“First of all,” Bethany continued, “the money is a heck of a lot bigger. PharmaTech has offered to pay the company twenty million for this case to go away.”
Simultaneously, John and I both looked at each other. That was more than enough money to keep the company going for the foreseeable future. Even in our wildest dreams, I don’t think we could have imagined spending that kind of money. We could even get into manufacturing our own products, something that had seemed impossible before.
“The only real catch on that is that you would have to maintain a degree of confidentiality about the whole thing. You could tell people you settled the case, but wouldn’t be able to mention the money involved. Other than that, your business can continue and spend the money however it chooses.”
Shit. I knew it couldn’t be that perfect. I wanted the money, obviously, and I wanted to punish PharmaTech financially, but John and I had both agreed that it had to be more than money involved. The faulty drug was still on the market, and that had to change.
“I’m not sure we can do that, Bethany,” I said. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a really good deal, but we agreed to get more than just money.”
“And you’re about to,” Bethany said. “There’s more to come. You can’t tell people about the settlement, but that’s just dealing with the corporate espionage issues. I don’t know exactly what the internal investigation showed up—God, I would love to see that report—but it was obviously drastic. In addition to paying you money, they are also going to withdraw the faulty drug and two others that turned up during the investigation and go public about them. Anyone who comes forward and claims to have been harmed by the drugs will get to discuss a separate settlement. That includes the family of this girl you know.”
“Wow,” John said. “That’s incredible. I thought that would have taken years to achieve. I assume you are happy with this?” he asked me.
“Oh, I’m happy. Very happy. Bethany, I assume you recommend accepting this offer?”
“Definitely. In my career I have seen very few offers as good as this one. It helps that they are a public company. They have to comply with all sorts of rules about reporting things like this, and allegations of bribery of government officials are enough to wipe a company off the map. Apparently, the CEO and a few others involved have already been terminated from their employment and should end up being prosecuted. They didn’t tell us how many people were involved, but it may not have been that many. The more people that know, the more chance someone will leak the information. The fact that this stayed a secret for so long suggests only a handful of people knew about it.”
I didn’t take too much pleasure in the CEO losing his job. Not because I felt sorry for him, but because I knew he would likely bounce back quickly. Someone with a resume like that will easily pick up another job, even if the allegations of his bribery got out. Still, I couldn’t in good conscience refuse such an offer just to take some sort of petty revenge against one person. We had got what we set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more.
“What about Kerry?” John asked me, although he said it loud enough that Bethany picked it up on the other end.
“Who’s Kerry?” Bethany asked.
“Never mind. Just a friend,” I said. “But while I’m thinking about it, do you know if criminal charges will be filed against the employees involved? Or does that somehow go against the agreement to keep all this private?”
“I expect charges will be filed,” Bethany said. “I imagine PharmaTech will try to keep this in-house, if possible, but the Department of Justice will want to get ahold of those who did the bribing. There will be lawsuits and prosecutions for years to come, although I’m guessing the whole thing will be settled with as little publicity as possible. That’s the US justice system for you.”
I had no idea what that meant for Kerry. She hadn’t done any of the bribing herself, but she had gone on record as having known about it. Maybe the Department of Justice would consider her an accomplice? Kerry was the one who planned all this, so she would either accept the consequences or had planned around them. Either way, we couldn’t let that affect our decision now.
We gave Bethany the go-ahead to accept the offer, and she told us to expect paperwork in the next few days. The money would be paid to the company, but given that John and I were the only shareholders now—Bethany assured us that the investor’s shares were not valid—we were effectively millionaires ourselves.
John made plans to see Michael, and I made plans to see Carter, but first we both went to dinner, just the two of us, to properly celebrate what we had achieved. We may have had some help along the way, but most of the credit belonged to us, and we treated ourselves to more than one cocktail in our own honor.
Chapter Fourteen
As much as John and I enjoyed each other’s company, after a couple of hours we were both a little eager to go our separate ways to see our boyfriends. I arrived at Carter’s apartment about half an hour before I said I would be there and found it empty. Although the effects of the cocktails were starting to wear off, I still felt a little giddy and more confident than usual.
My attempt at finding something to watch on TV was fruitless, so I went into Carter’s bedroom and decided that now would be a good time to take a closer look at some of the toys I knew he kept in the lower drawers. John had already seen them from when we were looking for information on his hospital visits, but I was still in the dark about what he had. There had been many nights I could have looked or even asked Carter to show me, but I had never quite had the courage until now. Maybe it was liquid courage, but people were brave in different ways.
A few months ago I would have been shocked, and honestly, a little disgusted at what I found, but having now been in a sex shop and explored some previously hidden recesses of my sexuality with Carter, I was now more intrigued than appalled. Most of the stuff seemed to be in one drawer, and I recognized a few pieces from our trip to the adult boutique.
If there were one word to describe Carter’s taste in this kind of “equipment,” then it would have been “leather.” The more adventurous—and in some cases, confusing—items remained in the drawer, but I took out a corset with a matching thong, a leather choker with stainless steel spikes, and finally, a leather whip with nine tails.
The clothing items looked a lot more intimidating than they really were. I’d worn corsets and thongs before, and while the choker looked kinky, I had similar things at home—albeit not in leather—from when they were in fashion.
I got undressed, and with no small degree of difficulty tied myself into the leather corset. The thong and choker were much easier to get on. I held the whip in my hand and gave myself a few gentle lashings across my upper thighs to get a feel for it. The impact stung, but there was a definite appeal in thinking of Carter punishing me with it. If only my ex-boyfriend could see me now, I thought. I’d changed drastically in the past few months, and not just from having more sex. The changes were more in the mental approach I took to thinking about my body and what I wanted Carter to do with it and to it.
I checked the time on my phone and realized that Carter would be home any minute. My first thought was to hop into bed and have him find me there waiting for him, but I’d done that before, and it seemed rather ill-fitting with what I was wearing and holding in my hand.
Instead, I went back into the living room and turned off all the lights before taking a seat on the sofa. When he arrived, he was going to get one hell of a surprise.
Carter ran a little late, but just as I was about to get my phone out, I heard the elevator stop and the doors start to open. He strolled out and threw his keys down on a small table before turning on the lamp. Instead of looking at me, though, he walked straight into the kitchen, turned on the light there, and opened the fridge. It wasn’t quite the effect I was going for.
“I’ve been waiting,” I said in my best slow and sexy voice.
“Holy shit,” Carter said, turning and looking
in the direction of the living room. “Why were you sitting in the dark?”
He could still barely make me out, so I stood up, whip in hand, and walked toward the kitchen, stopping once I was in the light.
“Oh, my God,” he said under his breath as he looked up and down my body. His gaze finally came to rest on what I held in my hand. “What’s all this? Not that I’m complaining, but wow, I was not expecting to come home to you like this.”
“I’ve been going through your things and trying them on. I’ve been a very bad girl, Carter.”
“Well, then,” he said, taking a couple of steps toward me, “I guess you need to be punished. Bad girls should always be punished.”
He took me by the hand and walked me over to the sofa. He sat down and pulled me next to him.
“Say ‘orange’ if you feel uncomfortable, and say ‘red’ if you want me to stop,” he whispered in my ear.
He took the whip from my hand and planted a firm kiss on my lips. Then he placed a palm on my back and pushed me over his legs. I let out a gasp as I fell forward onto the sofa cushions on the other side of his thighs. My ass immediately stuck up into the air as if eagerly awaiting its punishment.
Carter let the soft tails of the whip trickle all over my bare ass cheeks and the backs of my legs. I already knew this was going to be something I enjoyed. My heart was racing in anticipation, and I could already feel my sex pulsating with raw desire.
He hauled the whip up into the air and I felt the leather tails leave my skin. I held my breath and dug my nails into my palms, waiting for him to punish me.
I heard the leather move through the air just before I felt the impact of it on my skin. The sting of leather on my ass was only mildly painful, but the tension had built up inside me so much that I expelled all the air from my lungs in one violent breath and moaned as if I were already experiencing the orgasm that was surely going to hit me before much longer.
“Did that hurt?” Carter asked.
“Only a little.”
“I guess I will have to go harder next time, then.”
This time, I didn’t have time to hold my breath before he brought the whip up and down again in one smooth motion. I yelped and winced at the pain on my skin. My breath was as heavy and fast as my beating heart, but I soon found myself ready for more.
“Again,” I commanded. “I’ve been a very bad girl, Carter. I need more punishment than that.”
Carter didn’t need to be told twice. He snapped the whip down again on my ass, and then again and again in quick succession. I let out a deep, guttural scream as the pain worsened each time he brought the leather down. The whip had now touched every part of my rear that wasn’t covered by the leather thong.
He grabbed hold of my right ass cheek and dug his fingers in hard. “God, you have such a nice, pert ass. Just looking at this ass and not being able to fuck you is torture for me.” He untied the straps holding up my thong and pulled the whole thing off. “Judging by how wet these are, it looks like you enjoyed your punishment rather more than you were supposed to.”
He lifted me up so that he could get undressed. Then he stood, completely naked before me, and pushed me back down onto the sofa before climbing on top of me. He spread my legs and pushed his shaft into my wet, eager slit. He grabbed hold of my hair with one hand and pulled my head back.
“I love you,” he whispered into my ear. “But now I’m going to have my way with you.”
He let go of my hair and grabbed a hold of my waist in his strong hands, lifting my ass up before thrusting his entire member inside me. Each time he slammed against me I moaned into the soft cushions of the sofa. My pussy was so wet he could barely stay inside me, and I came twice before he pulled out and sprayed his passion all over my back. Thankfully, leather was quite easy to wipe clean.
Chapter Fifteen
A few days passed, during which John and I were able to live relatively normal lives. The lawyers took a while to draw up the settlement agreement, and it was another day or so before the business world noticed that the lawsuit had been dropped. We were not allowed to talk about it, but the local community seemed to have a strong intuition that we had won. Once a couple of the local tech websites ran with the story, it became news. That was when our lives really changed.
John and I were inundated with calls offering us jobs, consulting positions, investments, and interviews. I ignored most of those calls and emails, but I did respond to a few where people who had written to thank us for taking on PharmaTech. It seemed that the company had pissed off a fair few people over the last couple of years, and usually, they got away with it.
Whereas before only one journalist had wanted to speak to me, now they all wanted to get fifteen minutes with me and John. We rejected all the offers for the time being. Neither of us really saw the benefit in speaking to the press at this point, and we were both concerned we might slip up and say something we shouldn’t about the settlement. One day soon we would sit down with Bethany and get a better idea of what we could and couldn’t say, but for now, we intended to keep our mouths shut.
I took some satisfaction in knowing that Amanda’s article was the only one out there of its kind, and that it must therefore be getting a lot of hits. I had approved her article just before the settlement and it should have now been online. But when I ran a quick search, nothing came up. I went back to my email to make sure I had responded to her confirming I was happy with the article. The email was there, but she had also replied with a further comment that I had missed. The email lay dormant amongst the other 649 unread emails.
I noticed an issue with the story. Can we talk? I think it’s important.
Amanda had done enough to earn my trust, so I replied, asking if she could meet at the coffee shop again. She emailed me back immediately and we agreed to meet.
With all the attention I had been getting recently, I half-expected to walk into the coffee shop and need to sign autographs. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not one person seem to recognize me. Even Jane, the waitress I knew, wasn’t working today. Amanda was already at a table and had bought me a coffee, so I walked over and joined her. She looked a lot less relaxed than she’d been last time we met, and that had me a little worried.
“Sorry it took me a long time to reply to your email,” I said. “Things have been crazy recently.”
“That’s okay,” Amanda said, and then went quiet.
“I couldn’t find the article online. Does that mean you weren’t able to sell it? I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I would have thought the article would be in high demand right now.”
“I never showed it to my editor.”
“You holding out for a better price?” Amanda was a freelance journalist, and she had every right to sell her stories to the highest bidder—although as I understood it, the correct practice was usually to offer it to a preferred editor and give them first right of refusal. Still, I could hardly blame her for trying to cash in a bit. After all, she was the one clever enough to ask for the interview in the first place.
“No, no, it’s not that. I’m not going to publish it because I don’t want to draw any additional attention to you personally, and to the lawsuit.”
“What do you mean? There already seems to be a lots of attention on the lawsuit, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Besides, we won!”
Amanda forced a smile, but it soon disappeared from her face. “Congratulations. I know you are the talk of the tech industry at the moment, but they aren’t looking too closely at the case. Fortunately, most of them don’t want to look directly at the court filings. But someone is bound to do that sooner rather than later, and when they do, they will put the pieces together. You don’t want that, so I thought it best to not publish the article.”
“We don’t have anything to hide,” I said, frowning. “There are certain things I can’t say, but everything we filed with the court is public information and I don’t have a problem with it.”
&nb
sp; “The thing is, I did a bit more digging after the interview. I’d been so pleased with how it went that I forgot to ask one of the questions on my list.”
“What question?”
“You didn’t just sue PharmaTech. You also sued another company—an LLC that I had never heard of. I went back to the court documents and reread them. The LLC you are suing was the investor—or an investment vehicle for an investor, anyway”
My stomach tightened as I realized where Amanda was going. I had never looked at the official documents filed with the court, but it only made sense that our lawyers would have sued the investment company as well as PharmaTech. The investment company was likely an empty shell, so we’d get no money from them, but that LLC did have one very important secret that I wished would stay hidden.
“I want you to know that I was trying to help,” Amanda said. “And I still will help, if I can. Anyway, I did some digging and found out who was listed as the founder of the LLC. That information isn’t easy to come by—fortunately I have a, uh, contact at the Secretary of State who was very helpful—but someone else might do the same.”
If it were any other journalist in front of me right now, I might have played dumb and pretended to have no idea what she was talking about. But Amanda had earned my respect, and it was quite clear she knew what was going on.
“You know about Carter?” I asked.
She nodded. “I got lucky. When I found his address of record, I went snooping and saw the two of you come out of the building together. Listen, I don’t fully understand what is going on here, but you seem like a really genuine person, so I don’t believe the two of you were up to anything shady.”
“We weren’t. The whole thing is a complete mess, but those claims against PharmaTech were true. Still, Carter and I are an item.”
“I figured as much. I have no right to tell you what to do, but if you do want my advice, here it is: you and Carter should not be seen together for the foreseeable future. In fact, I would recommend Carter go underground, if at all possible.”
Crash - Part Four Page 6