Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2)

by Rosalind James

  He said, “There’s going to be an article in the Journal tomorrow. Not good. They’re asking if you want to comment. I’ve said no, but you should take a look at the draft and decide for yourself.”

  It wasn’t the first time, but it wasn’t important. “What is it? The layoffs at La Strata? They had to happen. Hopelessly overstaffed. Or am I just a ruthless investor again?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s your wife. I’m sending it to you now, and I’ll hold while you read it.”

  “No, you won’t. Send it. I’ll ring you back if I want to comment.”

  I kept it together. Whatever it was, I’d cope. Bad press had happened before. Power and bad press went together like bangers and mash. If it was personal…well, that wasn’t new, either. It didn’t matter.

  Except to Hope.

  No. I shook it off.

  And then I read it. No headline, not yet. But the article was bad enough without it.

  Revelations surfaced today of cracks in the foundations of one of fashion’s most successful and powerful houses, as it was learned that Hemi Te Mana, 37, iconic founder of the company bearing his name, is facing the possible loss of half his personal net worth in a marital dispute.

  In a development that could have widespread repercussions for both the Te Mana corporation and the wider fashion industry, it was revealed that Mr. Te Mana has been married for the past seventeen years to 37-year-old Anika Cavendish, whom he left behind in their native New Zealand upon his emigration to the United States barely two years after their marriage. The pair never officially separated despite Mr. Te Mana’s widely reported single status and rumored connections with a series of women, beginning almost immediately upon his arrival in this country. The couple has no children.

  The multimillionaire’s playboy lifestyle continued, sources allege, until his recent rumored engagement to 25-year-old Te Mana marketing assistant Hope Sinclair. Despite the lack of any public announcement, Ms. Sinclair is reported to be wearing an engagement ring into the office and to have mentioned her impending marriage to colleagues.

  However, when Mr. Te Mana filed for a divorce from Ms. Cavendish last month, he was served in a separate filing with a suit demanding half the property accumulated during the seventeen-year marriage, in accordance with New Zealand family law. Such a division of Mr. Te Mana’s estimated $250 million personal fortune, retail experts suggest, could require a wholesale selloff of the corporation’s rapidly expanding holdings and seriously jeopardize its financial position.

  Mr. Te Mana’s woes may not end there. The May-December romance between the Te Mana CEO and the much younger and more junior Ms. Sinclair has raised eyebrows and hackles at a company whose employee handbook features a five-page sexual harassment policy that requires immediate disclosure of romantic or sexual relationships between managers and their subordinates. As an unnamed colleague of Ms. Sinclair told this reporter, however, “Hemi has one rule for the rest of the company and another one for himself. If he puts his girlfriends on the payroll, who’s going to tell him no? Let’s just say that complaining has been proven to be more than our jobs are worth.” Another colleague noted that Ms. Sinclair’s former manager, Publicity Director Martine Devereaux, a highly esteemed Te Mana veteran of more than eight years’ service, left the company abruptly last year only a few months after the start of Ms. Sinclair’s employment as her direct report. Ms. Devereaux could not be reached for comment.

  Experts agree that the potentially disastrous financial repercussions far outweigh any internal issues. Mr. Te Mana’s attorney, Walter Eagleton, refused to speculate on the situation, saying only, “The corporation is on solid financial ground, and we are confident that its future remains secure.” According to Ms. Cavendish’s attorney, Hamish McAllister, “Ms. Cavendish is not interested in vengeance, only in receiving what is rightfully hers under the law. For seventeen years, she has believed that she was in a real marriage, a long-distance one at Mr. Te Mana’s insistence, a relationship that began when she was just a teenager. We have every belief that the New Zealand justice system will follow the rule of law in its decision.”

  Meanwhile, the fashion industry and over two thousand Te Mana employees worldwide can only watch and wait to see how the drama plays out.

  I rang Walter back.

  “She’s gone nuclear,” he said economically.

  “Yeh. Aiming for that big settlement, I’m thinking.” I focused on breathing in cool air, breathing out the hot rage that wanted to enslave me. Rage was unproductive, and it had to go. I dealt with the facts, made a plan, executed, and moved on. No matter what the facts were. No matter that Anika was hitting me where it would hurt most, trying to shake the foundations of everything I’d built.

  Before she took half of it.

  “Settling could be worth it,” Walter said. “Without an affidavit from your roommate…” Rog had been tracked down at last in the UK, had said he “couldn’t remember exactly,” and had implied that a fair deposit of beer money—say, a lifetime’s worth—could jog his memory. Which was absolutely no help at all.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not worth it. It would never have been worth it. If I’d offered a million, she’d have demanded twenty. Trust me, if she sniffs weakness, she’ll have my blood. That’s not going to happen. I’ll go proactive here, board meeting and so forth. And you’ll go proactive there. I don’t want ‘no bloody comment.’ Call that reporter and show him the documentation from the divorce I thought I had. Link to the articles about that attorney. Explain the bloody two-year waiting period. They want a story? We’ll give them a story. And go nuclear yourself. Tell them what the investigator’s found about her sex life, and then tell him to find out more. I want to know what her neighbors have heard, what they’ve seen. She’s been screaming over there. I know it. Find out who’s making her do it.”

  “I do not want to know this,” Walter said.

  “Too bloody bad. You’re hearing it. I want to know who she’s brought home, and what she did when they got there. I want her past partners, and I want them talking. I want it all, and I want her to know I’m getting it. She wants to talk about my private life, take half the money I earned after she cheated on me with my friend and then dumped me? She wants to shame my fiancée and ruin me professionally? She wants to put lies out there? I’ll put the truth out there, and I’m not the one living on an island with four and a half million people who don’t have enough to read about. The world’s a big place with a short memory. New Zealand isn’t.”

  “And what about Hope?”

  “Do everything you can do to keep her out of it. She hasn’t done anything wrong, and I want her out of it. Whatever it takes.”

  Hope

  There could have been better ways to get the news.

  Hemi had come home late the night before; so late, in fact, that I’d been asleep. And on Friday morning, he was gone by the time I got up.

  He hadn’t exactly frozen me out since Saturday, when I’d told him I was quitting. He’d just been his most remote self. Except in bed, where he’d been his most demanding self. But then, Hemi won. That was his thing, and he needed it. As long as he kept it to that one area, I was happy to help him do it.

  He’d have to adjust on the work front, though, and that was all there was to it. I wasn’t giving in and staying on in a situation that made me unhappy, not when there was no real reason to stay. If I became unhappy and resentful, I’d take it out on him whether I meant to or not, and that was no way to begin a marriage. Object lesson one: my own mother. Instead, I’d communicated honestly, and now, I was following through.

  Adult relationship. Yeah. That. Easier said than done.

  Today, I was dressed like an adult, too, in a severe black suit and pumps I’d bought on Sunday, an outfit that said Job Applicant as if I were wearing it on a name tag. Only a few days after starting to send out my resume, and I was getting ready for my first interview, with another one lined up for Tuesday. Things were looking up.


  I’d thought long and hard about what to tell Simon. In the end, I’d walked into his office and said, “I’ll be in about ten-thirty tomorrow morning. I have a job interview.”

  What was he going to do? Fire me?

  I’d been right, because he’d just looked twitchy and said, “Fine.” And had probably done a fist-pump the minute I’d left the room.

  I’d have given my two weeks’ notice, except that I’d remembered how fruitless my last job search had been. My eternal job search, right up until Hemi Te Mana had seen me crawling on the floor and had decided that my future position was going to involve working under him.

  So to speak.

  But that had been then, and this was now. I’d been at Te Mana for nearly a year, and that carried some serious cachet. I’d worked for a top fashion photographer for four long years before that, too. Never mind that I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree or more than one reference, and that it was from Nathan. Somebody would want me, especially once I started going on the interviews.

  I had killer shoes, after all, and in fashion, appearance was everything.

  The designer was minor, and the location nothing like Te Mana. More like Violet’s setup in Auckland, a converted warehouse in the Garment District. But the air was alive with energy as staffers walked through the small reception area, heels clicking on the tiled floor, their glances at me sharp and curious, their clothes as funky and edgy as the company. A fairly new company, but an up-and-coming one, where I could help out and hopefully grow along with them. A job as a publicity and marketing assistant, too, and I knew how to do that. I did.

  Yeah. I’d just keep telling myself that. And what I didn’t know, I’d learn.

  I checked in with the receptionist and waited ten minutes, then fifteen, and nobody came. But then, that was probably what happened when you weren’t being interviewed on orders from the boss.

  After twenty minutes, I was thinking about a polite inquiry when a youngish brunette came out from the back, dressed in super-skinny black jeans, a draped gray top, and heels, instantly making me feel overdressed in my severe suit. “Hope?” she said. “Audrey Ballesteros. Come on back.”

  When I did, though, and was seated across from her at a table in a tiny conference room, out of the bustle of the single big open-plan office, she didn’t start doing anything I’d call an “interview.” Instead, she looked at me, laughed a little, and said, “I don’t really know where to start.”

  I said, “Well, me neither. Interviewing is awkward, isn’t it?” I smiled, already liking her, and thought, Maybe. Maybe.

  “Especially today?” she said. “I thought it was a risk, but now…I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d come.”

  What? “Maybe,” I said slowly, the cold starting to creep down my spine, “you’d better tell me what you’re talking about.”

  She studied me, her expression quizzical. Her eyes were almost gray, I noticed inconsequentially, trying to focus on anything but the lightheadedness that was threatening once again. “You don’t know,” she finally said, “that the word on the street is to steer clear of you?”

  Oh, man. I was going to have to put my head between my knees again. “What?” I whispered.

  Martine. She’d gotten her revenge after all.

  Except for what Audrey said next. “Look.” She sighed. “Hemi Te Mana is a very powerful man. And especially now that the whole story’s out…at this point, we’d not only be going up against him, we could be making ourselves look foolish, too. And I should have just told you that the position’s filled, I know. I thought maybe you could pull it off, that we’d go for shock value and get people taking your calls that way, get ourselves some real publicity. No such thing as bad publicity, right? But now that I’ve met you, I’m not getting that vibe from you, that you could pull it off. I’m sorry. And I know,” she said with another laugh that I would’ve enjoyed under other circumstances, “that’s too blunt. My unfortunate nature, but then, why beat around the bush?”

  I set one palm on the table to steady myself. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please explain.”

  “You haven’t read the news today, I guess.”

  “No. I was getting ready for this.” For my interview. For my chance.

  “Uh-huh.” She turned around behind her, grabbed a newspaper from the top of an untidy stack, and put it down in front of me. “Maybe you ought to take a look.”

  Hemi

  I was in a meeting, and not one I was enjoying, though that wasn’t the point. Today, like yesterday, was all about damage control. At this particular moment, it was an emergency session with my hastily assembled board of directors.

  For the thousandth time, I was grateful that I’d kept the company privately held. No outraged, panicked shareholders’ groups to deal with, at least. No publicly traded stock to take a plunge, although the value of my own shares would be suffering a loss in value I didn’t want to think about.

  I didn’t have to, though. The value of my shares only mattered when I sold them, and that wasn’t going to be happening.

  “The personal attacks are just a smokescreen, of course,” Jeannine Robinson, my Vice President of Finance, was saying now. “But they could still be damaging if they affect public confidence.”

  “PR firm,” I said. “We’re on it.”

  “A statement in every employee’s inbox wouldn’t come amiss right now, either,” she said, “to address the personnel issue.”

  “Aw, BS,” Blake Orbison said. “Let ‘em talk.” An ex-NFL player who now owned a string of sports-themed bars and restaurants and licensed franchises to over a hundred more, Blake was always the wild card among the outside directors, but he brought a freewheeling entrepreneurial mindset I appreciated. “What did his ex say? That he’s a stud. Not going to hurt him with men or women. Look at the guy. And what did he say? That he had every reason to think he was divorced, and that she was banging anything in pants herself. And even if he cheated—so what? He’s not running for office.” He told me, “Do an interview and a shirtless photo shoot showing off the tat, and you’re all good. Arms folded. Black background. You’re wounded but strong. Might as well be printing money. Best favor she ever did you.”

  “There’s that matter of sexual harassment,” my COO, Franklin Curry, said dryly.

  “Sexual harassment my ass,” Blake said. “He’s marrying the girl, isn’t he? Photo shoot, man,” he told me. “With the girl. Even better. You’ve got your arm across her chest from behind, staring hard into the camera. You’re protective, and she’s in love. She’s little, right? Man, you’re golden. Every man wants to be you, every woman wants to do you, and all of a sudden, you’re better off.”

  “Not the definition of sexual harassment,” Jeannine said, looking like she wanted to climb across the table and slap him. “Whether you marry her. And for your information, not every woman carries her brain betw—” She cut herself off. “And last I checked, a female who’s reached twenty-five is a woman.”

  “Whatever,” Blake said.

  I stepped in before the word Neanderthal could be uttered. “Moving on.”

  That was when Hope walked into the room. Little, yes. In love, maybe not so much.

  “Excuse me,” she said, but that wasn’t how she sounded. She was in a tailored black suit and graceful black heels, her hair up in a twist, not looking one bit like the soft, sweet little thing I loved to watch underneath me, her breath coming hard in the candlelight, or the laughing girl who sat on a stool in my kitchen and twisted my heart into a knot.

  “Could you wait until we’re done, please?” I asked, projecting every bit of calm I had. What the hell had Josh been doing, letting her walk in like this?

  “No,” she said, then told the others, “Excuse me. It’s an emergency, I’m afraid. Could you give us a minute?”

  They looked at me, not at her, and I could tell that was infuriating her more. “Ten minutes, please,” I said, then picked up my phone and rang Josh. “We�
�re taking a ten-minute break,” I told him. He’d take care of them. The way he hadn’t taken care of Hope.

  They filed out, Blake sauntering out last, all blue jeans and half-smile, pulling the door shut behind him after one last amused look at me. Bastard.

  “Sit down,” I told Hope when they were gone. “It’s not really on to interrupt a board meeting, you know. Some of them have traveled to get here, and this is a bit important itself.”

  I could have asked what was wrong, but it was clear to me that she wasn’t unhappy, or panicked, either. She was angry, and I didn’t really have to guess why.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not making the first move to sit down. “Maybe you should have thought of that and told me ahead of time that you’d be in the paper this morning, and so would I. Maybe you could have told me, while you were at it, that you were facing a crisis, so I could have known, and so I could have helped you. The way people normally communicate with their partners.”

  “You were asleep.” Not my sharpest comeback ever. My mind was racing, but it was coming up short.

  She stared at me with the contempt that excuse deserved. “Couldn’t wake me up? And was I asleep yesterday, or whenever you found out about this? No. I was downstairs. I was hoping you hadn’t told me about Anika over the past weeks because there was nothing to tell, but now, who knows? Maybe it was because you think I’m a child, somebody who can’t handle the truth, somebody to stick on a…a shelf like a doll until you want to play with her.”

  What the hell? Who’d said she was my doll? She was still standing, too. “Sit,” I told her.

  “No. I’m not your dog, either.”

  I did not need this agro. Everything was crashing down on me. Couldn’t she see that? “If you don’t want me to treat you like a child,” I said, “maybe you shouldn’t act like one.”