Chapter 36
Noah
Thirty minutes earlier . . .
We’ve been living in a bubble of bliss.
But everyone knows that bubbles aren’t meant to last. They always burst.
Cassandra’s vet running behind threw us out of our routine. Liv’s and my mornings have been full of rushing around to throw Max’s bag together and call a car to transport us across town in rush-hour traffic. Taking him to her place last minute was not in the game plan when I woke up.
It won’t do me any good to stress about what I can’t control. We both know that everyone in the office will judge her before me, so I’m glad she made it almost on time.
When I hop back in the car, I pull out my phone as soon as we leave the curb to text her:
The package has been delivered.
Laughing, I wait for her reply to basically tell me how hilarious I am and pepper me with compliments about how entertaining that text was.
Okay, she doesn’t give compliments out like candy.
She doles them out when there’s truth in them.
It’s one of the things I love most about her—her honesty. I thought it was funny, though.
The three dots don’t show up.
Although I know the meeting has started by now, I check the time anyway.
She sits next to her father. When I entered that conference room on my first day of work, I thought it was a position of power.
It’s not. It’s her father’s way of exerting control over her.
He makes her sit while he praises everyone else, and he never has to look her in the eyes to see the pain he’s caused.
Fucker.
I scroll through my emails to make the most of my time and find the new Torres contract sitting in my inbox. I grin, ready to wrap negotiations and get started on their campaign. The car jolts to a stop, causing me to look up. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Fuck. “How bad is the traffic ahead?”
The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror. “There’s an accident blocking all lanes.”
“Any way we can detour?”
“You mean us and every other New Yorker with some place to be at eight thirty in the morning?” Despite the chaos this morning, I’m in a decent mood, but I’m not sure it’s good enough to appreciate his sarcasm.
“Yeah, maybe worth a try,” I reply, certain I won’t make the end of the meeting, even if we do find another way around this mess.
He laughs, not bothering to reply. Since we’re not moving at all anymore, I drop it altogether, but I do send another text to Liv:
Stuck in traffic. Be there when I can. Love you.
And then send the same to Leanna to keep her in the loop, leaving off the love part, of course. Even though Liv might be too busy to respond, I expect Leanna to. When she doesn’t, I start to wonder what’s going on. That’s not like her.
I lean over to look out the windshield once more.
We’re still not moving, spiking my body temperature.
I’m not letting irritation win, so I start reading through the contract to distract myself.
At least I can claim I was working. Two pages in and I spot the first issue.
Within the first four pages, I’ve highlighted three problems, issues that will backfire on me if I sign these.
In the three months I’ve worked at Bancroft & Lowe, this account is the only one with endless red flags.
Why is that? My only theory remains that this was Leslie’s account before Chip was added to it.
Leslie left six months later. She was called a spy and rumored to be working for the competition.
I’m starting to believe those rumors are lies, and Chip’s the culprit behind this sabotage.
Look what rumors have done to Liv’s career at Bancroft & Lowe. Did they do the same to Leslie’s?
I google Leslie’s name, then read the most recent articles and work my way back to the time when she left.
She went to the competition all right. The timeline aligns with what I heard.
As for secretly working for them, that story doesn’t appear to match on the surface.
She was a star at Bancroft & Lowe and managed their biggest accounts along with Mr. Bancroft. So what went wrong?
I'm not sure I should be doing this, but I find her number online and call. I’m sent straight to voicemail.
I leave a message, “Hi, my name is Noah Westcott. I work for Bancroft & Lowe. I’m hoping you can help answer some questions I have regarding an account for Torres Manufacturing.
You were running the account, successfully from what I’ve seen, and then were partnered with Chip Lowe.
There are some holes I’m trying to fill.
Since I was assigned the client, the NDA no longer stands.
I'd appreciate a call back if you’d be willing to talk confidentially. Thank you.”
Although I’d wish I could have spoken to her, I’m also not naive enough to think she’d be open to telling me anything negative. I’m sure she’s washed her hands of Bancroft & Lowe and doesn’t want to stir up old ghosts.
I’ve successfully put off the inevitable, but it’s time for me to figure out my next step. I make the call to my attorney, who specializes in corporate law.
“Do you need bail money?” Loch asks without so much as a hello. It’s like we’re brothers or something. Ha! He clearly knows me well.
“It’s Monday morning. Why would I need bail money?”
“It was Monday morning the last time as well.” My brother’s coming in strong with the jokes today.
“That was a joke.”
“What do you mean it was a joke? I wired you a thousand dollars.”
“Oops, about that—”
“Fucking hell, Noah.” His puff of breath fills the phone, and I can imagine he’s rubbing his temple to ease the headache I’m bringing on.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pay you back with interest.” We’ve been moving slowly, but I look out the windshield again as if things are different from that angle. Unfortunately, they’re not.
“I have a better idea.” I like the turnaround in his tone. He says, “Tuesday really wants a baby.”
“Sorry, I’m already in a committed relationship, so I can’t give your wife a baby.”
“Real funny, asshole. Hear me laughing.” Spoiler alert: I did not, in fact, hear him laughing. I still chuckle because that was damn funny. “She wants to babysit Max.”
“As far as paybacks go, I don’t think she understands how babysitting works. Usually the parents pay the person to watch their kid. Not the reverse.”
“Forget about the bail money, Noah. Will you let her spend time with Max? She wants a baby, so maybe that will help until she gets pregnant.”
Loch has always been the most uptight of my siblings.
He says it’s because he had to be the responsible one.
He’s probably right. But this also provides a lot of opportunities to fuck with him.
“Babysitting doesn’t actually produce a baby of your own.
” God, I love teasing him. “Did Dad never go over the birds and bees with you?”
“I’m hanging up the phone.”
I’d almost forgotten why I called him. “Wait. Loch?”
“I’m busy.”
“I think I was hired to take the fall in a money laundering scheme.”
I hear him sigh heavily, but being the awesome older brother he is, he calls out, “Leisa, reschedule my next call.” There’s a pause, but then he says to me, “We have five minutes. Did you do anything illegal?”
“No.”
“Good,” he replies, his tone turning firm. I imagine it’s the same one he uses in court—all business and no fun. “Send me one thousand dollars electronically. That payment will establish the attorney-client relationship, and you can pay the rest of the retainer when we hang up.”
I send the money, listing what it’s for to document everything. “It’s done.”
“Received. Okay, listen to me. Everything you tell me from this point on is protected by attorney-client privilege. What dirt do they have on you?”
“None. Dirty business belongs in the bedroom, not the boardroom.” Some progress is finally being made with traffic moving again, but not enough to celebrate.
“If found guilty, a money laundering conviction can lead to substantial prison time.”
“Are we talking country club prison or doing hard time?”
“This is serious, Noah. Manhattan district attorneys don’t fuck around with their charges. Not that I can’t beat them, but it’s always better not to end up with the charges in the first place.”
I hear what he’s saying, but levity is necessary when I probably should have quit as soon as I found out. Now, I’m mixed up in this mess. “Look, I’ve known about this for months, but I didn’t quite have all the pieces.”
“Now you do?”
“No, but I have enough to see what’s happening.”
“Who else knows? Liv? She’s in accounting. Does she know, or can she be implicated?”
This isn’t my world, but I’m starting to realize that the associations alone can destroy our lives. Fucking hell. “They’ve circumvented her on these expenses. Her father approved them, but her name is on there as well because she has to enter them into the system.”
“That’s not good.”
Max and I can’t lose her. I won’t let her take the fall. I’ll do anything necessary to keep my family together.
He says, “I need to know what I’m dealing with. Is your name on any of the documents?”
“My name is clean, but I’m expected to sign the contracts I just received. That’s why I called you.”
“Don’t sign anything. And if you have proof, you need to send electronic copies to yourself through email.
It’s free protection. That provides a date and time stamp if they go in and alter the documents.
Though an x-ray audit can find all the traces of changes made to prove they were doing a cover-up.
Your documents add to the evidence.” His sobering tone should worry me, but I know I haven’t done anything to contribute to wrongdoing in this case. “Do you plan to blow the whistle?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You have a choice. Between right and wrong, saving yourself the trouble and moving on, or even ignoring, though I wouldn’t advise the last one.”
“So you’re saying I don’t?”
“I can’t legally advise you on that aspect as it could blow back on me. An anonymous tip could always be left, a file leaked. Dad is almost retired, but I imagine he’d keep things legally off the record if you want his advice.”
“And you can’t?”
“I have a career ahead of me, a law firm to run, and a family to take care of. As your brother, what I can say is that you don’t owe anybody anything.
You can walk today and let it come out another way.
Unfortunately, you could also be dragged back into this mess years from now.
How the law views what you should report is not the same thing as telling you to go live life without reporting a crime. ”
“So I’m fucked?”
“No. You didn’t do anything.” There’s an extended pause before he says, “But Liv needs an attorney. Today.”
I scrub my hand over my face. “I’ve kept her out of the details to spare her from this shit.” I’m mad at myself for even hinting at an issue with her. It may have been earlier on in discovery, but that could infer she was aware.
“If her name is on there, they’ll go after her.”
“We have to protect her, Loch.”
“Let’s get her representation and on record with her knowledge. I’ll take her case if she chooses to work with me. The best thing we can do is get ahead of this. That means she becomes the whistleblower.”
Fuck me.
“I appreciate the help,” I reply, dropping my head back. “I’ll have her contact you.”
To make things official with my brother, I pay the full retainer he charges, and he tells me exactly what to do when I walk into the office.
Little did I know what I was walking into . . .