Chapter 20 Conflict and Cooperation #2
Andreas was heading toward me, a gravity I could feel across the room. He closed the distance and kissed me lightly on the cheek.
Grandfather’s voice got sharp. “Is it because that Kristiansen boy adopted you?”
I could feel Andreas’s entire body tense with the words “Kristiansen boy,” but I ignored it.
“Yes. But if Andreas hadn’t adopted me, I never would’ve been given access to the documents that proved Dad’s innocence, and that Mom was right all along.
I couldn’t have done any of this if I hadn’t agreed to the adoption. ”
“I hate that you’re giving up those shares. Why can’t you keep them?” I heard him sigh on the other side of the line, the sound familiar enough to conjure a childhood memory of being walked to the park and fed fist-sized slices of bakery bread.
“Because we have to hand everything over to the police. Once it all comes out, you will petition to have the civil suit overturned and the shares will be yours. Mom and Dad deserve to be vindicated. Once, uh—” I stopped. Andreas stood right in front of me, his arms at his sides, his frown intense.
He’d listened to every syllable, and I realized that this was the first time Andreas had heard any of this information from me. His eyes told me he had opinions.
“Grandpa, let me call you back. Give me an hour. Okay?”
“Okay, sweetie. I’ll talk to you in an hour.” He hung up.
I dropped my hand to my side and straightened.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “You are giving up the shares? After everything, you’re giving them to your grandfather?”
I exhaled, all the air leaving me in a single whoosh.
“Listen, I have proof—as of last night, remember the call I received after dinner? I have proof your brother Henrik forged my father’s signature on the data sale documents, and that Henrik—and potentially Oskar—were involved in framing him.
Once I hand over this proof, Henrik will be arrested for fraud, and then the dominoes will start to fall. ”
He blinked twice, frown deepening, jaw tight. “Why would you hand this information over to the police?”
I stared at him. “Are you kidding? How else can Henrik be punished? I think he killed my dad.”
Andreas responded instantly: “Yes. Obviously!”
That made me stop. I stood very still. “What do you mean ‘obviously’? Do you know something you’re not sharing with me?”
He paced, hands flexing at his sides. “I have no hard evidence, if that is what you are asking. But who else could it be? Henrik has always been the one to get his hands dirty. It makes sense that it was him.”
A cold ripple moved down my back. I didn’t think it made me paranoid to worry that Andreas had already set some multistep, 4D scheme in motion, and that by the time the police got involved, Henrik would be in a pine box or the bottom of the Hudson.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I said, “Andreas, what did you do? Please tell me you haven’t done anything to Henrik.”
He stopped and looked at me, face unreadable. “Nothing directly to him. Yet.”
“What does that mean?” My voice sounded unsteady.
“The pieces are all in place,” he said. “He took your dad’s life. Of course he should suffer.”
. . . WHAT?
My frustration suddenly detonated. “This is the problem! This is why we will never work!”
His eyes widened and I could see my words genuinely startled him. Andreas reached for me, but I twisted away, heading for the hallway that led to my old bedroom.
He followed, two steps behind. “What? What did I do? Are you saying you do not want Henrik to pay for his crimes?”
I yanked open the closet, grabbed my suitcase, tossed it onto the bed. Andreas stood in the doorway, face pinched with confusion and anger. Then he rushed forward, moving to block me from the closet and grabbing the handle of my bag. “Wait. Talk to me. Yell at me, but please, talk to me.”
I growled. “You can’t keep making decisions for me.”
Setting my bag down on the ground, he said, “I—I do not think of it that way. I am merely keeping your hands clean.”
“But I want your hands clean, too!” My voice was harsh, the words ricocheting off the bare walls, and I told myself to calm down.
Gripping my forehead, I tried again. “Of course I want Henrik to pay for what he did, and I have concrete evidence that will ensure he does pay. He will be arrested and he will be tried and he will go to jail. But we are handing all the evidence over to the police so that we can do this above board. I need to prove my parents’ innocence.
If you go all vigilante on me, and Henrik is punished outside the bounds of the law, how am I supposed to prove that my dad didn’t commit fraud and that my mom wasn’t a hysterical, paranoid fool?
I can’t. Not unless we do this through the legal system. ”
He listened, breathing hard, and then said, “But if you do that, you will lose all those shares. They belong to you.”
I met his gaze, steady as I could. “But they don’t belong to me. I did nothing to earn them. I had nothing to do with the creation or the success of Genetix.”
He was nearly vibrating with incredulity. “But your father did. Every success that Genetix has is based on your father’s work.”
I nodded. “I agree. But his work is not my work. I have my own research, my own projects. If I become a millionaire or a billionaire, let it be because I’ve earned it.”
Andreas began pacing the room, from the foot of the bed to the window and back.
“I don’t understand you, Samantha. After everything we have done, everything we have been through.
How can you throw it all away? You say those shares do not belong to you, then who do they belong to?
Why do they belong to your grandfather more than they belong to you? ”
I braced myself for his reaction, drew in a breath, and said, “I don’t think they belong to my grandfather more than they belong to me, which is why I’m going to encourage him to sign them over to the employees of Genetix.”
He stopped. He stared at me, stunned. “You are going to give the company away?”
I shrugged, though my heart hammered. “It’s what my dad would have done. He believed in science for the public good. It’s not about the money. It’s about vindicating him. Clearing my mother’s name. Restoring what was stolen.”
He started to laugh, but it was the kind of laugh you heard at funerals—hollow, shocked, a bit dangerous. He ran a hand through his hair, then sat down heavily on the bed, hands folded in his lap.
I gave him space to process. I didn’t try to fix his feelings or make him okay with my decision. I waited until his breathing slowed, until his face softened, and then I joined him on the bed, sitting a careful distance away.
Hesitating, I reached out and placed a hand on his back, feeling the tension there.
“I hope you can support me in this,” I said, voice soft but unwavering.
“As you said, I made this decision a long time ago. And I hope you can agree this is my decision to make, not yours, not anyone else’s.
I know my own mind, and I feel very strongly that this is the right thing to do. ”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly, then looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “You have already decided. Nothing I say will make a difference.”
“Yes. It has always been more important to me to prove my father’s innocence and my mother’s stability than it has been for me to inherit those shares.
At first, sure, I wanted to believe that they belonged to me.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize, they didn’t.
My priority has always been for the truth to come out. ”
He studied his hands for a while, then finally exhaled, a long, slow release. “I will support you,” he said. “But I do not understand it. Not fully.”
“That’s all I can ask.” I tucked my clasped hands beneath my chin, afraid to get my hopes up quite yet.
He gave a wry smile. To me, it seemed half sad, half proud. Andreas reached out to touch my hands. “Okay.”
His touch gave me the confidence to add, “Whatever plan or plot you have in motion against Henrik, I want you to put a stop to it.”
He stiffened, then nodded. “If that is what you truly wish, then that is what I will do.”
“Do you promise?” I squeezed his hand with both of mine.
“Yes. I promise.” He squeezed me back, but sounded defeated.
I narrowed my eyes. “No loopholes? Nothing you’re not telling me? Do I need to get you to sign a piece of paper or a contract? Is there anything I’m missing or words you’re using to make me misunderstand?”
He met my gaze, full on. “No,” he said, voice stark. “I promised I would stop my plan and I will. I will do what you want because you are right, this should be your decision and only your decision. I will . . . support you.”
Relief swept through me, so physical I nearly collapsed.
But before I could savor the moment, he added, “And I know that if I make any attempt to trick you or manipulate you or try to force you to see things my way, it would only jeopardize our relationship and our newfound trust. I would never do anything to jeopardize your trust ever again.”
Something in the center of my chest melted. Acting on instinct, I leaned over. I kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
He tightened his hold before I could draw away.
“You should know, Henrik might be stupid and violent, but he does have eyes and ears inside of Genetix and elsewhere. If you found evidence against him, no doubt he already knows about it. And since he is stupid and violent, this knowledge will make him desperate. You need to be careful. Until he is in jail and stripped of monetary resources, you should increase the number of bodyguards following you. And you might want to keep a guard with you inside work from now on. Tara would be a good choice.”
I absorbed his statements, the grim weight of them. “Is there anything else I should know?”
He placed his palm on my cheek, gentle. “I do not know if this will help, but he cannot see out of his right eye. Cosmetically, it looks fine, but he lost his vision after a fight in college. I know you take self-defense classes with Tara. If, despite being careful, he manages to grab you, target his right side. He is slow to react when attacks come from the right.”
That, at least, I could file away. “Thank you, Andreas.”
He pulled me into an embrace, careful not to squeeze too tightly, as if I was fragile and he didn’t want to risk damaging the new trust between us.
I pressed my forehead to his and said, “I know you’re not happy about this. But knowing that I can trust you makes me very happy.”
He smiled, but it looked melancholy. And intensely grumpy. “Well, as long as you are happy.”
He sounded grumpy, too. I was not about to fix it.
Instead, I patted his chest and said, “You need to get used to not plotting for me. Or against me for that matter.”
He rolled his eyes. “I would never plot against you.”
I gave him my best skeptical glare.
He tilted his head side to side, as if considering, then said, “I might plot to get you naked, to do things to your body, but never to manipulate you or hurt you in a way that means you would have difficulty trusting me again.”
I laughed, a real laugh. It felt good. “And you can’t plot on my behalf either. Not unless you consult me first and receive my consent.”
“Fine.” He sighed, long-suffering, resigned, and stood up. Giving me his back, he paced a few steps away. “I guess now would be a good time to tell you that Roman instructed me to wear gray sweatpants whenever you are around.”
I blinked, confused. “Wait. Why would Roman tell you to wear gray sweatpants whenever I’m around?”
Andreas turned, looked down at himself, then back up. “Roman claimed gray sweatpants and tight T-shirts would make me irresistible to you. In the interest of full disclosure, I thought you should know.”
I looked at his fitted black T-shirt, and then at the gray sweatpants that did, in fact, leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. And I realized that Roman had absolutely nailed it.
Throwing my head back, I laughed. Chess grand masters and their schemes.
Even so, I would definitely be sending Roman Buckley a thank-you note. For science. And for everything else.