Page 13 of Billionaire Corruption
When I came in, my father got up from behind the desk.
“Whiskey?” he asked and without waiting for my response, he walked to his drinks table and poured me a glass.
“I heard you’re having some trouble at work?” he said. I wasn’t surprised that he knew, but I did wonder how he’d found out. I hadn’t mentioned anything to anyone in my family.
“Who told you?”
“There may be millions living in this city, but if you know the right people, it is much smaller,” my father said, giving me a knowing look. He wasn’t a big man, but he had presence. Our relationship had never been an easy one. My father always seemed impatient and dissatisfied with us, with me, nothing was ever good enough.
“Yes, well, I’m handling it,” I said, stiffly.
“You are? I’ve heard the FBI are involved.”
I sighed. There was no point hiding the extent of the problem. My father would find out soon enough.
“Yes….” I had spoken to Don from security earlier in the day. He’d managed to hack into Daniel’s email and found out that he was in financial dire straits. His wife had left him, and now the FBI was leaning on him, offering him deals in exchanges for info on the company. I had instructed Don to look into how compromised we were exactly, and what evidence there was. I knew the South American operation would not hold up to scrutiny and if Daniel was spilling the beans, it could be a nightmare for Ladden.
“How did it get this far?” my father said.
I shrugged and finished the rest of my whiskey.
“What does Brock say?”
I hadn’t realized that they knew each other that well. As far as I knew, they were acquainted.
“Brock? Didn’t know you were on first-name basis?” I said, lifting an eyebrow.
My father shook his head, dismissing my sarcasm.
“We’ve played golf, you know how it is.”
My father refilled my glass. “What’s his take on all this?”
Brock hadn’t taken my last few calls. I’d left messages and once, I briefly got hold of him and he promised to call me back. That was days ago. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. But it wasn’t good, that much I did know.
Some of this must have been evident on my face because my father walked up to me.
“Now, you listen to me,” he said in a low voice, his eyes boring into mine. “You had better sort this out. This is going to look terrible in the press. The McKinney name tied to an FBI investigation!”
God, the press. I hadn’t thought of the media yet.
“If the FBI and the IRS are involved, you need to move fast. You can’t afford to wait this out!”
My father was not a tall man. Ever since I was sixteen years old, I had at least half a head over him. But the force of his personality added many inches. He was a powerful man, and I knew he was regarded as a ruthless negotiator. He had studied law but gone into property development. His firm specialized in hospitals; their group had built hospitals all over the country. I’d heard he knew how to get plans approved and how to sidestep regulations in extremely creative ways.
I stepped away from him, putting down my glass and sitting down on the leather couch.
“I’m working on a few things,” I said.
My father grunted as if to say that wasn’t good enough, but I was ignoring him.
“You know, my grandfather came to this country with nothing.”
I already knew the story of my great-grandfather, who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in harrowing conditions at the turn of the century. He’d lost his parents to Spanish Flu in Ireland and came to the United States with only a few pounds in his pockets. He’d managed to make something of himself out of nothing, eventually owning several pubs and diners all over the city.
“I don’t think I ever told you how he was robbed at the docks, shortly after his arrival?”
I was surprised to hear that there was a part of the story I didn’t yet know.
