I try to smack his arm, but with how weak I am, it’s barely a tap. He snorts.
“Do you know who it was?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You don’t need to worry about it. I’m taking care of it. You just worry about getting better.”
“Nope. I was poisoned, Asher. I deserve to know who did it.”
He sighs. “I guess you’re right about that. It was Alan from the board, but he didn’t work alone. We’ve learned through surveillance that he and Daphne have been having an affair for about a month now, at least that’s what we’ve been able to catch on the cameras. It could have been going on longer.”
“Ew. He’s, like, twice her age.”
“Par for the fucking course in my line of work.”
My brows rise to my hairline. “She helped him?” Holy shit, I knew Daphne didn’t like me, but I never would have suspected that she would do anything like that.
“What was their goal? Were they trying to . . . kill me?”
Asher brushes his thumb down my cheek. “No. We don’t think so, but we’re still trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Alan didn’t give much away as far as information, but Daphne is distraught and spilling everything. Though, she doesn’t know much, so it still hasn’t given us a lot to go on.”
“So, what do you know?”
“We know that someone within Langford Holdings has been secretly working with TDC to sabotage Greenspan, and it’s been going on for about thirty years. And we know that person must someone high up in the company. Alan certainly fits the bill.”
“So, he’s the person on the board who’s been betraying you and Greenspan?”
“Yes, but I don’t think he’s the only one. Janet has also had it out for me for years.”
“He’s always trailing her like a faithful dog.”
“So far I can’t find anything on Janet, but that doesn’t mean she’s innocent.”
“Okay, so all that aside, why poison me?”
“Because Alan got a call from Sergei. I hurt Dimitri, so Sergei wanted to hurt me, but he can’t kill me until I give him what he wants, so he went after the thing that would hurt me the most. You.”
He brushes a kiss to my temple.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Hale, you are very much my weakness, and my enemies and my board are now very aware of that. Alan decided to try to use you against me to see if it would work, but he couldn’t get close to you without it being noted as strange, so he’s been using Daphne. He kept his eyes on the PR team and quickly figured out that Daphne was jealous and held a great deal of animosity toward you, so he exploited that. He introduced himself to her and flattered her—made her feel special—and because he’s rich and powerful, it worked. It didn’t take much convincing for her to spy on you and report to him.
“When he got his orders from Sergei to find a way to hurt you, he came up with the plan to use the stalker letters so that it couldn’t be traced back to him, and he used Daphne to deliver the letter. The last thing we caught on camera is Daphne picking up the pile of fan mail from her desk and delivering it to you. But surprisingly, there’s no footage of how it ended up on her desk. The cameras have had an ironic number of glitches from the day and time the mail was initially sifted through to when it ended up on Daphne’s desk.”
“Did she know it was poisoned?”
“She denies it. She admitted that she knew there was a stalker letter in the stack of mail, but she insists that she had no idea it was poisoned and that Alan didn’t divulge that part to her. She said that he told her it would scare you—and scare me—like it had the first time. She was feeling angry and petty after the disastrous meeting beforehand, so she gave you themail earlier than planned. She was supposed to give it to you later that day.”
“Why?”
“There was another meeting scheduled for the afternoon, and I think Alan wanted a spectacle. He wanted you to faint where everyone would see you and it would show the board that I am susceptible to threats which would undermine my power and leverage. He wants to sow more discord between the board and me. He had Sergei’s orders, so he decided to use them to his advantage. But he won’t be a problem moving forward.”
The finality in his tone makes me freeze.
“He won’t?”
“No.”
