“No fucking way,” Declan says.
“Yes, fucking way.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m pretty fucking sure he was there that night. He was one of the men in ski masks.”
They’re both quiet for a moment.
“Was he the one who swung the hammer?” Declan demands.
“No, that was the man next to him. Henry was the one yelling at the idiot for doing it. They weren’t supposed to kill Grandpa, just beat him until he agreed to their terms and answered their questions. Now I’m thinking the terms must have been the sale of Greenspan.”
“What year did Henry start working for Langford Holdings?” I ask Sterling.
A moment later I hear theclackingof the keys on his laptop.
“How do you know he was there that night?” Declan asks.
“Because of a phrase one of the men said to Grandpa. The man said,‘We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.’I had a fucking gun to my head, and I was ten, so it’s no wonder I’d forgotten until now. But I’ve heard that same exact phrase more recently. Then probably six years ago or so, Henry said the same thing to me during an argument in the board room. The only reason it stuck with me was because he had never been so aggressive before. It was close enough to a threat that I didn’t brush it aside.
“And a few months ago, when I was sleeping with Charlotte, she said the same phrase. I didn’t know she was Henry’s wife at the time, but now I’m starting to think we didn’t accidentally ‘meet’ at that charity auction. I think Henry sent her to get close to me. Looking back, we didn’t just have sex. We talked about my work a lot. She asked questions that I didn’treally think much of at the time. But now? Yeah, she asked what seemed like innocuous questions that often lead to something about Greenspan or musings about all the companies we have under us that are developing technologies of some sort. Charlotte was never just a fling; she was a spy for her husband.”
“1994,” Sterling says, answering my earlier question. “Four years before Grandpa’s death. And mother fucking hell, he worked in Albert’s secondary division, Operations Management. That’s why I couldn’t find him. I was looking into R&D. So, we have to assume that Uncle Albert was involved.”
“And you think Henry was there, in person, the night Grandpa died?”
“Yes. Now that I can remember it clearly, I recognize Henry’s voice, even if it was a younger version of it. He must use that phrase quite a bit since he said it to me in the boardroom twice that I can remember, and it’s rubbed off on Charlotte.”
“Conrad has pushed selling Greenspan for years. Do we think he could be working with Henry? Or does he simply see a company that loses money each year?” Declan asks.
“No way to know yet. But we’re going to find out.”
“Do you think your affair with Charlotte being leaked to the press was a coincidence?” Declan asks. “Because it was Henry and Janet that spearheaded this little ultimatum that threatened your majority share. No one thought twice about it because we understood that Henry was furious at finding out you were fucking his wife. But now I wonder if he thought you wouldn’t be able to follow the terms of the ultimatum and that you’d lose your majority stake in the company. Then he could push to sell Greenspan, and you wouldn’t have been able to stop it. And other board members would go along because almost all of them hate Greenspan, and that would have been just enough to push the sale forward even with Dad, Sterling, and me voting no.”
“What the fuck is TDC offering him that has him putting so much at risk?” Sterling muses.
“Whatever it is, he’s a fool for taking it. Because now he’s a dead man,” I say. Rage burns in my veins. But an eerie calm also settles over me. Now that the questions are answered, at least most of them, there’s nothing left but action.
“I want to know if Conrad is involved, and I want Janet off the board and out of our company. Leave Henry to me.”
I hang up and head back into the bedroom. Ella is fast asleep again, thank god. She needs rest. I stand at the edge of the bed and take her in in the early dawn light that creeps into the room, highlighting her sleeping form. Even after a car accident and a bandaged head, she’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But I can’t find any peace at admiring her. Because the bandage on her head is bloody, and scratches crisscross the skin up and down her arms.
She very easily could have died tonight.
And that is unacceptable.
I lean down and brush her hair back from her bandage and place a soft kiss on the top of her head. She is everything to me. And yet, she’s lying here injured because she’s with me.
I need to make sure she’s safe. There is nothing more important than that.
I’ll make Sergei and Yegor pay, but it won’t be easy. And it won’t be clean. It’s clear now that if I’m going to be successful in taking them down, I will have to focus all my energy on it.
My heart stutters as I place another kiss on her head. I hate myself for what I need to do. But I have no other choice.
I can’t have any distractions.
37
