“Logan has requested an audience with you,” Ian said to me as he began loosening my restraints.
I sat up on the bed and began rubbing my wrists where the straps had been, more confused than in pain. “Logan? But why? I'm not his assistant, I'm yours,” I said.
Ian shrugged. “Who knows? I think the old-timer is going senile on us. Best not to keep him waiting though, unless you want an earful. The only thing Logan likes more than money is a thorough lecture, and trust me, he's equally good at getting both.”
I slipped my blouse back on. Logan was a nice man, warmer than Ian, more sensitive too. I didn't really mind the idea of spending an afternoon with him. Still though, it seemed very unprovoked. Logan had a team of the most gifted scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and stock brokers at his command at all times. What could he possibly want with a glorified secretary? “So he didn't say what for?” I asked again.
“Well not exactly, but I'm sure it's nothing serious...” Ian trailed off. He was scrutinizing my face. Suddenly, I felt naked again. “Do you not feel comfortable around Logan or something?” There was an unmistakable hint of suspicion in Ian's voice. My heart began hammering in my chest.
I took an internal deep breath and shook my head. “No. Of course not. I'm just worried,” I said.
“Worried about what?” Ian asked, edging closer to me. I could feel his suspicion mounting.
“What if he knows our secret? What if he knows about us?” I whispered, as if someone else was in the lab.
Ian's posture instantly relaxed. “Logan? Ha! Even if he did know, he wouldn't care. He understands the kind of confidentiality you have to maintain in this position. He would even encourage the secrecy himself.” Ian laughed. “I wouldn't worry too much about Logan. You had me going there for a second. I just had the strangest feeling you were holding out on me. Which is bizarre; my instincts have never served me wrong before...” Ian trailed off thoughtfully.
“Aw, you mean Ian isn't clairvoyant as well as rich and famous? Poor baby,” I said snarkily.
Ian chuckled to himself. “Just get out of here, before my ego gets compromised any further,” he said, nodding towards the door.
“Wouldn't that be a shame,” I murmured as I walked to the door, swiveling my hips with each step. My mother had always taught me to always leave them wanting more. To remind them of what they were missing when you were gone. It seemed the further I got along in my life, the more of my mom's advice seemed correct.
“I love you,” Ian said when I reached the door. I paused at the knob and grinned to myself.
Mother knows best, I thought. “I love you too,” I said, and walked out.
* * *
“Wait just a moment,” Mr. Renly said. “I'm a bit confused.”
“Common phenomenon for a man,” I said with a shrug.
Mr. Renly ignored my retort. “So this moment in the lab, this occurred after you two began seeing each other?”
I nodded. “Correct.”
“In secret?” Mr. Renly added.
I sighed. “Yes, in secret.”
“Which you thought was to preserve the integrity of his company, but was actually to hide you from his wife,” Mr. Renly said. His tone was brutally matter-of-fact. So much so it felt as though he had just punched me in the stomach.
I thought back to Ian. Was Mr. Renly right? It was hard to say. The more time that elapsed from the event, the more ridiculous it all seemed. Meticulously, my mind had begun to pick apart all my emotions from that time. Now I wasn't sure that a single one of them had any real merit. “I'm not sure,” I said. “It was complicated.”
“Well can you explain further?” Mr. Renly asked.
“I can try,” I responded.
* * *
The moment I stepped into the office I knew something was wrong. The lights were dim, too dim. Not only that, the office was too isolated. When I had left Ian and the lab, an escort had taken me down to the garage, where a driver was waiting. From there, the driver had taken me to some remote complex deep in the heart of the city. I could even see my office at the magazine from the window. Was that an accident?
Logan was not here yet either. This left me alone, in a dim room, pacing back and forth in front of an auburn desk. It felt as though I was in an interrogation room. Even though I knew the driver was waiting for me on the streets below, and that my cell phone could contact anyone at any time, I still felt very alone, very vulnerable. If I screamed, would anybody be able to hear it?
“Hello, Ms. Adams,” a deep voice said.
I swiveled around in shock. “Mr. Lambert!” I said, startled. “I didn't hear you come in.”
Logan feigned a smile, then began to approach me. It wasn't until now, when we were alone in this dark room together, that I noticed how large he really was. His barrel chest and thick arms looked as though they could snap me in half without so much as a second thought. Then, a horrible, nightmarish realization came over me. Logan had called me Ms. Adams, not Ms. Potters. A deep, dismal sinking feeling sank into my stomach. He knew.
I cleared my throat, watching as Logan fished out two glasses from a cabinet, filling both with an amber liquid. Scotch by the look of it. A popular drink amongst the upper echelons. He offered me one wordlessly. The hand I went to grab it with was trembling fiercely.
Logan took a sip of the scotch and peered out the window onto the streets below, still not saying a word.
When I could take the silence no longer, I spoke. “Mr. Lambert, why did you request my presence? I have quite a bit of work to do. So if it's all the same to you, I'd like to return to the esta―”
“You can drop the act, Ms. Adams. I know who you are,” Logan said, looking directly at me. The gaze from his dark eyes petrified me in place.
“W-w-who is Ms. Adams? I don't know what you're talking about,” I insisted. I would not go down without a fight.
Logan laughed. It was a harsh laugh, a scathing one. “Admirable, but futile.” Logan tossed a file onto the desk. I looked at it. The file was the immaculate résumé of the esteemed Penelope Potters. “Ms. Adams, I help run one of the most technologically advanced companies in the entire world. Even our simplest software is ten years ahead of most military applications. The average education level of everyone on our staff, including lawn maintenance and janitorial duties, is a Master’s degree. So tell me something, Ms. Adams. Do you really think we wouldn't run something as simple as a background check on one of the most revealing positions within our company?”
The dread welling in my stomach graduated to raw terror. I felt small, stupid, feeble, like a mouse cornered by a snake. How could I have been so foolish? How could I honestly have believed that something as crude as a faked résumé would pass the screening of a company as prestigious as Infiniti Inc.? I was nothing more than a fly riding on the back of a titan. I tried to speak, but the words found themselves frozen in the back of my throat. All I managed was a meager whimper.
“Do you know who is in charge of screening new employees here, Ms. Adams?” Logan asked. Only silence answered him. I still could not muster the will to speak. I was too busy envisioning my career crumbling around me. I saw jails and deportation. Now I would be lucky to be able to go back home and run my family's furniture store. By the end of this, I would be lucky to be an American citizen.
“I do,” Logan said after a prolonged silence. “And that is precisely why your plan worked.”
Logan's last sentence broke through the fog in my mind like a beam of light. I still was having trouble processing the information I had just been given. “What?” I finally squeaked.
Logan smirked. “That's right. Who do you think sent your magazine the lead? Who do you think requested Rachel Adams, the hard-hitting, Pulitzer-winning journalist with a nose for truth and a skull too thick to know when to call it quits?”
A sudden flashback played itself out in my mind. Stacey, my co-worker, had handed me the file of Ia
n Payne over a month ago. She said it was a hot lead, that Ian had a secret the world needed to know, and the source had come from an insider. I had never dreamed the insider was so close to Ian himself. That it was none other than his mentor. It all made sense now: why it had been so easy to obtain the position, why Ian himself had conducted the interview. Logan had been in the background the whole time, pulling strings. Something told me he had never actually run a background check on Penelope Potters' suspiciously perfect resume. Logan had convinced Ian that I was the real deal. He had set his friend up for a fall, but why? Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach.
“It was you,” I said, still dumbfounded.
Logan nodded. “You catch on quick.” The sarcasm in his voice was not lost on me.
“But why? Why would you put the company you helped build in jeopardy?” I asked.
Logan scoffed. “Listen. The company is in jeopardy now. Ian's a good kid, sharp as a tack too. Simply put, he's a genius, the genuine article. But in this day and age, that's not good enough. Ian may be a great engineer, but he has the business sense of a six-year-old. He doesn't understand how to profit off of his mind.”
The nausea was swirling now, gurgling. With it came rage. “Ian trusts you,” I said.
“Exactly. Just another one of his faults,” Logan said.
“I would call that a virtue,” I said through clenched teeth. I had to suppress the urge to throw my glass in his grinning face.
Logan sighed. “I don't have anything against Ian, I really don't. I watched him grow up, watched him flourish. I love him, truthfully.”
“You don't even know what love is,” I spat, surprising even myself. I was gripping the glass so tight now my knuckles were white.
Logan's face curled in confusion, then understanding. “Perhaps I'm not the only one in this room who loves Ian,” Logan said. The accusation stung my cheeks like a wasp. I only prayed he couldn't see the scarlet flush in them. Logan's eyes fell on my face, then widened, along with his grin. “Oh. Well that is certainly an interesting new development. So Rachel Adams loves Ian Payne, and Ian Payne loves Penelope Potters.” Logan chuckled and shook his head. “A new-age love triangle. Tell me something, Rachel: Do you think Ian will feel the same way once he discovers who you really are?”
My stomach was throbbing, my knees weak. How had I let things get so out of hand so quickly?
“You see, Ms. Adams, I need your help,” Logan continued. “One thing I can say about Ian is that he may not know how to market his inventions, but he certainly knows how to keep them a secret. He doesn't trust anyone with them, not even me.”
“I can't imagine why,” I said with a scoff.
Logan ignored the slight. “You, though,” he said, running a finger through my hair. I recoiled from his touch, stifling the urge to hit him. “He loves you, or who he thinks you are. The semantics don't matter. The fact is, he trusts you, with anything. I know so because he talks about you all the time. You've become his obsession, and his weakness.”
“What do you want?” I asked. I felt so helpless, like I had wandered too deep into the jungle, and no longer knew how to find my way back out.
“I only want two things from you. One, the schematics for the Genesis Drive,” Logan said. I winced. The Genesis Drive was Ian's baby, a perpetual-motion device he was developing that if successful, could provide limitless clean energy. He talked about it often. “And two, I simply want you to tell the truth.”
My eyes narrowed. “What truth?”
“Both of us know that Ian is using company money to fund personal development projects on his estate. I believe we also both understand how illegal this is,” Logan said.
“You want me to ruin his reputation?”
“I want you to do your job, the job you were truly hired to do. I mean, let's be completely realistic here. Do you really think Ian loves you? Or even Ms. Potters? Maybe he does, but you're no stranger to love, Rachel. It never lasts. Eventually all that passion is going to run dry, even if he never finds out who you really are. Just take it for what it is, a love affair. It's temporary, but you know what isn't? Your career. That will be yours forever. Once your story hits the papers, that will be it. You thought winning a Pulitzer was big? This story will cause the most dramatic economic shift the world has ever seen. New York City will be ablaze with debate. They will talk about your story for years to come. You'll be a household name. That kind of press isn't easy to find. Once you're that well known, well, the rest is easy. You release a book, maybe an autobiography. It will be a bestseller the day it hits the shelves. You'll be richer than you've ever been in the entirety of your life. You'll have everything you ever dreamed of,” Logan said.
My eyes were glittering now, peppered by the vision Logan had described in front of me. I was torn, caught between my doomed love for Ian, and the desire to achieve what I had dreamed about since I scribbled in my notebook on the farm as a little girl. Many people dreamed, few achieved, and now there it was, within my grasp, more obtainable than it had ever been in my entire life. All I had to do was reach out and grab it.
“Are you really going to pass all of that up for some doomed romance? No, not you. Maybe you would have a few years ago, but you're smarter than that now, harder. Aren't you, Rachel?” Logan asked, surveying my face.
I felt my soul tugging in two directions, straining against itself, tugging so much that it threatened to rip in half. “What if I refuse to help you?” I asked.
Logan shrugged. “Well, simple. I'll tell Ian who you really are. Then who knows what will happen from there.”
The open threat was meant to allow my imagination to fill in the blanks. “What if I tell him about the conversation we had just now? What if I tell him you were the one who set the whole thing up?” He wasn't the only one who could make threats.
Logan simply smiled. “Who do you think he's going to believe, Rachel? Some reporter who has already lied to him, or someone who has been with him for his entire life, mentoring him?”
My insides froze over. He was right. Suddenly I was no longer at a crossroads; there was only one real path to take. Only one that made any sense. I sighed. “Okay. I'll do it.” The words that left my lips felt hollow, as hollow as I did.
Logan grinned. “Smart girl. See, I knew you were a logical person. A few years from now, you'll look back and know you made the right decision.”
“One last thing though,” I said as my hand hovered over the office door.
“What's that?” Logan asked.
“Why? Why are you doing all of this? Why go through all of the trouble?” I asked.
Logan shrugged. “Simple. I want what's best for the company. Once Ian's reputation is ruined, he will be investigated. By the end there will be a board meeting, and I will become the new head of Infiniti Inc. Then I will end the foolish privacy policy instituted by Ian, and Infiniti Inc. will be a publicly traded company, making it become the single most profitable company on the planet.”
“So you want to take something that isn't yours,” I said, seething.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Don't be so naïve. Do you really think the company belongs to Ian? Or his father before him? No. We have a moral obligation to the world to let them know what is going on here. Men like Ian want to keep all of their wonders to themselves. But something that great belongs in the hands of the people. I'm simply doing what needs to be done.”
I reached into my purse and hit the stop button on the tape recorder hidden inside. “And so am I,” I said, and walked out of the office.
* * *
Mr. Renly was grinning from ear to ear, dabbing his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief. “Well,” he said after a long pause. “This story is certainly heating up, isn't it?”
I shrugged. “I wasn't lying to you when I said that this would be the highlight of your career.” I could see the greed shimmering in Mr. Renly's eyes. Then, he frowned.
“But wait. You obviously neve
r published the story on Mr. Payne, or Logan Lambert. Otherwise you wouldn't be here,” Mr. Renly realized.
I nodded. “Very observant of you.”
Mr. Renly scratched his head. “Well then what did you do with the recording of Mr. Lambert? Please tell me you still possess it.”
I looked back to the window sill. From the corner of my eye, I could see the disappointment settling in on Mr. Renly's face.
“You no longer possess the recording,” he said heavily.
“I don't,” I admitted.
Mr. Renly shook his head and scoffed. “Unbelievable, what kind of journalist are you anyway?”
“A poor one,” I responded.
“What in all of God's creation could have caused you to lose such a valuable piece of information? You do realize that thirty seconds of that conversation would have been worth more than this entire building?” Mr. Renly said, his face going a deep red.
“I don't expect you to understand. Even I don't truly understand why I did it, why I did anything. It's just kind of how it happened. I don't really know how else to explain it.” My own words sounded feeble tumbling out of my mouth.
“What exactly did you intend to do with the recording when you left Lambert's office?” Mr. Renly asked.
I took a deep breath. “I was going to do the right thing. I was going to let Ian listen to it.”
Renly raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You were? Even though doing so would knowingly reveal your true identity, as well as jeopardize your job, your relationship with Ian, and even your freedom? Letting him listen to that recording would be nothing short of admitting to fraud, an act punishable by a five-year prison sentence.”
Rich Man's Deception: Complete Boxed Set Bundle: Billionaire Boss / Corporate Espionage Romance Page 8