter . . . investigated her?

That was the only way, if he had dug into her background because he wanted leverage.

She hated the man. After everything she had done for him, he betrays her.

“What do you want?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“Tim Miller is talking about me. Carter didn’t do his fucking job, and Tim is going to blab. He doesn’t have proof, but it’s enough to have the feds asking questions. Unless you want me to share what I know about your involvement in covering up the real results of the Phase 1 trial and how you modified the drug and changed the documentation on the original formulation, then you’re going to transfer one million dollars into my account.”

“I can’t transfer that kind of money. I’m not that liquid.”

“Bullshit.”

“I can give you fifty thousand right now to walk away and never show your face again.”

He barked out a laugh. “You owe me far more than fifty thousand, Mildred. I was going to get fifty million next week when we sold Neurovantix! Fifty fucking million.” He slammed his fist on the desk with each word. “I should have known this was going to blow up in our faces.”

“It blew up because you had Liz Swanson killed in broad daylight. Shot in front of her house! You couldn’t even be patient enough to create a believable accident!”

“Hey, that’s not on me.”

Except it was, Mildred thought. This man was rash. Rash men were dangerous men.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said. “My bank will not let me transfer more than fifty thousand from my business account. My personal account has a ten thousand daily limit without prior approval. You’ll just have to live with it.”

“No, you’ll have to live with it. Transfer sixty thousand now and on Monday you’ll get me the rest. But mark my words, if you try to screw me in any way, I give the police everything.”

“Do not threaten me.”

“You have far more to lose than I do,” he snapped. “Do it. Now. My account numbers are right there waiting for you.”

As much as it galled her to give this traitor a dime, this would buy her time.

She had intentionally retired to distance herself from the VA and the Neurovantix trial so that she could profit off it after the sale next week. She owned the private company through a shell corporation. It would take a lot of digging to connect Neurovantix to her, and by that time she would have already sold it.

She had to hold tight to the fact that the sale would still go through. It was Saturday—in no world she knew did the feds act this fast. The drug would be approved as promised on Monday, and twenty-four hours later a half-billion dollars would be deposited in her account from the buyer she already had lined up.

If Peter thought he was getting a dime of what she had promised four years ago, he was mistaken. Because he would be dead.

Her brother was going to have to join her in leaving the country. She couldn’t risk Peter turning him in.

At one time, she had respected Peter. He was smart, wily, driven. She detested his gambling habits, but she couldn’t argue with his foresight and knowledge related to pharmaceutical interventions. They had made a substantial amount of money together through Hollander & Wyck.

She should have cut him loose when she learned he had lost most of his profit through gambling.

Except . . . when the Phase 1 drug trial started to fall apart, it was Peter who had identified the formulation error and fixed it. It would have worked too if Devin Klein hadn’t been monitoring his patients so closely.

Damn him. It was Devin’s fault.

She sat down at her desk and logged into her personal account. Peter watched over her shoulder, snorted. She had logged into her checking account, where she only had fifteen thousand. Her savings and money market were more substantial, not to mention her investment accounts. But she wasn’t going to share any of that information with Peter.

She transferred the money. Next, she logged into her business account.

“You have fourteen million? You’re going to have to do much better than a million.”

She fumed. She despised this man with all her being.

She transferred the fifty thousand to his account.