7. Emily
Iwoke up once again with sun on my face. I had forgotten to close my curtains. I had to admit that did work as a good alarm to wake me up. But it also reminded me how good it had felt to wake up in bed beside Travis Ross.
I opened my eyes, glaring at the window like it had betrayed me and groaning when the sun shone even brighter into my eyes. My bed was not comfortable enough to tempt me to go back to sleep.
I let my eyes get reacquainted with the room and looked up at the faintly cracked paint on the ceiling, then at all my belongings piled up in the corner.
I lived in a one-bedroom apartment that did not afford me much space, so I had given up on getting proper storage furniture. My apartment was barely the size of the bathroom at Travis Ross’s penthouse.
I kicked off the scratchy covers and lay down, exhausted from the effort it took. This had been the state of my living arrangements since I chose to become a freelance journalist after leaving college.
Not many people realized that, even when I got my picture plastered all over the place, I didn’t get paid very much for my work. Few publications wanted to hire a journalist who cared more about her ideas of truth and justice than about what was profitable to write.
The one thing independent journalism offered me was the ability to work on any case I wanted to, instead of sitting in an office where I would be forced to drop a case because my superiors said so or not even be allowed to look into it because they believed my claims to be farfetched.
The sound of my alarm beeping reached my ears. I had woken up before it went off because of the sunlight streaming in. I reached out to turn it off, sighed, and sat up. I couldn’t lie here all day feeling sorry for myself. That wouldn’t help with the money problem or the truth and justice problem.
I picked up my phone, unlocked it and noticed a text from my mother. My heart ached as I read her message telling me I did not have to worry myself about my father’s hospital bill and I should not let it burden me.
I’ll find a way to take care of it, her message read. I always do. I love you.
I dropped the phone on the bed beside me and ran my hand up my face. How could I not be burdened by it? How could I leave my parents to figure it out for themselves, knowing how they’d been struggling for fifteen years?
After my father had begun to break down and started losing himself in the bottle to forget his sorrows, my mother had to get a job so she could take care of us. Unfortunately, my father simply could not find the will to carry on trying any longer.
We’d thought he would bounce back from being forced to sell the business, he’d spent his life building, to Ross Industries for next to nothing during the financial crash. It had been the only way to save our house and avoid ending up homeless with a child. But it seemed like losing his life’s work in such an unfair way had broken my father. The old him had been lost somewhere and he did not seem willing to get him back.
He never tried to look for a job to assist my mother, he simply drank and did nothing except mourn his loss. By the time I was in high school, the cirrhosis had begun to creep up on him. While I was in college, it had finally killed him—but not before leaving my mother under a mountain of medical debt.
My mother had done all she could to keep us from falling into poverty while my dad squandered the little that she brought in. She had never lost hope that he would recover.
When he had died, my mom had grieved for him, for the man she had hoped would make a comeback, but I was relieved. I could never tell if she knew how relieved I was, but whenever I tried to console her, she would always give me a knowing look. I had never been able to shake off the feeling that she knew how I felt about him dying.
Of course, I still thought it was messed up that my father’s death evoked such deep feeling of relief in me, but I knew that having him around would only have led to more devastation for my mom and I. He’d made it clear that he was never going to get better.
I was glad when my mom finally remarried, although it took her a while to finally let someone else in, since she was so focused on me and her work. My mom remarried around the time I graduated high school, and I was happy for her, but my stepfather and I did not spend enough time together to bond in the way a father and daughter could/should.
Still, I knew he brought my mother companionship and joy, just like she did him and I liked that they had each other.
I was glad to take on his last name when my mom changed her name to his and I was content to be called his child. He wasn’t rich, but he had enough to take care of my mother. We didn’t have to live as horribly as we had during the last years of my father’s life.
Recently, he had been climbing a ladder to fix the roof of the house and he had fallen and cracked his hip. My mother had informed me that he would need to have hip replacement surgery, which meant tens of thousands of dollars more in medical bills. His fall was the beginning of a familiar nightmare replaying itself.
I had wanted to pitch in so I could help, but my mom knew I was struggling and she did not want me to send money.
I felt terrible. I should be able to help them in their time of need. While we were not very close, he had been my father in every way he could, and he had been a wonderful husband to my mother. I wished that now when he needed me, there was a way that I could help.
This was why I needed to crack this Travis Ross case as soon as possible. Concrete proof of wrongdoing by such a high-profile billionaire was sure to generate dozens of new contracts and job offers. I might even be able to score the kind of pay rate that would ensure my mother was never buried in debt again.
But. But. I squeezed my eyes shut, my head pounding as I saw the image of Travis sleeping angelically in bed beside me.
I had gotten into journalism to chase justice and expose those who did wrong. In the beginning it had been easy, but those were the little people who were sloppy and did not wield much power to stop me.
They had superiors who were complicit in similar or worse crimes and who, so far, I could not touch. Superiors who controlled things from their mansions while pretending to care about the populace. These were the people I wanted to go after, the big fish. Travis Ross was the king of those—the biggest and the worst.
I remembered the moment I saw Ross Brothers’ announcement that they would be giving ten percent to the foundation to help those who needed it. For the first month or two, it was all I heard about on every single news outlet and magazine.
They were all singing the praises of the brothers, philanthropists, who cared about the people.
It made me furious every time I saw it. One day I had happened upon a news magazine that had the brothers on the front pages but instead of praising them, it questioned their motives. I was so glad.
Ross Brothers: Should We Really Trust Them So Easily?
The news magazine had printed that in bold and I had never grabbed anything off a newsstand so fast. I flipped to the page they were featured in. It questioned their motives and warned people to not be so quick to trust them and sing their praises. It talked about how their background was not exactly trustworthy and how people knew that their management was not going to be any different from the previous ones. All they were doing was virtue signaling for public attention despite the fact that they had not done anything yet. They were just making vain promises and taking the public as fools.
I had been so impressed with the article. These were the kinds of people I wanted to work with. I had gone in search of the publishing house and that was how I met Jonathan.
Jonathan West was an old man, old enough to be my father. I had told him quite plainly that I would love to work with him and when he asked why, I had brought up the article and told him I wanted to go after justice.
“Going after the Ross’s is not something most people want to do. For the longest time, they have believed themselves to be untouchable.”
Those were the words he had spoken to me when I told him of my intention. I had told him my father had been one of their victims and the effect it had on us. I was certain there were more victims like us, but nobody had gone after them and I had been too young to do anything back then. I was not too young anymore and I was willing to go against them.
Jonathan had explained that he had also been a victim of the previous Ross management. Travis’s dad sold him bad assets which had led to his company going under and he wanted to take his revenge. After his company had been destroyed and he had gone bankrupt, he had been unable to pay for the heart surgery his daughter needed which had ended up leading to her death.
“My daughter… She was everything to me. I didn’t care about the company going under… I didn’t care if I had to lose everything… but not her. Not my Amelia. I was forced to watch her die because Ross took everything from me. I was ignored even after going to kneel in his office to beg for help.”
He had understandably been unable to forgive Ross for it. He knew their company was built off the sorrows of others who had lost everything they had, some losing their lives as a result.
He had been suicidal, but for the memory of his daughter, he had started over, building his finances to start this publishing company. He had sworn to publish their atrocities one day.
We had bonded over our hatred and need for revenge and decided to work together. Michael and I would get the information he needed, and he would fund our work.
If I managed to find out the truth about the Ross brothers, he”d promised to give me a permanent position where I had full freedom to pick and choose what articles to work on. I”d get articles I”d have to work on, of course, but also the freedom to pursue my own stories. Basically, I”d have a stable salary and my freedom. Just one more reason for me to want to show the world how horrible the Ross brothers were.
This was another reason I needed to finish this case. There was so much banking on it.
I got up and headed for the tiny bathroom in my one-bedroom apartment. I needed to get ready to see Jonathan.
I arrived at his office, saw his greying hair bent over some documents, and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he said, not looking up. I took the seat opposite him.
“Good day, Jonathan.”
“Good day.” He looked up from his pages and nudged his head. “I take it you have something for me since you’re here?”
He smiled slightly. Jonathan was a kind man with sad eyes. He was nice but not in an overly welcoming way. I returned his smile before speaking.
“Ah yes. Well since the last time I filled you in, we have managed to crack the information on the phone, however some accounts needed more than decryption, we needed his biometrics to get in. Michael was able to get me into Calypso and we managed to get a glass with Travis’s fingerprints. Michael is currently working on lifting the prints so, we can get into his cloud account and retrieve the information we need.”
“Thank you for filling me in and for your work so far. Will that be all?” he said after he quietly took in the information I just gave him.
“Well, I was wondering if I could ask a favor.” His brows raised in a questioning expression. “My stepdad broke his hip and is currently in the hospital. I need to get some money so he can have hip replacement surgery. I know it’s not really for the case, but I need to be able to send something home. You could make it like an advance,” I said desperately, hoping he would give me the money.
I watched as he thought about it, his chin resting on hand.
“I wonder if my Amelia would have been anything like you…” He smiled sadly. “Alright, fine. I will have some money wired into your account. But you need to make sure you crack this case and open up the account real quick.”
“Of course, I’ll go right over to Michael’s as soon as I leave here.” I was grateful. Sometimes I wondered if he rarely refused me because I reminded him of his daughter. He made a gruff sound and waved me off before returning to his work, signaling that our conversation was over.