Man of the House(50)

I turned my attention back to Bruce and the matter at hand. “What do you want?” I asked him.

“Finally getting down to business.” He smiled at me serenely. “It’s simple, actually. I want you to resign from the company and to leave the country.”

I laughed. “Very simple.”

“I will accept nothing less.”

“Actually, you’ll accept much less. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

“Are you sure about that? You’re not in a position to negotiate.”

“Actually, I think I am. You see, you won’t release that information. As much as you hate it, Valor Tech is attached to my name and my reputation. I founded the company and built the company, and public perception is on my side here. If you come after me, you come after Valor.”

“Ah,” Bruce said, the smile never leaving his face. “I wondered if you’d make that connection.”

“You can’t destroy me without destroying the company.”

“There’s one big mistake you’re making, Carter. You assume that I don’t want to destroy Valor.”

“What? What’s the point of this then? Without the company, you’ll have nothing.”

“There are powers in this world much larger than companies,” he said with a sly smile. “Some men would be very happy to see your company destroyed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Insider trading,” he said. “I’d tell a few close friends that the stock of Valor was about to drop in exchange for small portions of their profit. I’d also sell off what I had, of course.”

“That would never work. There are too many regulatory agencies watching the market for that exact thing.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Are you willing to gamble your life on it? Because I am.”

I stared at Bruce as I slowly realized something that I had never noticed before: he was insane.

Not actually crazy, of course. Bruce was an intelligent man and clearly still had control of himself. But he was willing to take serious and intense risks, the sort I never would have guessed he was willing to take. That, combined with his willingness to blackmail, suggested that he had some serious instability issues.

This wasn’t a fully rational man standing before me, as I had been assuming. All of my calculations so far had been around the assumed fact that Bruce was a normal, self-regulating human. Instead, he was clearly unstable and verging on madness.

For a second, I felt afraid.

My mind worked through my options. Part of me wanted to pull my gun and kill them both, but I suspected Cox would pull his faster. He knew I kept a weapon in my office and was probably prepared for something like that. No, I had to do something else, probably something equally drastic.

That left me only one option. It was obvious and it was dirty, essentially the last thing I wanted to do, but I had to do it. I couldn’t see any other way out of this mess with my honor and my company intact.

“I’ll think about it,” I said finally.

“Don’t think long. I’ll give you two days to figure it out. If you don’t make your choice then, I’ll release the information and we’ll see who survives.”

I didn’t bother to respond. I turned without another glance at Cox and quickly strode to the elevators. I thought I heard Bruce laughing as I walked away, but I couldn’t be sure.

I was already planning my next moves. I knew I had to finish this soon, much sooner than people expected, otherwise we’d be done for. But I finally had a course of action, and I hoped it would be good enough to get us all through it. Because this wasn’t just about me anymore, it was equally about Emily and Evelyn. I couldn’t just leave them behind and forge ahead with some random plan. Whatever I did had to include them in some way, at least it had to have their best interests at heart.

I couldn’t tell them my plan. Not exactly at least. I knew they’d both try to talk me out of it, but I couldn’t have that. If they tried, I was afraid I’d listen and back down. I needed strength and dedication now, nothing else would do.

But before I did anything, I had one last stop. I had one last thing to do, something that I wanted to do, not something that I needed to do. It was just as important as anything else, and I couldn’t wait another second.





25





Emily





For some reason, sitting out by the pool had lost its excitement for me. Probably because I had done it almost every day for the last few weeks, but that was only part of the issue.

I realized that I felt exposed sitting outside. I knew there was someone coming after us, someone that wanted to see Carter destroyed and was using me to do it. I felt naked and exposed sitting out in the open next to the pool, like someone was watching me.