Chapter 7
By four o’clock, my office was packed into three neat cardboard boxes.
I hadn’t technically been fired, but after that memo, sitting in my glass-walled office while the floor whispered about me was a waste of time.
I had bigger plans.
I took a cab to the financial district.
Robert’s office occupied the fortieth floor of a high-rise that smelled like old mahogany and new money.
He had been my attorney for a decade. He handled my divorce, my investments, and the purchase of the Cullinan.
I dropped the manila folder onto his desk.
“They want one hundred twenty-eight thousand by Friday, and they kept the car.”
Robert, whose resting expression had always suggested irritation with the entire human race, opened the folder and reviewed the disciplinary memo first. Then he looked at the original title bearing my name.
“Diana, please tell me you didn’t agree to pay this.”
“I signed the acknowledgment,” I said, settling into the guest chair. “And I plan to wire the money tomorrow morning.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Why?”
“Because right now Nate thinks he’s recovering lost operational costs. But the moment I wire that money, this stops being an internal HR dispute.”
Robert went still.
Then a slow grin spread across his face.
“What does it become?” I asked.
“Wire fraud,” he said. “Extortion under color of employment. Conversion of property. Potential grand theft auto. They forced you to pay for the use of your own property under threat of financial penalty and public defamation. If the wire crosses state lines, it escalates.”
“Exactly.”
I took a sip of the sparkling water his paralegal had placed beside me.
“Nate is desperate. The company’s cash reserves are bleeding. That’s why he didn’t just take the car. He needed cash. He used this intern’s fake audit as a smokescreen to rob me and make payroll.”
“And the car?”
“They’re using it to impress Arthur Sterling on Monday. A fifty-million-dollar account. Nate thinks landing Sterling will save the firm.”
Robert tapped his pen against the desk.
“I can file an injunction tomorrow and have the vehicle impounded.”
“No,” I said. “Impounding it tomorrow would be a nuisance. I want maximum damage. I want Nate to feel exactly the humiliation he tried to bury me in.”
Robert leaned back.
“You always were terrifying.”
“I learned from the best.”