CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
There was a cracking sound like a bone breaking as a Y-shaped branch of light flickered across the bruise-coloured sky above New York. The fierce storms that had been predicted by weather forecasters all week had hit the city that afternoon.
But nature’s most powerful pyrotechnic display was like a damp squib in comparison to the tension in the HCI boardroom.
Lounging back in his chair, Harris scanned the faces of the people sitting around the table, a slight narrowing of his eyes the only sign that he was even listening to the debate taking place.
‘Enough.’
He spoke softly, because he could. Because everyone in the room was paid to listen to him. Then again, they would still listen even if no money were involved. Wealth was not a prerequisite of leadership.
It was one of the few things his father had taught him and maybe that was why he had always remembered it, because evidence of the father-son bond they nominally shared was scant and mostly negative.
But that had stuck, and so he had trained himself to speak with intention and conviction, to always be prepared and to get to the point. And not to shout. Speaking calmly and quietly made people stop and listen and being heard gave you power.
His father had taught him that as well. His mother too. Growing up, he had felt neither seen nor heard.
Or wanted?
His spine stiffened against the leather upholstery, and he pushed the question away, reluctant to even acknowledge it within the privacy of his head. The past was unassailable. Fixed. It was history. There was no point in wasting time and energy on it. What mattered was the present and here he was respected, and for good reason. He had built a business from the ground up and he was taking it to the stars. Metaphorically and literally.
HCI was currently in the process of finessing a remote AI-powered lunar module, which, if things went according to plan, would be searching for minerals on the moon’s surface roughly this time next year.
Unfortunately, due to his impetuous and ill-judged attempt to expose Tiger McIntyre, things were no longer going to plan. Not only was his reputation under scrutiny but his shareholders were rattled. Enough for him to call his C suite into the boardroom for this unscheduled meeting.
There was no direct evidence linking him personally to the hacking of Tiger’s server and plenty of people would think it was just one billionaire throwing shade at another, but shareholders hated conflict and scandal.
The irony was that he hated it too, but Tiger pressed all his buttons. Which was why he’d gone and hired Sydney and it had seemed to make perfect sense at the time. Tiger was known to cut corners and blur lines. All he’d had to do was prove it. The idea that he would end up in the firing line simply hadn’t ever occurred to him.
‘This is getting us nowhere.’
A drumroll of frustration, irritation too, because he wasn’t the bad guy here, vibrated against his ribs as he stared down at his laptop, his eyes fixing on the headline that played on his name: What a Carve-Up!
It had started small. Just a couple of carefully worded paragraphs about rumours of IP theft and industrial espionage on a blog online.
Naturally, he hadn’t been named as the perpetrator, but his was a niche industry. There were only so many people it could be. Then again, the Internet was a rumour mill. Surely no rational person would be swayed by something so random and half-baked and, having run it past his legal team and his head of Comms, he had taken their advice and decided to simply ignore it. To do otherwise would be to give it credence, to fan the flames that would shrivel and die of their own accord if deprived of the oxygen of publicity.
And that was what had happened. Everything had gone quiet.
Job done. Problem solved.
Until today at five o’clock, Eastern Standard Time, when everything had come crashing down around his ears.
Because of course it wasn’t just any blog. The Bit Bucket might have started out as a nervy, acerbic column by MIT dropout, Chase Fordham, but it was now the go-to destination for anyone looking to take the pulse of big business.
In other words, those two paragraphs were actually a baited hook. And someone had taken the bait. A much bigger fish, big enough to name names.
His name.
He scrolled slowly down the two-page article in the New York Chronicle . It was good journalism. Punchy, and unfortunately true. Deniably so, but the damage was done.
Which was why he was here in the boardroom instead of heading off to Monaco to look at his latest yacht. Another twinge of irritation.
Stifling it, he glanced up, the pen in his hand tapping out a clear message to the people sitting round the table even before he spoke. ‘I’m struggling to understand what it is that I’m looking at.’
Outside the storm was raging but nobody inside the room was watching the clashing clouds and flashing thunderbolts.
They were watching their boss.
‘Isn’t this story supposed to be dead?’ He spun the laptop round to face the table. ‘Because from where I’m sitting, it appears to be not just alive but in excellent health.’
His lawyer cleared his throat. ‘Obviously, the source is anonymous, but we have our people looking into—’
‘I am way past worrying about who the source is,’ he said firmly. Obviously, his team knew nothing about his ill-advised meeting with that hacker but even if she hadn’t signed an NDA, he knew this ‘leak’ had nothing to do with Sydney Truitt. This was Tiger McIntyre. It had his paw prints all over it. ‘I want this story shut down.’
‘And we can do that, sir,’ his head of Comms, Avery Williams, said. ‘But if we want to deny it—’
‘I do,’ he said coolly.
She nodded. ‘Then first off, we need to issue a statement denying any allegations of wrongdoing. And then we need to focus on reminding everyone exactly who you are and what you stand for. We need to set the record straight and give you the opportunity to be the man the world thinks you are.’
Her words echoed inside his head. She made it sound so simple and in theory it was. He had a reputation as a meticulous, straight-talking, cool-headed businessman that was fully justified. Except when it came to Tiger. Even hearing his name made him feel awash with a rage that he knew was both excessive and irrational.
A rage that had momentarily blocked out all logic and good sense so that he had momentarily ‘gone rogue’, acting on impulse, driven by a need to take down the man who had so casually betrayed his trust and treated their friendship as something disposable.
It had been an uncharacteristic act of recklessness, and the worst part was that he still hadn’t managed to punish Tiger. Instead, he was the one being made to jump through hoops.
Lifting an eyebrow, he stared steadily at Avery. ‘And how exactly are you planning to do that?’
She hesitated. ‘I know you like to handle most media matters in house but, on this occasion, I think it would be better to involve a reputation management agency with specialised experience in mitigating these kinds of negative incidents.’
He nodded. ‘So, you want to start interviewing people?’
Avery smiled at him. ‘I’ve already hired someone. All you have to do is meet them.’
Avery’s words were still echoing inside his head as he took one of the nutritionally balanced meals from the fridge at his triplex penthouse that his chef prepared every day and dropped down onto one of his huge cream-coloured sofas. It was still raining heavily, and he stared out of the window at the blurred New York skyline, mechanically forking up edamame beans and smashed avocado.
His body still felt so on edge, and he could feel the tension humming beneath his skin as if the storm were trapped there. It was Tiger’s fault he was feeling like this.
And he hated him for it. Not that he could hate him any more than he already did, and that would never change.
But other things were going to have to, he thought irritably. Unlike Tiger, he was not of the opinion that all publicity was good publicity. His PR people worked hard to keep his name out of the headlines so that he could ensure that his life ran like clockwork. Now, though, he was going to have to do whatever it was people in his situation did when they messed up.
He tossed his half-empty plate onto the sofa, his hand moving automatically to reach for his wallet.
Gazing down at the photos in his hand, he leaned forward greedily.
The one on top was an ultrasound scan. It looked like one of those weather maps on TV of an incoming storm, all indecipherable curves and lines at first. Then your eyes adjusted, and you could detect the shape of a baby lying on her back, her nose distinct, arm waving up as if to say, here I am.
Now he held the two photos side by side and looked at the second.
After nine months in the warm, watery gloom of the womb, his newborn daughter’s small face was scrunched up against the light, grey eyes, his eyes , wide and still stunned after the shock of birth, her tiny, flawless fingers curled like petals against some kind of shawl. She had been perfect. Unreal. Miraculous. Only he hadn’t realised the miracle of her until after she was born and was living on the other side of the world from him.
By then it was too late. She was gone.
He’d found her again, but it had taken years and money that he didn’t have back then. By the time he’d been able to pay someone to find her so much had changed. Jasmine had a new father. Not new to her, because he was the only one she’d ever known. Which meant that Harris was not only absent but superfluous as well.
Obviously, he had a legitimate biological claim and these days he had unlimited wealth with which to demand his paternal rights. Only it wasn’t that simple. He knew from personal experience that after food, shelter, warmth and comfort, what every child needed was stability and him barging back into her life all these years later felt like self-indulgence, not a right.
He flinched as a snap of lightning illuminated the room, momentarily blinded, just as he had been earlier when the photographers had swarmed towards him. He’d been lucky today. The tumultuous weather had been on his side, but it wasn’t going to rain for ever. The press would come back and in greater force. So, as much as he wanted to pretend this wasn’t happening, that wasn’t going to work.
Decisions and actions, both had consequences. He was still living with his from twelve years ago. He stared down at the photo, his heart swelling to fill his chest.
It had been taken in the hospital just after Jasmine was born. Taken by the man who had stepped up in his place. A man, not a boy.
That’s what Jessie had needed when she’d told him she was pregnant.
They’d done the paternity test and he’d been supposed to go with her for the scan but had bottled it. He’d been so young and hadn’t been ready to be a father. Hadn’t been in love with Jessie. And his parents’ marriage had shown him what happened when you forced people into a lifetime commitment under those exact same circumstances.
So he’d made a bad choice, never thinking that it would have such absolute and irreversible consequences.
But it had.
He hadn’t understood it at the time but that one small decision had been the last straw for Jessie.
She’d needed a man who was willing to support her, not a teenager hoping it was all a bad dream and that he was going to wake up real soon.
That was why he’d skipped the scan. He’d done the paternity test, but the scan would make it scarily real. When he hadn’t shown up, Jessie had reacted accordingly. Within days she was gone, back to Australia and out of his life. Had he realised that would happen? Had he understood the full, lifelong consequences of that moment of panic and cowardice? Had he imagined another man becoming Jasmine’s father so quickly? No, he hadn’t.
But even if he had, would he have done anything differently? Would he have fought to change Jessie’s mind or tried to make it work between them? Probably not, because deep down a part of him had thought she’d be better off with someone less damaged. Someone who could be the father his daughter deserved.
That was part of his reasoning then, swimming in the slipstream of his panic and shock, the need to not repeat the mistakes his parents had made. They’d been two square pegs forced into a round hole because he’d been conceived by accident. Was it any wonder their marriage had failed? And failure came with fallout.
They’d remarried other people and had more children. Half-siblings, who, through no fault of their own, were a constant reminder that he was on the outside. They were the focus of their parents’ love and attention, and he was always an afterthought, a reminder for ever of a past everyone wanted to forget. A visitor who stayed in the guest bedroom.
His beautiful daughter must never experience the pendulum swing of two homes, because it was a lie. In reality, two homes meant no home. Just a temporary address with a pull-out bed surrounded by boxes of books and old sports equipment, and an angry, confused boy lumped in with all the other unwanted, unnecessary detritus of life.
He breathed out shakily. Thankfully, he could afford to give his daughter an entire suite of rooms, decorated just as she wanted. Money was no object.
His shoulders tensed. It was an empty phrase and also misleading because money was just an object, a thing. But it also had the power to change lives and it would be disingenuous to pretend that his money didn’t matter to him or other people.
And yet, it had limitations. Jasmine lived in a world where she felt safe and seen. He had hired a very expensive investigator to make discreet inquiries and she’d reported that his daughter was happy and stable, so his money could only offer her material things. Better things? Possibly, and more of them. But did that really matter? Arguing that it did made him feel shallow and he didn’t believe it anyway.
This whole Tiger McIntyre mess was doing his head in. To get it sorted, he needed to be the man the world thought he was, but right now he just wanted to lose sight of that man. To break free of him. To be a stranger to himself.
What he needed was a distraction. Could he call Rebecca?
They had ended things two months ago. Not because he didn’t like her. He did. She was smart, driven and beautiful, but she had started dropping the odd hint about the future. Their future.
That wasn’t what he wanted. Not now, maybe not ever. Or maybe it wasn’t about wanting or not wanting it, but instead not knowing how it worked.
As a kid, he’d always been fascinated with the inner workings of machinery. That was another thing he and his father had in common, that need to open up the hood and see the mechanism, to understand the nuts and bolts, the cogs, the pistons.
That need to know was the engine of his success.
But he didn’t know how to make a relationship work. How could he when he’d only ever seen them failing?
He got to his feet and stared out at the city below. The rain had stopped again and at street level the lights flashed as they changed colour, beckoning him as they had the other night.
Heart throbbing against his ribs, he watched them blink, red then green—
Green eyes and a tattoo of a bitten apple on her shoulder.
A pulse of heat beat across his skin as he replayed what had happened when he’d met her two weeks ago.
His hand splayed against the glass as he scanned the city skyline.
Who was she? And where was she now?
If only he could snap his fingers and summon her here.
If only…
* * *
‘Excuse me, Mr Carver.’
Harris looked up at his PA and frowned. ‘What is it, Sean?’
‘Ms Williams just called. She sends her apologies but says she’s going to be another fifteen minutes.’
Fifteen minutes was nothing in the scheme of things, but he didn’t like waiting at the best of times, and this was far from the best of times. But that’s what this meeting with the reputation manager was all about. Putting the worst behind him and regaining control of his narrative.
Then, finally, things would go back to normal.
Tapping his fingers on the armrest, he stared around the room. He could have had this meeting at the office, but he preferred using the club for anything more sensitive.
The last meeting he’d had here was with Sydney Truitt. Same room, same chairs. The difference was he’d been on his own and that should have been a red flag because he should have had his people there. Except he hadn’t been able to because what he’d done was fundamentally, legally wrong. Not that there was any hard evidence to connect him with the rumours. His lawyers had been very clear about that.
Unfortunately, there was always that lingering sense of no smoke without fire. Rumours could and did do enormous damage.
It was too late for regrets, though. Yes, if he’d told his team what he was planning the meeting would never have taken place. But he’d been so furious with Tiger, he would have ignored every flag including the skull and crossbones.
And the rest, as they said, was history.
Or rather he’d like it to be. Currently it was very much in the present, but, shutting down the memory of what had been far from his finest hour, he glanced at his watch. ‘Fifteen minutes, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. But the reputation manager is already here. Would you prefer to wait for Ms Williams? I can take some coffee—’
‘No, send her in. Let’s keep things moving. Ms Williams can join us when she gets here.’
* * *
As was usual with an outside hire, he’d been sent a short biography and résumé of the person, which ordinarily he would have read.
Ordinarily.
But for some reason, he’d barely skimmed the report. He couldn’t seem to concentrate. His mind had been all over the place.
Instead, time and time again he had thought about that hotel off Bowery.
His eyes narrowed as if he had X-ray vision and could see through brick and plaster into the hotel room where he had spent six hours at most.
Six hours. It wasn’t even the length of a working day, but if he closed his eyes, he could replay almost every minute right up until the moment he fell asleep.
Then the screen went blank.
Because she’d left without waking him. Without saying goodbye or leaving so much as a note. Oh, but she had paid for the room.
He knew he should open his laptop and read the report through quickly, but his gaze kept being pulled towards the windows. The staff hadn’t closed the drapes and something about the arrangement of the fabric nudged forward a memory of waking alone in that hotel room. Feeling alone, and wronged. As if something had been stolen from him.
He’d hated that feeling.
He gritted his teeth. Hated too that she had paid for the room. He knew that it was ridiculous, but he did.
But why? No doubt she earned a wage so why shouldn’t she pay for the room?
And yet, still it rankled.
Which was no doubt why his brain remained so fixated on her.
Now, though, he needed to focus on the matter at hand. He picked through his memory for anything he could remember about this woman from the conversation he’d had with Avery when she’d told him they’d found someone.
‘She’s a bit of a wild card,’ Avery had said. ‘ Not in ability. She comes highly recommended, even though Aletheia One is a small agency. She’s just opened a second office in New York, but she started out as a one-woman band. She’s young and very media savvy and there’s a creativity and a freshness in her thinking that I think could work very well for us.’
We’ll see , he thought. This interview was a formality really, a nod to his authority and an opportunity for him to meet the successful candidate, but he was always wary about outside hires. They might lack loyalty, and this IP theft accusation was such a sensitive issue.
Of course, his team had done everything by the book. No details of what had happened would have been released until the NDA was signed. And yet, despite that caution, Avery had still hired someone who was, in her own words, a ‘bit of a wild card’.
He heard the door open.
‘Mr Carver. This is Eden Fennell.’
He felt it first in the air.
A shift of something, a tightening, so that momentarily he was distracted enough to get to his feet on autopilot, holding out his hand to the woman standing in front of him.
And then his brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing, and he froze.
Petite. Brunette. No smokey eyeshadow this time and the tattoo on her shoulder was just a blur beneath the sleeve of her cream silk blouse, but the green eyes were the same and once again they were narrowed on his face.
It was the woman from the bar.
And this time she had a name.
Eden.