15. Noelle
NOELLE
Istare at my laptop screen without seeing it, while the cursor blinks at me from an empty document. Outside my office door, the SME n You office is alive per usual: phones ringing, keyboards clacking, the occasional murmur of a consultant on a call. I hear none of it.
My mind is still stuck in last night. Edward’s hands. His mouth. The way out eyes met while he was inside of me. I feel a tingling between my legs.
And yet… It feels a little weird that I’ve moved on from Graham to Edward.
Not morally. No. Graham forfeited any right to my loyalty the moment he destroyed my career and torched our relationship because of my assistant.
But it’s a move I never could have predicted, much less imagined I’d follow through on.
Edward is so different from his brother it makes my stomach churn thinking of the years I stayed with Graham.
The excuses I made. The red flags I painted white.
I exhale and reach for my coffee mug. Empty. Of course.
Before I can push back from my desk, an email notification pops into view. I click it open out of reflex more than curiosity.
The sender name stops me cold.
It’s one of the people from my old office. One of the contacts I’d quietly reached out to weeks ago, asking them to keep an eye on anything unusual coming out of Graham’s corner of the building.
The subject line is blank. The body contains a single line: Graham sent this to the shredder room.
Attached is a hurriedly taken photo. I download it and zoom in, squinting at the slightly blurred image.
The Jordan & Jordan letterhead swims into focus at the top of the page.
My interest is instantly piqued. I comb through the document meticulously, tracing each line of dense corporate legalese. Then I stop and my eyes go wide.
I snatch my phone off the desk and dial Edward instantly. He answers on the third ring.
“Hey, I’m in a meeting,” he says.
“Can it wait?”
“I’m with the senior managers to arrange a temporary filling of Graham’s and Vanessa’s roles.”
I picture the conference room. Arthur. Compliance. The five department heads who voted to keep me in that briefing. All of them watching Edward take a phone call.
“So, yes…?” I ask.
He sighs. “Give me a moment.”
The call goes on hold. I press the phone harder against my ear, as if that might hurry him along. My knee bounces under the desk. When the line resumes, the sound of a coffee machine gurgles in the background—his office, probably. He’s put some distance between himself and the conference room.
“Let’s hear it, Noelle.”
I get straight to it. “First of all, is Graham in his office?”
“He slipped in and out earlier today. Why?”
“He’s going scorched earth.”
“What?” He sounds incredulous. “He’d be stupid to try anything that puts him in the spotlight again.”
“That’s why he’s now trying to clear or, at least, muddy his trails.”
“Out with it already, Noelle.”
I pull the photo back up on my screen, the J&J letterhead glaring at me like a taunt. “Graham sent some documents to be shredded today.”
“Huh.” He pauses. I can almost hear him connecting the dots. “Given he’s being investigated, I don’t reckon that’s a good thing.”
“No, it isn’t. But luckily for us, he’s just given us the noose to hang him with.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! One of my contacts sent me a photo of one of the documents. It’s from J&J, and names Graham as a third-party consultant.”
A long pause follows before Edward’s response. When he speaks again, his voice is slower now, deliberate. “Why would Graham be consulting for a consultancy firm?”
I feel a grin splitting my face. “Legitimacy, duh!” I shriek in delight, then catch myself, lowering my voice. “Even better, the document is a letter of intent for the first ever deal involving J&J and Whitmore Holdings.”
“Our real estate portfolio?”
“Bingo!” I giggle, then force myself back to seriousness. “Now, anyone can make the argument that Graham could have been on their books as a consultant before that investment. However, why would he be the chief adviser for a company advising his other company?”
“It makes no sense.” Edward’s voice grows quieter.
I move the phone to my other ear and lean forward, elbows on the desk. “Let me ask you this: were you able to have that sit-down with J&J? You were supposed to meet with them to discuss the Cartly project, weren’t you?”
“I was. But they cancelled. Said they were working remotely due to ongoing renovations.”
I snort loudly. “Awfully coincidental, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
I scroll down the photo, my eyes landing on the address line at the bottom of the letterhead. A slow, cold satisfaction spreads through my chest. “Would you like to guess the address on this letterhead?”
“Oh. I’ve got to be seated for this one.”
“You’ve been standing?” I frown, momentarily distracted.
“I thought it would be quick.”
“Oh. My bad. Are you seated now, my lord?”
“Shut up, Noelle.”
I cackle. As I recover to resume the conversation, another email notification pops up. Same sender. Multiple attachments this time. The subject line reads: Found more. Check these.
I click on Download All and wait a few seconds. My leg has stopped bouncing. I am very, very still.
“Hello?” Edward’s voice comes through the other end.
“Hey. Give me a minute, will you?” My voice is serious now. The playfulness is gone.
I click an image, then skim it. Then another. And another. The documents are all variations of the same theme: letters of intent, consulting agreements, internal J&J memos addressed to Graham. All of them bear his name. All of them list him as the sole decision-maker on the J&J side.
“Oh, dear!”
“What’s wrong?” He sounds concerned.
“Graham was chief adviser on every J&J deal with Whitmore Holdings.”
“That makes sense why the reps who came deferred to him. But it doesn’t prove much else.”
“True.” I’m still staring at my screen, scrolling faster now. “But these documents should also contain the names of the other representatives and their roles. They don’t.”
The silence on the other end of the line grows heavy.
“Where did you say the company is located again?” He asks.
“I didn’t.” I pause, my eyes fixed on the address line of the most recent document. “But if I say it, you’ll come to the same conclusion I just have.”
“Tell me.”
“135 South Church Street.”
“Where’s that?”
“George Town.”
“What state?” He sounds impatient.
“Country.”
“Country?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. What country?”
“The Cayman Islands.”
A pause. A hesitation. Another pause, followed by the frantic clacking of keyboards on his end.
“The fucking Ugland House?” Edward sounds furious.
“The fucking Ugland House,” I echo back.
I hear him exhale long and hard. I picture him in his office, a coffee machine going behind him, his knuckles turning white around his phone. “As the only rep on file, Graham has to be the sole employee of J&J.”
“That’s what I surmised, too.”
“Fuck!”
A dull thud echoes through the speaker, followed by the fluttering of paper—maybe a stack of documents he’s just swept off his desk. I wince but say nothing. When Edward speaks again, his voice is a low growl.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“Oh, not me. Keep your apologies for whoever has to clean that up.”
“I’m sorry to me, then, I guess.” He laughs mirthlessly. “How come we never noticed? It was right under our noses.”
“Well, Graham personally saw to the filing of everything related to J&J, himself. Since he claimed it was a subsidiary, I didn’t think much of it. At worst, I thought the brass didn’t want the staff snooping around classified information.”
“This is bad, Noelle.”
I pull back from my desk and lean into the backrest of my seat. “How bad?”
“Permanently ruin the Whitmore legacy on the board levels of bad. Our name may be on a building we may never again head.”
“Oh.” I am suddenly tongue-tied.
An uncomfortable silence settles between us. I can hear his breathing, the distant chime of the elevator. I think about everything he’s risked to get to this point and realize he’s about to risk even more.
“I guess there’s only one thing left to do,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“Go to the board.”
I sigh. My free hand moves to my temple, pressing against the faint throb building there. “Edward?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m here if you need me.”