Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
HARRISON
“Good morning, Mr. Cross!” Heather set a fresh cup of coffee on my desk Thursday morning. “Ready to go over your agenda for the day?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’ll go with your top three, then.” She tapped her tablet. “Ken Lay wants a meeting at noon. He sounded very impatient.”
“What are the other two things?”
“Additional meetings with the Lay Group. One of them mentioned finalizing some ‘far more generous’ severance packages. Is that—” Her voice dropped. “Is that true?”
I didn’t answer.
“Mr. Cross?” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Are you laying people off?”
I took a long sip of coffee and glanced out my window—at the exact pane where Andrea should be pressed against the glass right now—taking every inch of me before the day even began.
I’ve never been this stuck on anyone else before…
“Um… Mr. Cross?” Heather said gently. “I don’t want to pry, but I have a five-year plan that depends on me still getting a paycheck… and a lot of people here feel the same. Will you at least give us decent notice?”
I turned to look at her.
“You would tell us if you were planning to let us go, right?” She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “You wouldn’t let us find out from a cold email or a headline, right?”
I couldn’t handle the trembling in her voice, and for the first time in weeks, I got a glimpse of the pain I was about to inflict on her.
On everyone.
And my blood began to boil over the thought of the man who put me in this position in the first place.
The man who started this entire trajectory of bullshit.
“Tell Francis to pick me up downstairs in five minutes,” I said. “And tell the Lay Group they’re not on my time. I’ll let them know when I want to talk again.”
“Okay…” She nodded.
“I should be back around five.” I stood up and grabbed my jacket. “I’ll expect dinner to be waiting.”
“It will be, Mr. Cross.”
I walked straight into the elevator, out into the cold rain, and into Francis’s waiting car.
“Good morning, Mr. Cross.” He slid behind the wheel. “Where to, sir?”
“Mr. Lewis’s residence in the Hamptons.”
“Uh…” His eyes widened. “Is he expecting you, sir?”
“No. That’s the entire point.”
One hundred miles later
Francis pulled in front of a massive white-and-gray mansion perched on the edge of the Atlantic. The place was larger than five of the houses on this street combined, and there was a collection of luxury cars parked in the long, Y-shaped driveway.
“Please don’t hit Mr. Lewis too hard, sir,” Francis said as he opened my door. “He’s in his eighties.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
Rain soaked my coat as I walked toward the front door—and before I could ring the doorbell, I froze.
Through the glass, Mr. Lewis was dancing in the hallway.
Moving like someone decades younger, he wasn’t holding his usual cane. And there was no wheelchair in sight.
His formerly fragile posture looked as good as mine.
This man really scammed the hell out of me…
I slammed my hand against the doorbell and knocked even louder.
His eyes snapped toward the door and he stopped mid-step.
Then—as if we weren’t seeing each other clearly through the glass—he grabbed a cane and limped toward the door.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
He winced dramatically while turning the knob.
“Well, hello there, Mr. Cross.” His voice dropped an octave. “I’ve been meaning to call and check on things.”
“Cut the shit.” I pushed my way inside. “It’s bad enough you’re a liar. You don’t need to pretend you’re not a fraud, too.”
“Why are you trying to give an old man a heart attack?”
“I’ll give him a black eye if he doesn’t drop his fake cane.”
He blinked.
Then he let it fall to the marble floor.
“What can I help you with today, Mr. Cross?” he asked with a smile.
“I need to know how you planned to avoid laying people off and going completely under if I hadn’t bought Sweet Seasons from you as fast as I did.”
He sighed and looked away from me.
“Are you looking for the answer over there?” I asked. “Answer me.”
“I didn’t really have a plan…” He shrugged. “I just knew I needed to sell it.”
“Did you know half your business was bullshit and propped up by a Ponzi scheme?” I asked. “That you ghosted me on hundreds of millions?”
“No, I…” He stuttered, his face reddening. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rage crawled under my skin as I stepped closer to him.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked. “I think we should discuss this over alcohol. We can be friends, I think.”
“You know what?” I shook my head. “I apologize for coming here without a murder weapon.”
“You don’t mean that, son.” He took a step back. “You like me.”
“In that case, you’re more senile than I thought.”
He turned away and rushed down the hall, forcing me to follow him.
His walls were lined with family photos—children, grandkids, holiday parties. Not a single business award.
Not that he deserved one.
In his parlor room, he poured whiskey into two shot glasses and handed me one. I took it down in a single swallow.
“I don’t even care that you sold me a company in terrible condition—or the fact that you knew damn well it was a house of cards.” I needed to make my true intentions quick and get out of here. “It’s disappointing, of course, but it won’t break me in the long run.”
“So, why are you here, exactly, Mr. Cross?”
“Why didn’t you promote Andrea to CFO years ago?” I asked the question that’d been stuck in my mind since week one. “She deserved it more than anyone.”
“She did.” He avoided my gaze. “But I couldn’t afford to pay her what she deserved.”
“You were paying plenty of people six figures to do nothing.”
“Tenured people who relied on me,” he said. “I kept hoping I’d get to a point where I could give Andrea more, but the budget was tight.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “Tell me the truth.”
“I didn’t want anyone else to get her, so I kept her hanging on in hopes it would change.”
“I’m only giving you one last chance to stop bullshitting me, Mr. Lewis.”
“Fine.” He sighed. “I didn’t promote her because I knew she would’ve audited the hell out of the books and discovered what I was hiding.”
“You mean, found out you were a fraud?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Does she know now?”
“She knows some, and I still have no idea why I hid the worst of it from her.” I glared at him. “I think it would’ve broken her heart.”
“I was really trying to change things around long before you came along… I promise you, Harrison.” He looked genuine, but I knew a con man when I saw one.
Well, now anyway.
“Are you planning to turn me over to the SEC or the government?” he asked, looking wary. “If so, I’d appreciate at least a full month’s notice so I can get my affairs in order.”
“I’m not angry enough to make things any worse for you,” I said. “I’m more interested in you making things better for all the employees you claimed to love.”
“Huh?” He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I overpaid for your company.” I pulled out an agreement from my pocket. “By about four hundred fifty million, right?”
“Right.”
“So, you’re going to be a gentleman and refund me half.”
“Half?”
“I can spell the word out for you if you’d like,” I said. “Then you’re going to write out a check for all the money you should’ve paid Andrea over the years, and we’ll go from there.”
“Mr. Cross, I’m not sure why you—”
“This isn’t a negotiation session.” I was done with the conversation part. “You owe Andrea Stone. And you also owe me.”
“Let me guess…” He swallowed, pulling out a pen. “You’re going to use this to make yourself look like the good guy in her eyes?”
“Not at all.” I pointed to the line he needed to sign. “I’ll have to do something else for that…”