Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Francis
I don’t know if it was the high from my successful first event the previous night, the consummation of my relationship with Kendall, or my elation at the thoughtful gift he’d brought me, but I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at on my porch. Until I did.
And then I screamed.
“Francis, come back inside.”
Kendall’s firm voice and hand on my arm made me flinch, and I juggled the plaque in my arms.
“Come inside, baby,” he said, more gently this time. He pulled me back inside and leaned out to look around before shutting and locking the door.
The pounding of footsteps on the stairs above us startled me again, until I heard Derek calling my name.
“It’s okay! I’m okay.” I looked at Kendall and nodded. He took the plaque and tool bag. “I’m okay.”
He placed his hands on my biceps and looked at me. “Baby, do you have camera feed for your porch?”
Dazed, I shook my head, then I realized what he was asking.
“Yeah. Yes, let’s go in my office.”
Derek came around the corner and pulled me into his arms. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Derek, will you call our moms and make sure they stay inside with the doors locked and alarm set until I figure this out?”
“Yeah, yeah, but what—”
Roger and Arnie were right on Derek’s heels, and they put their arms around him as I led Kendall into my office.
“Pretty sure the alarm guy said the feed stays in the cloud for two weeks.” I pulled up the app, clicked on the events, and scrolled through them until I got to three in the morning.
A car pulled into the driveway, staying in the darkness, with no lights on.
There were no plates on what appeared to be a beat-up Lexus.
A lone person climbed out of the car covered from head to toe in black with sunglasses on.
Their lower face was covered, and they carried a bundle in their arms. They came up onto the porch, unwrapped the bundle and dumped out the contents, held up a middle finger to the camera, and walked back to their car, thinking they would get away with this act of horror.
But they’d made a fatal mistake.
“Kendall? Can you call the police for me and ask someone to come out. I need to make a report.”
“Yeah, baby. Are you okay?”
I gave him my bravest smile and exhaled. “I am.”
If this would have happened before my opening event, if I hadn’t made this move and had success getting everything started, I might have been more thrown by my past paying me a visit. But with Kendall by my side, helping without hovering, I knew I could handle it.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. Not of Robin LeBlanc.
Roger and Arnie went to look outside and came back cursing.
“Who the fuck would do that kind of twisted shit?”
“I have an idea,” I said. Kendall had just hung up with the police, and he came right back to my side. “Let me talk while I cook. It’ll help.”
I realized I had a tin of steel-cut oats and that they were easy to make in the Instant Pot.
I started pouring in the right amount of water, milk, maple syrup, cinnamon, and oats, set the timer, and then pulled a bunch of fruit out of the fridge to cut up.
Arnie, Derek, and Roger sat on the barstools while Kendall handled the coffee.
“Since it appears that someone else has violated their court order—again—I feel okay talking about the details with you guys. You’re all here, and the police will likely talk to you about it anyway, so I’ll tell you.”
“Baby, you don’t have to—”
“It’s okay.” I put a hand on his cheek. “It really is now. I’m okay.” I pushed up on my tiptoes and kissed him, which got snickers from our audience, but it put the smile back on his face, albeit a concerned one.
“Like I told Kendall, I don’t come from money.
Neither of us do,” I said, gesturing to Derek with my knife.
“A little over a year ago, almost a year and a half now, I discovered some discrepancies at work. I was in finance, Menlo Valley Financial Group in Silicon Valley. My dad’s brother, my uncle Kyle, hired me out of grad school, and I worked my way up to senior analyst. I worked under one of the managing directors and was next in line for a VP spot.
” I looked at the guys’ blank faces and laughed.
“None of that really matters to the story. I went to my boss, Robin LeBlanc, and told him I was concerned about the numbers on one of our team’s biggest accounts.
He told me it was fine, that he was working on it with in-house counsel, not to worry.
“The next few weeks, we were working late hours, just him and I from our group, trying to nail down the particulars of this account, and I brought up the numbers again. He told me to leave it alone—without the reassurances this time—and we left for the night. A week or so later, they announced a round of promotions. I wasn’t listed.
I went to Robin’s office before going home and asked if he had a minute. ”
I’d finished cutting the fruit and realized I’d probably overdone it, as I spied the huge pile. I put it all in a big bowl and pulled out brown sugar, granola, chopped nuts, and shredded coconut to put into serving bowls.
“He was all smiles, getting ready to go out to dinner with some of the other MDs, and I just asked him. Why had he told me I was next in line for VP if it wasn’t in the cards?”
I blew out a breath and shook out my hands. Kendall reached out, and I let him pull my back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I continued my tale.
“He met me in the doorway, stared at me for a minute, gave my cheek a slap—not hard but not affectionate, either. Then he grabbed my balls, squeezed, and told me, ‘Guess you grew a pair. Didn’t think you had it in you.’ He told me he’d see me the next day and to close the door on my way out.”
There were grumbles from the barstools, and Kendall’s arms tightened a little around me, but I kept going, feeling better the more I got out.
“I was too stunned to even react to what had happened. I mean, who does that? I went home, returned the next day, and found out he’d left on a business trip.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the account—yeah, I was more worried about that than the fact he’d put his hands on me.
I knew if the deal went sideways, it would really hurt our company.
So I went to my uncle and told him what I’d found.
He asked me what Robin said about it, and I told him the truth, that Robin claimed he was working with in-house counsel, and I doubted that was true. ”
I looked at Derek. “Uncle Kyle said to leave it alone, to let Robin handle it. And I thought I could do that, but then Robin came back from his trip, and his behavior became more volatile. We worked every night until midnight for a week, and he was frantic, couldn’t get the numbers right.
I finally spoke up and told him he needed to talk to Kyle, and…
he backhanded me. Split my lip. I was so shocked.
I just looked at him. He told me to get my shit and get out. So I did.”
“Are you kidding me? Francis!”
I gave Derek a sad smile just as the Instant Pot beeped, indicating the oats were done.
I reached for a stack of bowls, and Kendall pulled spoons out of the drawer.
I started serving everyone, and they piled toppings on theirs, though they were mostly just stirring things in their bowls while giving me their undivided attention.
“Look, I have a big mouth, and sometimes it gets me into hot water, but no one had ever gotten physical with me. Not even in high school or college. I didn’t know what to do.
Like, nowhere in my MBA program did I ever take ‘What To Do When Your Boss Hits You 101.’ It wasn’t covered in one of those cheesy workplace harassment videos we had to watch every year or so.
“I went to work the next day, and my friend Justine asked me what happened to my lip. I didn’t want to tell her, but she figured it out.
She knew I hadn’t been anywhere but work and home, and she never liked Robin.
She’d refused to work on his team. She told me if I didn’t tell HR, she would.
I went back to Uncle Kyle. He couldn’t exactly ignore my face, so he told me he’d take care of it. ”
“Kyle didn’t take care of it, did he?”
Derek and Max never really cared much for the other Liang men.
I hopped up onto the counter across from the bar. Kendall stood beside me, his bowl in his hand, but he wasn’t eating either.
“Later that same day, I was packing up to go home, and everyone else was gone. I didn’t even know Robin was in his office. He called me in… I wanted to leave, but this was my job. I’d worked so hard for this place.”
I had to sit my bowl down and take a couple of deep breaths. Kendall put down his bowl and placed his hand on my lower back, his blue eyes trained on me. That gave me the strength to finish the story.
“I won’t go into details. It was bad. He… assaulted me. And he fired me. I called Max, and he picked me up and took me to the ER.” I let out a breath and gazed at Kendall. “It could have been so much worse. I got away with a strained neck and bruised ribs.”
Kendall’s hand closed around mine, and, with his other, he rubbed my back.
“Max is Derek’s brother,” I explained to Kendall.
“His girlfriend Mei is an associate at a law firm that deals with employment law, and she kind of threatened me that if I didn’t talk to one of the partners, she was going to call the press.
That was enough to convince me. They helped me file a lawsuit.
Uncle Kyle was named initially, until he agreed to testify on my behalf.
The settlement included Robin losing his job, but I initially agreed not to press criminal charges against him.
The company didn’t want the details of the assault getting out.
I was sworn not to tell anyone what happened, and in exchange, they paid me.
After fees, taxes etcetera, I received just over thirty million dollars. ”
Everyone’s eyes bugged out except Derek’s.