10
I’m staring out the window at the view when Cora comes into my office later. “Michael, I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.” Even though I register her words, I barely notice that she’s there until she touches my shoulder and I jump. “Wow,” she says, “you’re never jumpy. Is something wrong?”
Yes, everything is wrong. Absolutely everything. But I can’t tell her that. It’s not fair to her. Knowing that someone is using her for blackmail would be a terrible thing to hear, and the last thing I want to do is hurt her. I know I’m going to though, I have to. I have to hurt her in order to protect her.
I know Jack all too well. Even if I sign the papers, there’s a chance he’ll go to the papers anyway and spread that story just to make sure I can never make a move to take the company back without him. Cora being attached to me would connect her to that. Her name would be dragged through the mud along with mine and make her senior year hell. I can’t have that. She didn’t do anything wrong by choosing to be with me.
“Michael,” she says, and I realize that I’ve just been standing here, saying nothing.
I clear my throat. “Unfortunately, I have some bad news.”
“Oh,” she says, playfully grabbing my arm. “Am I being punished early?”
“No,” I say. “It’s nothing like that, it’s…more serious. I have to let you go.”
She looks at me like she’s trying to figure out a puzzle. “Ha ha, good joke?”
“No.” If she’s fired before the story gets out, then it will protect her. I can tell the papers the allegations are from someone else who was fired. A disgruntled employee. Then it turns into a story about workplace revenge and not sexual assault, and Cora doesn’t become the face of the newest scandal.
“Michael, that’s not funny.”
“I know it’s not.”
She walks away quickly and then comes back. “I know something happened between you and Jack. The whole office is buzzing with it even though they don’t know what the hell happened. Does that have something to do with this?”
I don’t say anything. How can I? What would I say? Instead I stand silently and let her glare pierce me. “Talk to me, Michael. We haven’t had a problem with that up till now.”
“There’s nothing to say. This is finished. I have to fire you. It’s over.”
“It’s been less than twelve hours since I last saw you—since you were last inside me. What the fuck happened?”
Everything. Nothing. I press my lips together so that nothing comes spilling out.
“So that’s just it?” she asks. “The end, no discussion, no closure, no nothing? Something happened that you’re not telling me.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she gets in my face, eyes burning, cheeks flushed, and if I had known that she was this beautiful angry I would have tried to make her angry a while ago. I feel that ache in my chest and I realize it was the fact that I love her. I do. This young, wild, sexy redhead, and I know that I’m going to miss her more than anything I’ve missed in my life. I may never get over her.
“You know how I know that something happened? Because this isn’t right. If you think I’m dumb enough to think that you don’t care about me, then you’re the one who’s stupid. I know you care about me. I know that you love me. And I know that because I love you.” Tears fill up her eyes. “I didn’t want that to be the way that I said it, but here we are. I love you, and I’m going to find out what’s really going on here.”
She storms out of the office, and I’m frozen where I stand. She loves me. A bloom of unmistakable hope and pleasure flows through me before reality comes crashing back in. What terrible timing we have. Any other place and time we might have been able to make this work. Not now.
I follow her out into the main office, practically jogging to catch up. She’s moving with a purpose that I recognize—I’ve seen Jack make the same kind of decision to get something done and then absolutely demolish the task. Cora is twice as passionate as Jack, so whatever she’s about to do, it’s going to be gigantic. I hope that I can talk her out of it.
She approaches reception, where I can see Jack is talking to someone, his back turned to the way we’re approaching. Oh, no. Cora walks right up to him, and in a voice loud enough for all the immediate offices to hear, she asks, “What did you do?”
Jack stops, and slowly turns around. The look on his face is almost like he’s never seen Cora before, or heard her speak that loudly. “Excuse me?”
“Everyone knows something happened between you and Michael, and I don’t really care about what goes on between you two until it starts to affect me. So what the hell did you do?”
“Cora,” his voice is a measured warning. “Calm down. I’m sure we can talk about this in my office, where it’s quieter and more…private.”
She raises her voice even louder. “How about you tell me right here. I don’t like secrets, and I think that getting things out in the open is in everyone’s best interest now.”
Jack takes a step back, and I recognize the move. He’s firming up his armor, ready to go on the attack. He sees me standing near the edge of the room and that oily smile returns. “I did what any good father would do,” he says, voice booming. “I was just trying to protect my daughter. I know how Michael took advantage of you, and I confronted him about it. I let him know that he could choose between leaving and being exposed.”
“What?!” Cora’s voice rings out, silencing every other sound in the office. “Michael Foster did no such thing.”
“Yes he did,” Jack sneers, “even if you don’t know it yet. You’re too young to understand, Cora. You need to be protected.”
Cora laughs, “If I need to be protected, how come you made it impossible to find you until I was eighteen? How come you weren’t a father to me for my whole life? I protect myself, Dad, and I know when I’m being taken advantage of.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he says, directing his words outwards at the growing crowd. He takes a step forward, and I close the distance between them and me, because I’ll be damned if he lays a finger on her. But he doesn’t touch her, he’s whispering furiously. “You already pissed me off this morning, don’t do it again, Cora. None of this matters,” he hisses. “The company is going to be sold and then I’ll be free. But either way, I’m not letting you and him be together, you can’t be.”
“Why not?” She asks.
“Because it’s not part of the plan,” Jack says viciously. “In order for this to work, neither of you can come out looking like the winners. So just shut up and stay quiet until after the company is sold, and maybe I’ll think about hiring you at my next company.”
What the hell is happening? “Jack, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Why is there a plan? Why would you make a plan to ruin us like that? This isn’t who I thought you were.”
“Oooh.” Cora places a hand to her head like she’s just figured something out. “Someone else found out too, didn’t they?” Jack stiffens, and I see the rage that enters his face. “This situation is so fucked up, Jack.”
“Cora—”
“You want to know why I’m really here as an intern?” she says to me, cutting him off. “It’s because Jack is in contempt of court and owes my mother eighteen years of child support.”
It feels like the air has been sucked out of the room. “What?”
“My mother always talked about the court case, and how someday she would find him and make him pay. But she never could, because he’s very good at using his money to hide. But I found him, and made him agree to pay it back. And I agreed not to say anything, provided he gave me this, and paid back the money. But you don’t get to ruin Michael’s life because of that. Certainly not when you’re stealing from him.”
There are hushed gasps around the room and I feel like the world is spinning. Cora continues. “When I came to see you Michael, I told you I had to talk to you about something important. Jack has been paying the child support—the bare minimum at a time. So, given my skills, I decided to see what possible reason there could be for him to not just pay what he owes at once and get over it.”
“Cora,” Jack seethes, “stop.”
“Turns out, Jack is broke. He’s broke because he’s invested all of his money into a business. A rival business: Takedown Clothing, which is bleeding money. So Jack doesn’t even have the money to order take out, let alone pay my mother. Instead, the money is being sent directly from the Tailor Me accounts. That’s what I came to tell you,” she aims the last at me.
I knew I had been missing something about the deal, and there it is. It all clicks into place, like a finished puzzle. “You invested in Takedown to drum up competition,” I say. “With the eventual thought that they would be bigger than us, more popular, and that we would be forced to sell out. But you would just switch from one company to the other.” It all makes sense now, and even if the plan is vicious, I have to admire it. It might have worked if it weren’t for Cora. “But because of the child support, you had to move up your plan. You wanted to sell so that you’d have enough money to pay off your debt and save your new company. And you weren’t afraid to use your own daughter to get it.”
Jack is sputtering, looking at the employees around the office, trying to see if they’ll support him. But a quick glance shows that there aren’t any friendly faces in the ones gathered. He points at me. “He sexually harassed my daughter! He’s the one you should be angry at, a boss taking advantage of an innocent girl!”
Cora laugh., “I’ll admit that we have had a lot of very hot, very consensual sex. In no way was I harassed, assaulted, or in any way forced to do something I didn’t want to do. Michael would never do that. Unlike you, who tried to have me seduce the investors from Anderson Financial who you were wooing to complete the buyout. Is that sexual harassment, Jack, to ask a woman to give sexual favors so your business will benefit?”
Cold rage floods through my veins. All this time I was trying to protect our friendship, to try to preserve what we had, and he was trying to stab me in the back. I don’t even know for how long this has been going on. I take a step closer to Jack, and he sees what’s on my face.
“Michael, we can work this out. You said it yourself; you know we can find a way that’s a compromise. After all, we built this together.”
“I thought we built it together,” I say, “but you can’t build something with someone if they’re actively trying to sabotage it. How much do you owe in child support?”
“Eighteen years worth,” Cora answers without faltering, “plus the cost of my tuition, which he promised to pay for my silence. In total, just shy of two million dollars.”
I nod, considering. “Jack, I think it’s time you retire. Your shares in Tailor Me are worth four million dollars. Subtract your debts to Cora and her mother and you’re left with two. I’ll pay you two million dollars today if you leave. But here’s the catch: If you leave, you leave forever. Cora and I don’t hear from you ever again. You disappear. Ellen, will you get my checkbook? And call security.”
I hear her footsteps moving quickly behind me, and it’s dead silence until she returns, and even then it’s only the sound of my pen on the paper. I hold out the check toward him. “Your choice. You’ll be leaving with or without the money. But if you don’t take it, I’ll turn your own threat back on you. By noon tomorrow, every newspaper in the country will know what a piece of shit you are.”
Jack stares at me, and I know he’s doing what I just had to do in my office—wrack his brain desperately for a way out of this mess. But there isn’t one. He saw to that. The security officers from the lobby enter, and I give them a nod. “Your choice, Jack.”
He snatches the check out of my hand and turns. He’s holding his head high as he’s escorted to the elevator bank by security, but he’s not fooling anyone. If he’s smart, he’ll never show his face here again. As soon as he’s gone, it’s like the room can breathe again, and it’s suddenly loud, with everyone talking at once. I turn to smile at Cora, but she’s not there. She’s not anywhere in the room.
Ellen taps me on the shoulder and whispers, “She took the stairs to the roof.”
“You’re a godsend, Ellen.”
“I know,” she says, and winks.
Now that everything is public, it’s time Cora and I had a talk.