Page 6 of Billionaire Corruption
“In a way, I guess.” I told her about the elevator incident, without mentioning Paul or the fact that it had happened a year ago. It wasn’t exactly a lie, as such, and it did feel good to finally talk about.
My grandmother walked back to her chair and sat down with a sigh of relief.
“Thank goodness you’re all right! No wonder you look so shaken up,” she said. “You know, near-death experiences can be life-changing events. Just ask your father.”
“My father?”
“Remember when he was shot in Iraq?”
“I didn’t think it was that serious!”
My grandmother shook her head. “I think he didn’t want to scare you at the time. But it was a while before the medics came to get him. He had lost a lot of blood and was lying out in the desert, thinking he was going to die. He told me that was when he decided to come back and try to make things work with your mother.”
“But it was too late.”
She smiled, sadly. “Yeah, it was.”
By then, my mother had become involved with the owner of a delicatessen in town. She wasn’t interested in my father’s promises of how things would be different, how he’d stop drinking and get a job. She moved out that same year. I was fourteen and didn’t want to move with her and her boyfriend. So, my brother and I went to live with my father and my grandmother at her place in the Bronx. It was cramped and noisy, but we made it work. When my grandmother increasingly suffered from arthritis, I took over most of the household duties to help her. My father spent some time looking for work, then he started drinking and about a year after we moved in with my gran, he got involved in a bar fight where the other guy was seriously injured. My dad got sent to jail for manslaughter and after he came out, he vowed to turn his life around. He got a job on an oil rig at sea and spent several weeks each year working on the rig, coming home for short breaks only.
The door opened and my brother came in with pizza.
“Hey, you’re back.” Toby was a lot taller than I was, a few months from finishing high school. I got up to set the table and we had our pizza at the kitchen table.
The next morning, I got to work a bit late.
We’d been told to go directly to the Ladden offices, as we’d be based there for the next couple of weeks. Each of us had been allocated certain sections of the financial documents to check and cross-check. As I arrived at my desk, I saw there was a note for me, tucked in under my computer keyboard.
It read: Come see me, Paul (elevator guy)
My heart started beating faster.
He must have stopped by in the morning.
“Was Mr. McKinney here?” I asked one of my colleagues, but she shrugged.
I didn’t want to get up right away, so I worked until lunch time and when most of the team got up to take a break, I went into the lobby and asked on which floor his office was. I took the stairs, not wanting to risk another elevator incident. The executive floor was much different from the general office floor where we were based. Here, there were oak-paneled corridors and Persian carpets. His personal assistant sat at a huge desk. Behind her, there were heavy drapes in an Oriental design. It conveyed a sense of luxury and wealth meant to impress visitors.
His personal assistant was an older, stout woman, who looked rather unfriendly at me. “Can I help you?”
“Mr. McKinney asked to see me.”
She frowned. “And you are?”
“Grace Bishop, from TLS Accounting?”
She picked up the phone and murmured into it.
Then she replaced the receiver and looked at me with a scowl. “He says you can go in.”
“Thank you.”
I took a deep breath and walked towards his office.
He opened the door, and I walked in, my heart thudding.
He closed the door behind him, and we stood for a moment, looking at each other.
He smiled, “Well, you know my name now.”
