Val had spent the last years in hiding from me, because she knew my wrath.
And Jordan held four times as many stocks as I did in Fiscal Heights Holdings and still couldn’t move an inch without me breathing down his neck.
That’s why I went prepared to the office the next day.
Amanda’s main job hadn’t been to find Val. What she did give me in spades—what I securely kept on my flash drive—was a lot of dirty, dirty information about Van Der Zee.
Which was why I felt completely at ease sitting on his chair, my signature legs-on-desk position with my hands behind my head, waiting for him first thing in the morning.
He walked into his office at eight a.m. like nothing had happened. Like it wasn’t his mission in life to try to destroy me. Like his other partners didn’t know he was now a lying, cunning piece of trash. Jordan stopped on the threshold, staring at me vacantly. His unpleasant surprise—me—stared back at him with enough hatred to blind him.
Reaching for the breast pocket of his blazer, probably to call security, he stopped when he heard me laughing as I lit a J.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?” he asked through gritted teeth, taking a step forward. I tapped my chin, pretending to think it through.
“Making myself feel at home, seeing as this office will be my second home, soon.”
“Smoking here is illegal,” he pointed out, choosing to ignore my blunt statement.
“Funny you should mention that, Jordan, since illegal seems to be your favorite flavor.” I got up from his armchair, strolling over to him with the wickedest smile in my arsenal.
“What are you talking about, Rexroth?” His voice sharpened with panic, coated by annoyance.
Progress, I thought, but not enough. I wanted to pull it out of him. The terror. The inability to fucking breathe it hurt so bad. Because that’s what losing Luna would feel like.
When my pecs nearly brushed his, I stopped, towering a few inches above him. “You need to sit, Mr. Van Der Zee.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he spat out the words, but did as I said. This was the best kind of victory. The one where I got what I wanted watching my opponent dragging his feet. He was about to take a seat behind his desk when I tsked from my place in the center of the room.
“Forget about it, Jordi. Where you’re going, not only do they not have executive chairs—but I hear the mattresses are really fucking bad.” I tilted my head toward an ottoman by his oak bar. He stared at me. When he saw I wasn’t kidding, he warily made his way there, grunting. Jordan was eager to find out what I knew. The answer was simple.
I knew everything.
Amanda had helped me build my case, slowly. Slow enough to know I couldn’t take him down while Edie and I were forming a relationship.
But then yesterday changed everything. I’d sent my friends to Edie while I drove straight to Amanda. I’d turned the world upside down. I’d fought the waves. I hadn’t drowned.
I would never drown. Not when I needed to keep my kid afloat.
I knotted my hands behind my back, pacing the room leisurely, the joint still clasped between my fingers. “You know what I never understood, Jordi? How come you were so goddamn successful, when every company you’ve ever incorporated before ninety-seven failed miserably and went under? It was like you were fiscal poison. Everything you touched turned into shit. The growing list of companies you’ve founded and filed for Chapter 11 was the first warning sign. We all saw it as a red flag, but your track record after two thousand and three was so solid, my friends decided to overlook it. Well,” I shrugged, taking a hit of my joint, exhaling the smoke on a smile, “I didn’t.”
At first, I’d thought all I was going to find out about Jordan was the usual shit—money laundering and maybe a bit of tax evasion. Even his affairs didn’t strike me as too interesting. After all—he wasn’t even trying to hide them. But I’d found more. So, so much more.
Jordan’s teeth gritted so hard I could hear them all the way across the room. His face remained tense, holding onto the last shreds of his dignity.
“I went to a private investigator and asked her to find me everything there was to find about the massive success story that was Jordan Van Der Zee. The first thing I found out was that you may have gone to Harvard on a scholarship, but that scholarship wasn’t entirely kosher, was it? You had someone footing the bill for your education after the first year. The poor Dutch kid who couldn’t even afford butter and bread—your words, not mine. I wondered who could help you with such large sums of money and found the name. A shady McConman who lived in British Virgin Islands named Kaine Caulfield. Caulfield is such a peculiar name. Very Catcher in the Rye. Some would even say…fictional. I decided to dig deeper, especially considering you shouldn’t have known someone who’d lived in the British Virgin Islands. Unless…” I put the joint between my lips and fished a document from my back pocket, throwing it in his face with the rollie still in my mouth. “Money laundering.”