14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
B y noon on Monday, Rowan was as close to pulling her hair out as she’d ever been. Everything was off at work. Almost every fund was down, damn near catastrophically. It didn’t help that she’d gotten very little sleep during what remained of her Sunday after leaving work.
Nope. Not going to think about that. Him. Shoving him out of her mind with a visual of him closing the box on their time together, she focused on what she was looking at.
The numbers on the report Linda had sent her did not add up at all. Nothing made sense, and the only way to figure this out was to go back to the beginning, one fund at a time. Rowan pulled up their flagship fund and printed detailed reports for the past six months. She did the same on the other funds that were now solidly in negative territory.
After ordering lunch delivered, she took the printed sheets, her laptop, and three legal pads to the conference room, spread out, and dug in. Numbers had always been her strength, and she lost track of time as she mapped out every aspect of each fund over the next several hours.
By the time she sat back and stretched, she looked out into a darkened office. Her phone explained why. It was after eight at night. A glance outside showed the edge of dusk settling in.
She’d lost an entire afternoon to the numbers, but at least she’d finally found a pattern, though she wasn’t yet sure what it meant.
A tap at the door startled her. “Come in.”
Why did it have to be Gerard walking through the door? Rowan looked skyward for a quick moment, then back at the man who stood at the end of the table, looking at the papers covering most of the dark wood.
“When we spoke about this, I said I’d wait until Monday evening to get involved. Have you found anything out?”
“Not that I’m ready to report.”
He sighed, his only indication that he was both tired and worried. Had he lost as much sleep as she had? Because of the business or had something else kept him up? A small, devilish piece of her hoped he’d lost sleep over her. With how quickly he’d returned to being her boss, that wasn’t feasible. It was the company crisis; that’s all. Her heart shriveled a little bit further.
“Maybe it’s time for two heads,” he said.
He was probably right. She pointed to the seat he stood behind, unwilling to have him any closer to her than that.
Gerard sat and picked up the report closest to him. “You’ve gone back six months?”
“Actually, I went back three years.”
“That’s before I took over the company.”
“Yes, and about the time, Silverman became part of the board.”
“Do you think he’s behind this?”
“I don’t have any proof. Not yet, at least, but I feel like I’m closing in. I also think, if it’s him, he has someone helping.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you have, and we can figure out the best approach from there.”
Rowan told him about the patterns she’d found. Within a month of each board meeting, she’d noticed tweaks to various funds that caused a slow, cascading nosedive in over fifty percent of the funds Barrett Investments oversaw or were part of. These incremental changes were deadly for a company like Barrett.
“This is starting to look like sabotage,” Gerard said, straightening.
“Yes, but I don’t have any idea how it’s happening or who is behind it. It feels like some sort of long game plan. Data from three years ago doesn’t show this pattern.” Rowan stood and stretched her arms back behind her, then crooked her neck in various directions to offset all the bending over and intense focus.
“You look tired, and I think you’ve been pretty focused on this today. Go home and get some sleep. We can come back to this tomorrow.”
Rowan didn’t like him giving orders, even if he was right. Exhaustion had turned her brain to mud. She nodded and started to gather the papers up.
“Do you mind leaving this? I’d like to go over the specifics. I’ll lock the door when I leave so no one else can come in here.”
She froze. What the hell? “You don’t trust me?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s got nothing to do with trust. I might see a person in this pattern. I know company operations better than you.”
She noticed he never said he trusted her, and she had no brainpower left to decide whether she was more angry or hurt. Leaving everything, including her laptop, she walked out without a word. If she’d opened her mouth, she would’ve said much more than he probably wanted to hear.
By the time she got to her car, Rowan was shaking with anger. How dare he? She’d worked long and hard for this company since getting hired. Mainly to prove herself, but she also sincerely wanted Barrett Investment to succeed. The underlying mission of this company was to do no harm. She admired that and laid that truth at the feet of Emersyn and Gerard and their father. They’d chosen to run a principled company, a huge reason why she’d wanted to work here over any other financial empire.
But for him to practically accuse her of dubious conclusions at best and outright false information at worst? Oooh! She stomped her feet before getting in her car. Instead of driving home, she headed to her mom’s condo.
“Darling,” her mother said when she opened the door. “I’m glad to see you.” Rowan walked into her arms and finally let the tears flow.
Pulled toward the couch, they sank onto it, still hugging, tears still streaming down her face. Her mother patted her back, held on tight, and let her cry. It took a while, but she finally raised her head. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me lately. I’m a blubbering mess.”
“Something must be going on. I’ve never seen you cry like that.” Reaching for a box of tissues, she handed them to Rowan. “Now, dry your tears. I’m going to make us a drink, and we’ll talk this out and find the best solution to whatever problem you’re having.”
Rowan’s lips lifted in a brief, shaky smile. Her mother was the only person who could calm her down and help her see the logic of whatever situation she’d gotten herself into. When Rowan had procrastinated filling out college applications, she’d helped her see what held her back. Rowan hadn’t wanted to attend her father and brother’s alma mater, and her mother had interceded on her behalf when she chose a local school.
Then, there was that disastrous engagement to a man who only wanted an in with her family. When she found out, six months before a wedding fit for a Murdoch—according to her father—she’d run right to her mother’s arms, and she’d helped her heal in the best way possible. She’d sewn a makeshift doll that looked just enough like her ex, then handed her a stack of pins to stab it with. When Rowan had asked if this voodoo thing really worked, her mother had responded, “Oh, no, dear. You’d need some of his hair and a voodoo priest for that.”
She’d laughed so hard at the surprising statement, it had gotten her over the first hump, the worst of her pain. Well, that and several well-aimed stabs with pins.
Her mother returned, not with tea, but with two tumblers half full of amber liquid and ice cubes. Under her arm was the partially empty bottle of the same stuff.
“Thought we were beyond the tea stage.” She set the bottle on the coffee table, then pulled her hand back before Rowan could take the offered drink. “You’re staying here tonight, right?”
Both her father and brother had gotten DUIs that they’d bought their way out of. Her mother, who’d been divorced from her father for almost ten years, was a stickler for not drinking and driving. Her way of making amends for the man she’d married and the son she’d birthed.
“Yes, I’m staying here.”
“Good.” She handed Rowan her drink, sat back down, and tapped her glass to Rowan’s. “It’s a girl’s night. Drink up.”
Rowan took a sip of the smoothest whiskey she’d ever tasted. So smooth, in fact, she opted to dull her senses and drained it in one pull, proud of herself that she only coughed once. Her mother barely batted an eyelash, simply picked up the bottle and refilled Rowan’s tumbler.
She stared into the swirling liquid and ice cubes, searching for solutions.
“How’s the new job going?”
“Not good.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Yes.”
Rose Murdoch was no slouch. She’d graduated summa cum laude and had gotten her MBA in business finance. However, when Murdoch took the company public, she bowed out and chose charities as her passion. While they had never discussed it, Rowan believed she hadn’t much liked the direction the company was going in. She’d commented once that her work offset the work of others who might not care about the little guy as much.
She needed her mother’s advice now more than ever. Rowan pulled her thoughts together and tried to put the issues forth as logically as possible.
“The funds my team oversees have been going negative.”
“That happens sometimes.”
“For two years, and it looks like someone’s tampering with them. It’s been very slow moving, but there are clear changes at regular intervals that affected the funds.”
“Daily checks can help counter those changes.”
“I agree, but that’s not all.” This was the tough part, admitting to the personal side of things. “Remember why I left Murdoch?”
Her mother nodded and took a sip. “Two primary reasons. The same reason I left—you weren’t happy with the way the company was run. And those unfounded rumors that you were involved in a high level tryst, one of the board members, right?”
“Totally unfounded. I never gave that guy a moment’s notice, but one rumor and everyone began staring at me with knowing eyes. I never figured out who started that rumor.”
“Probably Finn.”
Her eyes widened as her mother sighed. “I love my son, but he’s too focused on power and being on that top rung of the ladder.”
“And money. He and Dad are both driven by those concepts.” Rowan gulped. Here came the really hard part. “I slept with my boss.”
The rest of her drink disappeared as she gulped it down, giving the woman who didn’t make mistakes like this time to digest that news. She stared at the ice in her glass, unable to look up until her mother tipped her chin up with a finger.
“All right. So what you didn’t do at Murdoch, you did at Barrett?”
“It wasn’t like that. Neither of us liked each other at all when I started there. Gerard and I—it was a one night stand we both agreed on.”
“You overrode your instincts?”
“No, that’s the worst part. I followed my instincts, and they led me to him. And now he’s all but accused me of not being trustworthy, that my research could be faulty.”
Rowan set her glass down, hating the hitch in her voice when she spoke again. “We said it would only be a night. We promised each other.”
“It felt like more to you, though.”
“Yes.” She could barely whisper the word. “Then, when we came back to the office, he was…the boss again. Cold, not smiling, all business. In fact, he was downright rude.”
The smallest smile touched her mother’s face as she set down her drink and faced her daughter.
“Really? You can smile about this, Mom? Because I sure can’t. I feel like a whiny bitch right now, and I can’t seem to stop waffling between sniveling and tears. This isn’t me, and I don’t like it.” She threw herself into the open arms in front of her, fresh tears flowing. Her mother held her, once again patting her back and whispering in the soothing voice that had always helped her pain.
When she’d cried herself out, she pulled back and grabbed a couple tissues. Her mother stood and took the glasses and bottle to the kitchen. When she returned, she pulled Rowan up.
“I think you need a good night’s sleep, and it will all feel better in the morning.”
“How? I have to go back and work with that man like nothing ever happened.”
“For now, yes. But I have a feeling this will all work out in the end.”
“Work out how?”
“Fate has better ideas than I do, I’m sure, and I’m not privy to them. All I know is that you are the best problem-solver around. So get a good night’s sleep, then get back in the game and solve your dilemma. You might not see resolution overnight, but you’ve been in for the long haul before. You can do it again. Now goodnight, dear. These old bones need their rest too.”
Rowan let herself be pulled to the spare bedroom. Not feeling encouraged by her mother’s words, she got ready and climbed into bed, figuring she’d lay awake half the night or more. Just then, her mother’s voice wafted through the condo, singing a lullaby Rowan had loved as a child. She managed to focus on that song and drift off, her last thought being that her mother was right. Tomorrow was another day.