Chapter Three #2
‘We didn’t know it back then, that you were innocent,’ Ruth Boxall said quietly. ‘I didn’t, and Ashley didn’t either. And in any case… This might come as a surprise, but she doesn’t even—’
‘Save it for someone who cares,’ Nico snapped. The old injustice, and the accompanying fury, rose in him in a hot tide and he didn’t have time for these feelings. He’d come here for one purpose—to destroy the last remaining Woodward holding—nothing else.
‘As for believing I was guilty…’ he couldn’t resist adding bitingly, ‘The twenty-year-old hireling managed to embezzle millions even though nothing was ever found in his bank account, his lifestyle hadn’t changed at all and he’d only been working for the company for six months? That all makes such perfect sense.’
‘Chase explained all that,’ Ruth protested.
‘In court.’ She sounded regretful, which made Nico seethe with fury.
Even if Phillip Boxall or Ashley hadn’t known—and that was an absolutely enormous ‘if’—the idea that anyone thought it mattered that they were sorry now, sixteen years later, just added insult to grievous injury.
‘He said you’d sent the money to some relatives in Italy,’ the woman explained.
‘There were bank transactions; they showed them in court…’
‘Transactions he’d made in my name, to people I didn’t even know.’ Nico shook his head, the old anger racing like fire through his veins once more, threatening to ignite with the injustice of it. Dismantling Infinite Innovations was hardly fair recompense for all he’d suffered, but it was a start.
On the sofa, Ashley stirred, and Nico stooped down once again.
‘An EMT is coming,’ he murmured, annoyed by the sense of protectiveness that surged up in him, just as it had all those years ago, but he told himself it was surely a normal response to any woman in distress.
He was a decent man, despite what Ashley Woodward and her sidekick might think of him.
‘Did she recognise you?’ the woman asked in a hoarse voice. ‘She wouldn’t, though—’
‘No,’ Nico cut her off. He had no interest in hearing why Ashley wouldn’t recognise him. He’d already realised himself how unimportant the boy he’d been was to her.
‘And will you explain—?’
‘I won’t waste my time. In about fifteen minutes, all of you will be unemployed and this company will no longer exist. Explanations aren’t necessary.’
Ruth shook her head slowly, almost in wonder. ‘You’re so ruthless,’ she observed, her tone sorrowful rather than condemning.
Nico straightened and met her gaze head on. ‘Five years in prison will do that to you,’ he replied evenly, and for a second they simply stared at each other, until Ruth looked away first.
Nico glanced back down at Ashley and saw that her eyes were fluttering open.
She gazed up at him, dazed, as colour crept into her cheeks and light into her eyes.
Nico stared down at her, determinedly unmoved.
His conversation with Ruth Boxall had raked up all the old wounds and feelings again—the shock and horror of his arrest, his stammering explanation, his desperate plea…
The whole thing had been a stitch-up from start to finish—his hiring, the responsibility Chase Woodward had supposedly entrusted him with, his invitation to that ball and his arrest. Everything had been orchestrated by the father of the woman now sprawled at his feet.
And she’d been there, had seen it and done nothing—less than nothing. She’d played her own part, unwittingly or not, and for that she deserved everything she got.
And yet, as much as Nico wanted to turn away from her now, he found he couldn’t. Reluctantly, his mouth set in a grim, hard line, he stooped down and reached out one hand to help her up.
Ashley blinked up at him, still dazed as she reached out to take his hand—and then yanked it back.
Why was she lying down? Ashley’s head was whirling, her stomach seething, as she almost took Nico Galletti’s hand before she remembered that he was about to fire not just her, but all her employees, and she yanked it back.
This man was a monster.
‘Ashley…’
She turned to see Ruth gazing at her in concern. ‘You were out for a while.’
Silently Ashley eased herself into a sitting position, her head in her hands, her whole body still reeling.
She couldn’t believe this was happening.
In all her worst imaginings, she hadn’t considered the utterly grim possibility that Nico Galletti would destroy her company simply for the sake of it.
He might absorb it, yes, take it as his own, but even in the worst-case scenario in which she and her board were all fired, she’d thought some employees would be able to keep their jobs. That some of the inventors she believed in so passionately would still have a place to live out their dreams.
But this…this was willful, wanton destruction, and she couldn’t think why…
until she remembered what she’d said about her father.
Ashley knew her father had hurt a lot of people with his treachery: investors who had trusted him as well as employees who had believed in him, like Ruth’s husband Phillip, who had gone to prison with her father even though Ruth had insisted he was innocent.
Had Nico Galletti been similarly hurt by her father? But surely he had to know she’d had nothing to do with her father’s fraud and embezzlement? The modesty of her life now was proof enough she hadn’t benefited from the millions her father had spirited away into offshore accounts before his arrest.
Slowly Ashley lifted her head from her hands. ‘Did my father do something to you?’ she asked, and Nico gave a short, harsh laugh.
‘You could say that.’
‘Ashley…’ Ruth murmured, and Ashley swivelled to face her friend, even though it made her head swim.
‘Do you know?’ she asked, sensing something in Ruth’s tone, and Ruth glanced at Nico before nodding tautly. Ashley shook her head, also not a good idea, she discovered, when she felt so faint and nauseous. ‘Can someone please tell me what is going on?’ she demanded.
Before Nico or Ruth could answer—not that either seemed inclined to—a knock sounded at the door. Nico called for the person to enter, a fact which rankled, because it was her office… Even if, Ashley realised with a plunging sensation, it wasn’t any more.
‘This is an EMT,’ Nico informed her shortly, nodding at the man. ‘He’ll have you checked out.’
‘What—?’
‘You fainted,’ he explained, sounding impatient now. ‘I will not be accused of any kind of cruelty or neglect when it comes to the logistics of this takeover.’
Ashley had to laugh at that, a short, sharp sound. ‘So, it’s not cruelty when you’re destroying my whole company for no reason?’
His eyes flashed then, streaks of silver that reminded her of lightning—and gave her the same kind of electric charge. Ashley jerked back as if she’d been struck, even though no one had moved.
‘Hardly no reason,’ Nico said in a quietly lethal voice, and then he turned and walked out of the room.
‘Ruth…’ Ashley began, and she shook her head.
‘We’ll talk after you’ve been checked out.’ Her old friend sounded so defeated but, Ashley realised, also something else: something that made her feel even uneasier. She needed to figure out what was going on, why Nico Galletti had targeted her company…and then decide what she could do about it.
Fifteen minutes later, having had all her vitals taken by the efficient EMT and choked down an energy drink and a granola bar, Ashley slipped out of her office, determined to get the bottom of whatever mystery she’d stumbled on, figure out how her father had hurt Nico Galletti and then convince the man that destroying her company was not the right kind of revenge.
Simple. Although, when she remembered that fierce look in Nico’s eyes, maybe not…
As Ashley came out to the open-plan office, she felt as if she’d come upon a funeral. All her employees sat slumped at their desks, looking shell-shocked. A couple of them were crying quietly.
‘Let me guess,’ she said heavily. ‘Nico Galletti…’
‘Just fired us all,’ Tom, one of her recent hires, said, sounding despondent. ‘We have ten minutes to clear out our desks.’
‘He only gave me five,’ Ashley told him, trying for a wry note but, she feared, only sounding bitter.
How could Galletti be so cruel? These people had done nothing wrong.
Didn’t he care about due process, severance packages, a sense of decency?
Nico Galletti didn’t seem to concern himself with any of those kinds of things, and certainly not the last.
Fury spiked through her. The man really was a monster.
‘Where is he?’ she asked her employees, and Tom shrugged.
‘He left.’
‘Left?’ So he’d lobbed a grenade into her office, her whole life, and then just strolled away from the wreckage? Typical.
‘Just a few minutes ago,’ Denise add, an administrative assistant and single mum of two. ‘He said his staff would make sure we were gone.’
Ashley shook her head in despair. These people needed their jobs, or at the very least some kind of severance. She could not let Galletti treat them this way.
Fired by both outrage and a desperate sense of purpose, she whirled around and strode back towards the hall.
‘Where are you going?’ Tom called.
‘After him,’ Ashley shouted over her shoulder with grim determination. She’d taken too many things in her life lying down to let this one pass. Nico Galletti was going to know the full force of her anger.
Knowing the lift would be too slow, Ashley made for the stairs, clattering down twelve fights in a way that left her breathless but even more determined. Down in the foyer, she sprinted for the front doors—just to glimpse Nico Galletti stepping into a limousine.
‘Stop!’ The word came out in a roar that had the security guard startling. Ashley raced for the doors, hurling them open and hurtling through, stumbling once in her pumps so that pain blazed through her ankle, and then half-sprinting, half-limping to the car door that was just about to close.
‘You can’t do this!’ she burst out as she yanked open the door, and then, her ankle giving out in another blaze of pain, she pitched forward with a yelp of surprise…landing right on top of Nico Galletti.