Undeniably His

by Amanda Chayse

  “I contacted the reporter at the Southampton Gazette,” I say. “I’ve arranged for him to come here. I checked your schedule, and slotted him in for later this afternoon. Is that okay?”

  “The sooner the better. It’s perfect, thank you. Getting the story out early is crucial, and whoever put this piece out knows that.” Kalin begins to devour his lunch. I have never seen him so famished. It must be the demands of his healing body.

  “His name is Carl Atwell. Apparently he thought he could put some B.S. out without anyone noticing?”

  Kalin wipes his fingers with his napkin and shifts his eyes to me. “Unfortunately, it’s a process that usually works for them.”

  “What do you mean?” I crinkle my brows at him.

  “As my marketing assistant, it’s time to learn how the media works.”

  “Okay.” I straighten up like a student in a lecture hall.

  “They write for profits, not to inform the public about anything in particular. Oftentimes they are even paid to forward a story, and solidify it in the public’s mind. So they run with a story and just keep repeating it over and over. The public believes it and at that point it is almost impossible to reverse, regardless of whether it’s true or not. Prosecutors have used this method for years to influence a jury, and politicians use this method all of the time in cooperation with news outlets.”

  “How do they get away with that?”

  “Money. It’s all about money. Stories are bought and sold just like everything else, not just advertising. Fortunately, we are on the advertising side. But I have seen how it works from the inside, and it isn’t pretty.”

  “So they are paid to put out false stories?”

  “It happens all the time. If they get any friction, they just buy the news source.”

  “I will certainly read the news with a new skepticism.” I shake my head with a tinge of disgust. “Apparently he thought he could pass a few lies off on you, and defame your name.”

  “Yes. And he’s mistaken,” Kalin sneers. “I’m going to let him know he gets only two choices with me. And he needs to decide fast.”

  I take a bite of chicken and raise my brows in curiosity.

  “Give up his sources, or get fired.” He glares.

  “Kalin, you can’t fire him, you don’t own the…” Even as I speak I realize the implications of what he’s saying. “You’re going to buy the Gazette just to fire him?” I ask.

  “If I have to. Or he can simply tell me who fed him that story, and print a full retraction on the front page. Or I can buy the company and do it myself. Oh, and then fire him.” Kalin takes a bite of chicken like he’s eating at a picnic on a Sunday afternoon. He looks up at me and smiles.

  The nurse and doctor come in to take some readings. “Hello, Annabelle. Kalin, you’re recovering about a week ahead of schedule. Your heart is much stronger, your ribs are strong and healing, and your lung is back to normal. Must be all that good food you’re eating.”

  Kalin and I exchange impish expressions.

  “We can probably let you out of here in a week.” The doctor writes down a few readings on the machines. “The nurse will be back in about an hour to take your blood pressure.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Brandt. I know this was a serious injury. I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me.”

  “You certainly defied the statistics, Kalin. Injuries of this type have an eighty percent mortality rate. Consider this your second life.” Dr. Brandt gives Kalin a stern nod and ambles out of the room.

  Kalin smiles at me. “Good news for us. Bad news for them.”

  Carl Atwell arrives at the hospital two hours later. He has thin, dark hair that he wears longer than necessary. I sit by the bed and record the conversation on the phone in my purse. Kalin introduces me as his marketing assistant who delegates all assignments, including how to go forward with this issue.

  Carl, a senior reporter for the Southampton Gazette, has gone far in his career by telling silly tales of good-hearted politicians, faithfully serving corporate interests, and generally covering for the rich and powerful. From his large body of work, there is no telling how much the public has been kept in the dark on any given issue that truly matters to them.

  Kalin tilts his head back in the bed and gazes at the ceiling for a moment. His tone is laced with impatience and disdain. “Are you proud of the work that you do, Mr. Atwell?”

  “It pays the bills.” Carl’s lips twitch into a smirk.

  “Mr. Atwell, let me get to the point. I know how this works. You report something over and over and over again, and before you know it, the people will believe it regardless of any ensuing facts. Even if you issue a retraction, it will be too late because it is too ingrained into the public’s mind. And the sooner the bullshit is reported, the better.”

  Carl sneers.

  “You knew there was another driver that rammed us. You made it sound like I caused the accident, and even worse, that I caused it while drinking.”

  “That’s the info I got. Witnesses that spotted you out that evening said you were drinking.”

  “We have the police report, the blood report, and the damage to the vehicle. Did you even bother to check on any of that information?”

  Carl slouches. “We got the information from witnesses. The police confirmed that it was possible you were driving recklessly when the truck hit your vehicle.”

  “There is nothing written in your article that would stand the light of day, much less survive a lawsuit. So I will give you two choices. I’m not making any deals, and I’m not giving you any more choices. This is it. Take it or leave it.”

  Carl shifts his eyes to Kalin, and his brows knit for just a moment in a flash of confusion. “Why would I do that?”

  “Tell me who told you to write the story, or I’m buying the paper and I’ll issue the correction myself.”

  “A journalist never gives up his sources, Mr. Davis.”

  “Sources?” Kalin chuckles. “You don’t have reliable sources, Mr. Atwell. You simply sell your services to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for you, I’m the highest bidder. Now tell me who paid you to write this story. Issue a full retraction on the front page that matches the actual evidence, or I’m buying the Gazette. When it’s revealed what a shameless, incompetent reporter you are, you won’t work again. And make no mistake, Mr. Atwell, it will be revealed. Those are your choices. Take it or leave it.”

  “Mr. Davis, I don’t make these decisions. Even if I wrote a retraction, it would never be printed.”

  “My company is one of your paper’s largest clients. Your team should have thought this through a bit better,” Kalin adds.

  Carl’s face blanches. “I don’t understand. They’re the ones who paid us to write the story, Mr. Davis.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Of course. They thought I would be dead anyway with no questions asked. Problem solved,” Kalin snorts. “Even if Annabelle survived, no one would listen to her. The story would be too well ingrained into the public’s consciousness. In a careless night of driving recklessly, I died an unfortunate death. End of story.”

  “The stories must pass our editing process, Mr. Davis. Even if I wrote something else, it would never see the light of day.” Carl casts his eyes downward.

  “Standard MO,” Kalin snarls. “I want the names, Mr. Atwell.”

  Carl shakes his head. “I don’t know their names. Even if I did, I couldn’t give them to you, or it’d be my death that they’d be writing about.”

  “Yeah, a suicide.” Kalin’s tone is laced with sarcasm. “Someone met with them. Who?”

  “My boss meets with them, and he instructs me what to write. If I don’t write the stories exactly as directed, as I said, it simply won’t pass the editing process.”

  “Can you get into one of those meetings?”

  “No way, sir. The paper tightly controls access to its sources. It’s highly compartmentalized.”

  Kalin ru
bs his chin with his hand. “You tell your boss what I told you. Reveal the sources or I’m buying the company. Those are his choices.”

  “Yes, sir.” He hunches his shoulders. “Please don’t tell him what I told you.”

  “I won’t. It’s his decision now.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Davis.”

  I type in some notes on my MacBook and mentally note how much more confidently the reporter entered the room compared to how he slinked out. Kalin has an effect on people. If they confuse his kindness and generosity for naivety, they are gravely mistaken. Every day I spend with Kalin is a day I learn more about him. He would give his fortune away to the people he cares about and trusts in a heartbeat, and he would annihilate anyone who tries to steal from him even faster.

  When Kalin was prepared to walk away from his company, it mattered very little to him that he would no longer be on the front cover of Forbes or Businessweek, or that he would no longer receive the accolades and admiration of the business community. But when Lia was injured, I could see a different shade of him. I knew then that they had crossed the line with him. He saw how much I loved Lia, and anyone that came near us again with harmful intentions was about to pay a heavy price.

  The hospital staff requested that Kalin fill out a guest list since they had so many visitors requesting to see him, including the press.

  Today, he has reserved the afternoon for Lia, and tomorrow his corporate managers will be coming to see him with Madison. On Friday, his old college buddies will be stopping by, in all likelihood to rib him about losing control of a high-performance sports vehicle. Since he knows his life is threatened, he has me stay with him the whole time. In the evenings I clean up and change at his place, and his parents fill me in on childhood memories all the way to his engagement with Rebecca.

  Tonight, after we have dinner together, the conversation turns to Rebecca and Kalin. “Rebecca was Kalin’s high school sweetheart. He was in love with her the day he met her.” Lauren hands me a picture of them together at the prom.

  “She’s beautiful.” Rebecca is smiling brightly, and Kalin’s arm is around her slim waist. She has an elegant, sleeveless black dress on, the bodice decorated with beaded accents that bring out the green in her eyes. Her long brown hair is combed back elegantly in a woven braid, and Kalin is playfully adjusting the corsage on her wrist. I swipe at a tear burning the corner of my eye.

  “Kalin was in love with her. He couldn’t hide it if he tried. What Peter and I said was puppy love turned out to be very real. Kalin asked her to marry him in college. Before he was rich and famous,” she says with an air of humor.

  “We were excited because they both wanted to raise a big family,” Peter adds. “You don’t see that a lot these days. When Kalin started his company and it became successful, it put somewhat of a hold on their plans for marriage and a family. He had a lot of offers both to take it public and sell it. He decided he wanted it to stay in the family, not only for financial security, but to maintain the integrity of the company that Kalin had built it on. He told us the business world was getting more corrupt with mergers and such, with the same people running all these different conglomerates. He wanted to avoid them.”

  “Rebecca loved the people side of everything,” Lauren recalls. “She would make big meals, entertain guests, and always try to set her friends up on dates.”

  Peter chuckles across from us. “Some of those didn’t work out so well.”

  Kalin’s love for her shines still in the photographs that Lauren shows me in the family album. “She loved kids and wanted a lot of them. I don’t think she was that interested in the business side of things.” Lauren looks up from the album with a warm glow in her eyes. “She was his oasis from that part of his life.”

  “Maybe so, dear, but Rebecca certainly had an entrepreneurial flair in her own right. She was quite the event planner in Chicago. She could bring a gathering of zombies back to life,” Peter laughs. “Just don’t try and match any of them on a date. She didn’t know where to draw the line,” Peter cackles with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “Kalin wanted to teach his sons or daughters the business, and let them maintain the honor of the company name.” An inward gaze shades his face. “Just when everything was going perfectly…”

  Lauren stands and caresses his arm with her fingers. A downcast expression pulls at their faces. “We shouldn’t trouble Annabelle with this.”

  “No, Mr. and Mrs. Davis. If you don’t mind, I want to know. I want to know more about Kalin and his family.” I straighten up and lean in slightly.

  Peter wipes his face with the back of his hand. “When Rebecca came down with pancreatic cancer, it was a devastating diagnosis that brought their world and dreams for a family crashing down. As CEO and chairman, Kalin left the company indefinitely to spend time with her. He approved the replacements that began to fill up key leadership roles in the company.

  “Quite frankly, his heart was not with the company anymore. It was with Rebecca twenty-four-seven. Kalin would do anything to help her, and had all the money in the world to work with, but the cancer spread too quickly. At that point, he just wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. She died only eight months after the diagnosis. Kalin became quite reclusive and remained absent from the company altogether after she died. He just took off and travelled for six months. Nothing mattered to him anymore. He figured his dreams were broken, and he would just sell the company and move on.

  “But when Kalin came back and received word that his clients and workers were not taken care of the way he directed, he decided to come back. Management knew what that meant. The party was over.”

  “I could imagine some of them would not be happy about that. But do you think they would hatch a plan to kill him just to keep their lavish lifestyles?”

  “Is there a bigger motive to murder than money?” Peter asks.

  I take a deep breath to fight back the sickening feeling churning in my stomach.

  “The way Kalin looks at you, Annabelle. We never saw a light in Kalin’s eyes like that since the way he looked at Rebecca. It’s as if you brought him back to himself.”

  “I could never replace her.” I sigh and stare at my hands.

  “Kalin would never expect that from anyone, sweetheart. But he sees something in you that brings him back to life.”

  “Kalin’s a hopeless romantic.” My mouth twists into a smile.

  Lauren and Peter laugh. “That he is.” They speak in unison, and we all laugh at the acknowledgment. “But you gave him something back, Annabelle. It’s not just that you’re beautiful.”

  I feel my cheeks grow warm.

  “Kalin works around beautiful women all day. In fact, he turns them down all the time. I think he’s crazy.” Peter snickers.

  Lauren frowns at him.

  “Not me, sweetheart. Kalin.” Peter raises his hands in protest and chuckles.

  I glance at the picture of Kalin, the hopeless romantic, and wonder what the future holds for a man whose heart is bigger than the enemies and the tragedies that seek to destroy it, and if I have what it takes to fill it.

  ~~~

  Lia brings Kalin a fresh bouquet of dazzling bright-red tulips and vigorous, rich blue iris.

  She hugs me and then sets the flowers next to him on a nearby table. She embraces Kalin, propped up in the bed, and kisses him on the forehead. “I hope these brighten your day. These are not girlie flowers, Kalin, but manly man flowers with rich blues.”

  Kalin laughs. “So I’ve noticed.”

  “Freshly cut,” she chirps.

  “They’re beautiful, Lia. They brighten the room, but not as much as you.”

  Lia gives me an incredulous stare and her mouth drops partly open at me. She turns back to Kalin. “You are a charmer, Kalin.” She smirks while arranging the flowers.

  “I’m serious. I couldn’t make it in this place three weeks without the two of you. My mind would go crazy, probably bent on revenge.”

  �
��Don’t let us interfere,” Lia teases. “Have they found the scumbags yet?”

  “No.” I reply.

  “See, that’s just bullshit.” Lia turns to me, crossing her arms over her chest. “They almost fucking kill the guy,” she says, tilting her head at Kalin while keeping her eyes locked on me, “and they’re nowhere to be found. Unreal.”

  “We have a lot to work with, Lia. In all likelihood, they didn’t think Kalin would survive. The truth would be buried, and no more would come of it. It isn’t working out that way. They left a lot of loose ends. All we have to do is piece them together.”

  “She’s right, Lia,” Kalin adds. Lia’s eyes dart to his. “In fact, right after your visit, I’m meeting with my lawyer to find out what he has on these guys. It’s especially important to be safe right now. I don’t like you staying at that apartment. Why don’t you stay with Annabelle at my home here in Southampton?”

  “Yeah, like that’s any safer. They ransacked the place, Kalin.” She blinks her dark lashes at him with her hands on her hips and smirks.

  Kalin presses up from the bed to stretch and shift his legs. “Well, technically we weren’t there, and I don’t really keep any valuables there. Until now.” He casts me a boyish smile that lights up his face. “Now I have security patrolling the area full-time.”

  “I’m fine. I just want these guys out of our lives. I don’t want to change my life for them,” Lia says.

  “That’s the plan. This has to be handled systematically,” Kalin mutters as if thinking out loud. “We shut down the media spinning lies for them, and then we go after the perpetrators. But nothing can get done in the fog of lies and confusion. That’s where they work. When the lights go on, the roaches scatter.” He turns to us and a smile spreads across his face. “And the lights are about to come on.”

  “Do you need my help?” Lia asks.

  “Not unless you are willing to walk into the boardroom and get them all to confess,” he quips.