She squinted. “Okay. But that’s not really strange. People demolish buildings all the time. Although I am wondering how you go from demolition to being the boss of a publishing company.”
“We demolish companies. From the inside out. My team and I, I mean.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you do that? And how, exactly?
“Because there are very large companies that are too big to get the punishment they deserve. They get big enough and they can bribe their way out of trouble. Environmental destruction, crimes against their employees, illegal business practices. There are all sorts of reasons, but that’s the ‘why’. Because they deserve it. The places we’ve brought down have all deserved every bit of it. We give good people a chance to fill in the gaps that crop up when we bring down the corrupt giants. And if another corrupt business takes their place, well, maybe we’ll come for them next.”
I took a deep breath. That was more than I’d planned to say. My passion for this work had got the better of me, though. To tell the truth, I wasn’t even sure I really planned to hang it all up after the Coleton job. This all started as a crusade for revenge in my father’s name. Jordan had been game for obvious reasons, but Noah and Travis had been happy to join because they believed it was a good cause.
Finishing this job wouldn’t mean the end of corrupt, twisted businesses. So why had I been thinking I’d be finished after this? Why wouldn’t I keep doing what I did?
I dragged my thoughts back to the present, watching Jules as the gears in her head turned.
“So you being at Coleton… Is it Coleton Central you’re trying to bring down, or is it just Coleton Publishing? Wait, no. You said you had to get the position at Central. You’re trying to bring the whole thing down?”
I swallowed. Naturally, she’d seen straight to the truth. “Yes,” I said. I could’ve offered excuses or tried to explain myself, but I wanted her to have the naked truth. No qualifications this time. No deception. Just the truth.
Jules looked down, eyes searching the table as she processed. Finally, she picked up her gyro and took a big bite. “Cool. Can I help?”
I stared. “What?”
“I want to help.”
I’d already been infatuated with Jules. I’d been obsessed. But until that moment, I don’t know if I’d actually cracked open the iron curtain around my heart for her. But with those four words, I thought I felt something inside me open up.
“You don’t know why I want to bring Coleton down,” I said.
“My father runs the place,” she said simply. “You can’t imagine the things I heard at the dinner table. But I never thought anybody could do anything about it. It’s like you said. He just pays off anybody who starts to get bothered by the way he runs his business. It’s all political lobbying, payoffs, and no consequences. Believe me, if I had a button to blow the whole thing up in my room, I would’ve pressed it a long time ago. So, yeah. I’m absolutely in.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded, wiping some sauce off the tip of her nose.
“I’ve been waiting all this time to target Coleton,” I said. “Ten years. Everything until now has been like a practice run. We got a lot of good done with the places we took down, but it has all just been in preparation for this.”
“What makes Coleton so special?” she asked.
“My father. He worked for their agricultural division for his whole life. They had those guys spraying pesticides every day. He passed ten years ago from a type of cancer they linked to exposure to the pesticide he’d worked with every day. But he fought it for two years before the end. They gave him the bare minimum sick pay, then fired him as soon as he tried to come back to work because he couldn’t put in the same hours anymore. Thirty years with the company and they threw him away like a used-up battery.”
Jules’ face twisted. I could see the anguish there and felt guilty for having to tell her about something her own father had taken part in. But she didn’t stop me. She wanted to hear all of it.
“I did some digging,” I continued. “I found out that Russ Coleton paid to suppress medical studies that showed a link between the pesticide and cancer. He knew he was exposing thousands of employees to cancer causing chemicals and he didn’t give a shit. We tried to sue before my dad passed, but Russ had a team of lawyers who had been preparing for the cases they knew would come. It was ironclad. They’d tampered with evidence, bribed experts, and even influenced jurors when they needed to.