Page 160 of Twisted Truth

“Done.”

“But that’s not the worst part,” Emily says with a wince.

I sigh. “What is the worst part, then?”

“Our timeline. RTZ apparently posted a photo of you and Charlotte together from the night you supposedly met Ella at the product launch. They claim to have proof that you weren’t there, and it’s brought the story with Charlotte right back up, which is the whole point of this thing with Ella—to bury that story. So, we’ve got to figure out how to clean up that timeline. Because now it looks like you were seeing both Charlotte and Ella at the same time, then when the story broke about Charlotte, you threw her aside and went all in with Ella. And now there are questions of when you and Ella started up, and how long you were seeing each other. Kyle mentions that things in his relationship with Ella had been off for months, so he’s painted it as though she was cheating on him with you for months while he was planning to marry her, and she was just waiting for Charlotte to be out of the picture so she could sink her claws all the way into you.”

Fuck.

“What do you propose?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Voices outside my office catch my attention.

“I will speak to him!”

Great. That’s Janet’s shrill voice. Matthew stands and opens the door. One of the receptionists is cowering, trying to reason with Janet, Henry, and Conrad as they stand outside, demanding to be let into my office. Without invitation the three of them march inside.

Janet waves some papers that I assume is the printed email. “This is what you get for going off script! We told you to picksomeone influential! Someone of social standing. Someone the media wouldn’t dare to attack.”

“The media attacks anyone and everyone. Me included. No woman I dated would be safe from them.”

“Yes, but at least they couldn’t be accused of being a social climbing, gold-digging whore.”

“Watch it,” I growl. “Not another word against Ella. This isn’t her fault.”

“You’re right, it’s yours for sleeping with Charlotte.”

“And I’m doing everything I can to remedy that unfortunate situation.”

“And yet it’s all been brought back up,” Henry seethes. “I want my wife’s name out of the media.”

“Maybe your wife shouldn’t have propositioned me at a charity function, then. She sure as fuck never mentioned she was your wife.”

His eyes flash with rage, but I don’t care. I’m done with tip-toeing around Henry’s feelings. While I can take responsibility for the fact that I was not careful enough when I got involved with Charlotte, the truth is she purposefully lied to me about who she was, and that isn’t my fault.

“This does not bode well for your shares,” Conrad says. He’s clearly trying to look serious, but I can see a hint of satisfaction tugging at the corners of his lips. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we put it to a vote, if the board was ready to make a motion to move forward with the stipulations in your contract to allow Langford Holdings to regain those extra shares.”

“It’s barely been over a month,” I snap. “The contract I created with Ella gave me ninety days to get my image under control. You have no grounds to push for this, at least not yet.”

“Overhauling an image is not a simple or linear process,” Emily says. Her voice is a bit timid, but trying for assertive. “It is expected that stories will recycle and that there are both steps forward and backward in the process. While there have beensome disparaging stories about Ella, there has been mostly positive attention. And this is the first time the story with Charlotte has come back up, and that, quite frankly, is astounding. Ella really does have a mostly positive draw and it’s pulled attention away from Charlotte, however, push back is inevitable. With the level of fame this has put Ella in, it is expected that people from her past would crawl out of the woodwork to get their fifteen minutes of fame. These types of stories are inevitable for any woman dating Asher. Every single one of the heiresses you all suggested had less than clean pasts. We found potentially problematic histories with all of them, so if anything, you are exceptionally lucky that Ella has no real skeletons in her closet. The worst she has is an idiot of an ex-boyfriend spouting lies which are all easily disputed. The only real problem we have with the story is the timeline. And we’ll figure out a way to fix it.”

“Then fix it. Or we will push with everything we have at the end of the ninety days to take those shares back,” Janet says.

With that, the three of them march out of the office just as obnoxiously as they marched into it. Matthew shuts the door after them and his eyes narrow. He chews on the inside of his cheek, a tell of his when he’s deep in thought.

“What’s up?” I ask him when he retakes his seat across from my desk.

“Why do I get the feeling they don’t actually want you to succeed?”

“What do you mean?” Emily asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m being paranoid. But just now the talk of shares didn’t really seem like a threat to get Asher in line, and more like . . . their true motivation. It’s almost like they don’t want him to succeed because then they can take back those shares, and they would distribute them among themselves and the other board members, which would give all ofthem more money and more power, and it would remove Asher’s majority shareholder position.”

“Then why the fuck did they force this elaborate farce in the first place?” I growl.

“Because they didn’t have the grounds to retake the shares without provocation. There was a clause in the contract about giving the opportunity of reparation or something. Basically, they couldn’t take back the shares without giving you a sort of due process to fix the situation. So, they have given you that, but what if they don’t actually want you to succeed? Maybe they’re playing the outraged board member while secretly hoping you fail. Because if you do fail, they ultimately win. I know in the short term, the story with Charlotte was a headache and had our subsidiaries and the media up in arms, but that blew over quickly. Even without Ella pulling focus, that story probably wouldn’t have stained the company for too long. So, why was the board so upset about it? Just because it was Henry’s wife? Maybe. But there’s two people in an affair and there’s no way she didn’t know what she was doing, so the blame lies as much with her as it does with you, and yet you’re the only one who took any heat. I don’t know, the way they’re acting just doesn’t add up. Something just feels off about it.”