The Dangerous Seduction (23 page)

“You know, I feel sorry for you, Ryan. You have no idea what you’re mixed up in here. Yes, I admit that I urged my employees to buy our stock when I knew we were tanking. But I genuinely thought I could turn us around. I thought that money would help us turn around, that it would just be a temporary thing to tide us over while the market recovered. And you might not believe me, but I regret it. I regret everything that happened to them. They worked for me—they put their faith in me and I let them down. But you need to talk to your new boyfriend about why he sold his stock—stock I gave him as a gift—before Penrose even went through. Why he deliberately misled
me
into buying that company when he knew it was worthless. He never thought once about all those employees he’s so nobly defending now back then when he was destroying my company.”

Ryan shakes his head, letting out a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “Bullshit. I don’t believe any of that crap. Why the hell would Joseph deliberately ruin your company? He was making money from it! That’s just fucking crazy.”

“Because I’d found someone else,” says McNeil flatly. “Joseph could cope with being the other woman when it was just my wife in the picture, but once he found out about Matty, he set out to destroy me.”

“What? Are you seriously implying that Joseph did all that to you because you’d gotten some new boy on the side? That’s ridiculous.” He shoves the photographs back across the table. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Take them back; I’m leaving.” He pushes back his chair, the metal legs screeching against the concrete as he gets to his feet.

“He told you his father was killed in a car crash, didn’t he?” says McNeil. Ryan pauses with his hand on the back of his chair. “Bill Van Aardt is not dead. He’s living in a fancy retirement home down in Corpus Christi with his fourth wife. Joseph lied to you, Ryan. He told you that story ’cause he wanted something from you. Hell, why’d you think he even hired you?” Ryan turns around slowly. McNeil’s got his head tilted back, that lazy smile back on his face again as he watches Ryan. “You might think it was for your smart brain or your good scores or even that hunky body and pretty face, but he knew about your father and me a long time before he even met you. He’d been looking for a way to get your father to testify against me when you popped up on his radar. So convenient, so impressionable, and as an added bonus, so fuckable.”

“That’s bullshit.” Ryan narrows his eyes on him. “It’s all bullshit.”

“What about Fiona Kyle?”

Ryan hesitates and swallows hard. “You going to tell me that Joseph was behind Fiona’s death too? She fell onto the subway. It was an accident.”

“You don’t believe that,” says McNeil.

Ryan leans over the back of his chair and hisses, “No, you’re right, I don’t. I
know
that you had something to do with it. You think you’ve fooled me with all this crap about twinky little Joseph ruining your life—but the truth is that you’re just pissed ’cause he dumped your wrinkly ass. You’re a pathetic scumbag who can’t keep it in his pants. Joseph did play you, and he’s gonna win now. That’s why you’re here, feeding me all this crap, trying to get me to turn against him! You’re jealous; you’re so fucking jealous, ’cause like you said, he got to you, right here”—he pushes his index finger up against his temple—“and you’ve never gotten over him. And now you’re trying to get between us!”

McNeil shakes his head, chuckles ruefully. “Oh you poor, deluded fool.”

“
I’m
deluded?”

“You have no idea who you’re dealing with here. You poor, stupid sack of shit. You’re in love with the little asshole. Well, good luck with that, because take it from someone who knows, my boy causes nothing but heartbreak.”

“He’s not your boy anymore.”

“That’s what you think. Here, keep this.” McNeil pushes the Polaroid picture of him and Joseph back across the table. “Ask him about it. See what lies he comes up with.”

R
YAN
IS
breathing hard by the time he makes it away from McNeil, pushing through crowds, oblivious to everyone around him. His heart is beating faster than a ten-mile run on the treadmill, his brain churning over and over with the same two thoughts:
Dad, Joseph, Dad, Joseph, Dad, Joseph, Dad and McNeil, Joseph and McNeil.

He ducks into an alley to dial the number. His fingers shake as he fumbles with the keys on his phone. The call connects on his second attempt, and he sighs in relief when his father picks up on the third ring.

“Dad, it’s Ryan.”

“Ryan, now isn’t such a good time. I’m very busy right now with—”

“
No
! No—don’t you dare! You listen to me; don’t you dare hang up! I gotta… I gotta talk to you, Dad. I just had Jack McNeil, Jack fucking McNeil approach me at a fucking coffee shop and sit down and talk to me! And do you know what he talked about? He talked about you—about you and him. You had McNeil shares, Dad, and you never said anything—you never told me. Don’t you think that was relevant?” There’s a hesitation at the end of the line and Ryan feels his heart sink. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “Tell me the truth. Please, Dad. Is it true? Did you used to own McNeil shares?”

“Yes.”

He bows his head and nods. He can feel the prickle of heat and pain behind his eyes, his throat and nasal passages throbbing with the effort of holding so much back. “When did you sell them?”

“April 2008.”

April 2008, the special month, the magic time period—the one that really counts. He was expecting it, but it still hurts. It still makes his eyes ache and his throat throb to hear it in his father’s voice. To know that his own father lied to him.

“Why did you sell then?”

There’s a long pause, then his father speaks slowly, reluctantly. “Because Jack McNeil advised me to.”

“Oh God, Dad.”

“I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you, but….”

Ryan blinks, raises his hand to his eyes, and swipes his sleeve across his face. “You have to testify, you have to change your statement.”

“I can’t, Ryan, I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can. For me, Dad. Please.”

“No, listen, you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me! God, just tell me the goddamn truth! Why did you lie?”

He hears his father catch his breath on the other end of the line and he pictures his face, his so familiar dad-face. The face of the man who taught him to drive and to ride his bike, who helped him with his math homework and cried when he gave the valedictorian speech at his high-school graduation. His chest tightens and he feels a hot, scalding tear slip free and roll down his cheek. “Dad, please.”

“It was a long time ago,” he says finally. “I did him a favor once. It was… just a small thing… just an insurance claim he had with us. But I helped him get the payout he wanted.”

“Fraud,” Ryan murmurs. “Was it fraudulent? Did you help him falsify a claim? That’s illegal, Dad. That’s insurance fraud. You hate that—you used to say that was as bad as stealing.”

“God, don’t you think I know that?” his father interrupts. “Christ, son, I’ve been torturing myself about this for years. But it was Jack McNeil
,
and he needed my help, and we needed the money; our family needed the money.”

“McNeil paid you off?”

“No, yes! I guess… I guess you could see it like that. He gave me a percentage of the payout he received. But it was a long time ago and we needed it, Ryan. You and your sister were in college and Duane was in grad school and we had no money. Our investments weren’t doing so well and your mom was working all those long hours and she wasn’t well, she really wasn’t well. We were so stretched, and I had to do something. I was supposed to get this big commission payment that would’ve taken care of everything, but it didn’t come through, and I was desperate, son. You were all depending on me. You and Duane and Sierra and your poor mom. I couldn’t let you down. It was just one stupid bit of information, just one line changed and people do it all the damn time.”

Ryan leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. “So what happened in April ’08?” he says quietly, cutting into his dad’s words.

His father pauses and takes another breath. “He invited me in for a meeting to consult on the policies for his senior management team, just like I told you. Except, there was another meeting afterward at the golf club. He was there for an event, and I was there for an event. And he took me aside and told me to sell any McNeil stock I had. He said he was returning the favor. He hadn’t forgotten what I’d done for him.”

“So he told you to sell just as he was telling all his employees to buy? Classy, real classy, what a classy guy.”

“He did us a favor! I sold the next day, and a couple of months later, the company had sunk. We could’ve lost half our income if he hadn’t warned me.”

“Does Mom know?”

His father sighs, the breath whooshing down the phone line. “No, she doesn’t know about any of it, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her anything.”

“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not gonna spill your dirty little secret to Mom.”

“Ryan.”

“What? What, Dad? I don’t get it, okay? You used to talk about people who commit insurance fraud as the worst kind of scum! I remember when Aunt Carol didn’t get that insurance payout ’cause she forgot to disclose about Grandma’s breast cancer—you said it was her fault—that she should’ve been more honest on the application! I remember you and Mom had a huge fight about it. And now… now you tell me you deliberately falsified a claim for fucking Jack McNeil and got paid for it!”

“Believe me, I’m not proud of it,” his father says quietly. “But at the time—”

“—we needed the money. Yeah, I know, I heard that.” He blows out a breath and swallows over the jagged lump at the back of his throat. “I’m sorry, okay. That things were that bad. But, God, Dad.”

“Ryan, if I change my statement, then McNeil will tell everybody about what I did. I’ll be no use to you as a witness. I’ll be completely discredited and… and everybody will know. Your mom would know.”

“Yeah, I realize that,” Ryan says bleakly. He blinks, feeling the sting of the tears against his cold face. “Look, it’s not all lost. I mean, it wasn’t just you. McNeil was to blame too. It was his policy. This will reflect just as badly on him.”

“But I went along with him. I said yes. And I knew it was illegal. I knew what we were doing was wrong.” His father’s voice is quiet, subdued in a way Ryan is not used to hearing from him.

He swallows and tries to think. The thing is, his father is right. Frank Carson would have a field day with his father’s testimony. Frank Carson is a sharp piece of work—there’s a reason McNeil pays him the big bucks. He would make damn sure that no judge or jury ever believed a word out of his father’s mouth. His father would be completely discredited, and worse than that, his professional pride, his own sense of self-worth, his belief in himself as an upstanding, law-abiding man would be shredded. He would climb off that stand a broken man.

“Listen, Dad, it’s okay. I’ll figure something out. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

He blows out a breath and finishes the call. He stares down at the phone, and watches the screen go into sleep mode before he slides it back into his pocket. His eyes are blurry, and he swears and swipes at them with his overcoat sleeve. His fingers have gone numb with cold. He fumbles with his leather gloves, flexing his fingers to warm them up as he tugs them on. He buttons up his coat, shoves his hands deep into his pockets, and walks back onto the street.

He walks to the office with his mind blank. Midtown is quiet, just the occasional dog walker or tourist, everyone bundled up in scarves and hats and long overcoats. He walks past the subway and refuses to look at it or to think of Fiona. He needs his mind clear, everything set out and organized and dispassionate in order to confront Joseph. He’s gotten the truth from his father; it’s Joseph’s turn now.

T
HE
OFFICE
is quiet. He can hear Joseph’s voice echoing eerily through the empty space as he hesitates outside his own office. He stands and stares at Joseph’s open office door. He can hear Joseph’s side of the conversation clearly and the muffled, slightly static responses of whoever’s on speaker phone. Joseph’s shadow is outlined in the opaque glass as he paces around the room, tossing his stress ball up and down.

Ryan sets his shoulders, takes a breath, and pauses in the doorway to Joseph’s office. Joseph is dressed in his usual casual weekend clothes: designer jeans and shoes, charcoal-gray cashmere sweater. His face is unshaven, hair a little spiky, not quite its usual executive slick. He looks like someone should be paying him to look that good. He looks like he just stepped off a GQ shoot. He pauses in his pacing when he notices Ryan and he cocks a smile, holds up two fingers, mouthing, “Two minutes.”

Ryan shakes his head, says, “No. Now.”

Joseph frowns but Ryan is already moving. He strides forward and leans over the desk to press the button to disconnect the call on Joseph’s Polycom phone.