More Than Words

Nina opened her father’s desk drawer and found the usual office supplies. Pens, pencils, Post-it notes, paper clips. She opened the drawer a bit farther and found a coupon she’d made him one Father’s Day, good for a Yankee game of his choosing. Even though Nina had tried, she could never really get into baseball. Her father loved it, though, so she went with him once in a while. Though sometimes he just took TJ and Tim and left Nina and Caro to spend the day together. Once Caro had signed them up for a self-defense class, where Nina learned what to do if anyone ever tried to kidnap her. Poke them in the eyes. Knee them in the groin, if it was a man. Scream as loud as she could. Another time they’d climbed the rock wall in Chelsea Piers. “Women have to be tough,” Caro had told her. Nina hadn’t understood what she’d meant then. But she’d been figuring it out.

Her cell phone’s vibration pulled Nina back into reality. It was her father’s lawyer. “Miss Gregory?” he said, when she picked up the phone.

“Nina, please,” she responded.

“Nina,” he repeated. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you sooner. But that company you asked my secretary about—Manxome Consulting.”

“Oh!” Nina said. “Yes. I’d love to get in touch with them. Did you find contact information?”

He cleared his throat. “Nina,” he said again. “That was your father’s company. I set it up for him years ago.”

Understanding struck her almost immediately.

Nina swallowed hard. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m—I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

“Wait,” the lawyer said.

“I’ll call you back,” Nina told him, her heart pounding hard in her chest. “I’m sorry.”

She’d taken forensic accounting. She knew what it meant when the chairman of the board created a company and billed his own corporation for services. He was increasing their compensation package illegally. This was embezzlement.

She picked up her father’s phone and pressed the button that said Melissa. “Can you get me Irv?” she asked.

The phone rang out, and the CFO picked up. “Do you have access to the canceled checks from payments we made six or ten years ago?” Nina asked after she said hello.

“I do,” Irv told her.

“And each check needs to be signed by two members of the executive team?”

“The big ones, yeah,” he told her.

Nina looked down; her knee was bouncing. She tried to still it. “Could you tell me who signed the checks to Manxome Consulting? They worked for us from 2008 to 2011.”

Irv had been in the business long enough to know he shouldn’t ask questions, just answer them. “Of course,” he said. “Let me just type in a few . . . here we go. I’m scrolling. Your father and TJ Calder signed all of those checks.”

“Thank you,” Nina said. “I appreciate the help.”

“Any time,” Irv responded before he hung up the phone.

Nina sat, dumbfounded. She thought for a moment she might be sick. Her world was turning upside down again. She was like Alice, through the looking glass. Her father and TJ had embezzled from the Gregory Corporation. There wasn’t any other explanation. Literally none.

She wished that she could call her father and ask what the hell was going on. Why he’d risked the hotel’s reputation, his freedom, their family name. The one he had built and grown and was so proud of.

How much more could come at her? How much more could she handle? She pressed the button marked Melissa again.

“Yes, Miss Gregory?” Melissa answered.

“Can you ask TJ Calder to come here, please? Tell him I need to speak with him?”

She had no idea what she was going to say, no idea what she was going to do. But without her father here, TJ was the only person left to talk to.

66

The look on TJ’s face when Nina told him she’d found out who owned Manxome Consulting was almost exactly the same as the look on Tim’s when she’d told him she didn’t think he should be the CEO of the Gregory Corporation.

“Uncle TJ,” Nina said, trying to keep her anger in check, “help me understand. What were you two thinking?”

TJ stood up and began to pace in front of the bank of windows, his body alternately blocking buildings and light, causing a slight disco effect in the office. “It was 2008,” he said. “The market was bad. Bookings were down. Your father had just invested a ton of money in the renovations of both gyms and the aquatics centers and he had a cash flow problem. His stock portfolio had dipped so far down that he didn’t want to sell, and if he sold any of his stake in the corporation, he’d lose his majority share. He’d asked for an increase in his compensation package, but the board voted against it. Rightly so, honestly.”

Nina had never known about this. “Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, distracted for a moment from the main question.

TJ shrugged. “I think he wanted you to be proud of him,” he said. “He was ashamed to admit that he’d gotten himself into this situation. It even took him a while to tell me.”

“Did anyone else know?” Nina asked, taking in what TJ had just said. Did her father adjust his behavior for her the same way she did for him? Didn’t he know she’d be proud of him no matter what?

TJ shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “And your father wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t want to sell the houses—the real estate market had tanked, too. His only other option was declaring bankruptcy. But the public humiliation, the way people would talk, the way they’d look at the hotels . . .”

“My dad couldn’t stand the idea of that,” Nina said, slowly.

“Exactly,” TJ said. “That’s when he came to me with the plan. He needed a second signature on the checks.”

Her father’s pride had led to this. And she’d benefited from his crime. Her father had taken nearly three million dollars from the corporation. She wondered how many dinners and dresses and car rides and who knows what else that money had bought her. She felt a throbbing in her temples.

“No one else ever found out?” Nina asked.

TJ sat down. “Not that I know of,” he said. “Once the stock market started making money again, we stopped. Your father actually lowered his salary after that. I think he was trying to make amends, pay the money back in better times. And he told me to legally disband Manxome Consulting earlier this year, when the cancer came back.”

Nina couldn’t believe what was unfolding. She heard Jane in her mind and realized that if something came out about this, even after the election, being with her could be a problem for Rafael. It could taint him as a politician, dating someone whose family was involved in an embezzlement scandal. Embezzlement. The word made her skin crawl.

“Maybe I should talk to Ned about selling my shares,” Nina said out loud. “Let this be someone else’s problem.”

TJ shrugged. “You could,” he said.

“Does Aunt Caro know?” Nina asked.

TJ shook his head. “I never told her.” He cleared his throat. “Tim doesn’t either, of course. I’d appreciate if you didn’t—”

Nina closed her eyes briefly. “I won’t,” she said. Out the window she could see the top few floors of The Gregory on the Park, and the lights from Los Tortolitos on the roof. It was why her father chose this office space, this office, so he could see his hotel while he worked. She couldn’t rage at her father, punish him for his decisions, but TJ was still here. “I think you need to step down,” she said, serious, controlled. “You can retire. We can figure out a way to make it work for the company, but I can’t have someone running this corporation who makes decisions like those.”

TJ looked down. Nina tried to feel bad, but anger crowded out her sympathy. She resented that she’d been put in this position. Even if she sold the company, she needed to know that it would be taken care of. That she’d be leaving it in good hands. It was her name on there. And she didn’t want to let the employees down either, people who were counting on the Gregory hotels for their livelihood.

She waited for TJ’s anger, for his own resentment to bubble to the surface. But instead TJ said, “You’re right.” And he looked almost relieved. Nina had given him a way out. “I’ll announce my retirement this week. And tie up loose ends this month. You know Tim wants to—”

“I know,” Nina said, cutting him off.

TJ looked at her and then got up from the table. “I should get back to my office,” he said. “I have a call in five minutes. I’m . . . I’m really sorry, Sweetheart.”

* * *

• • •

Nina stood, staring at the door, wondering what to do now. She looked up at the small sketch of Caravaggio’s Narcissus hanging above the door frame. If her father needed money, he could have sold that. Or any of the pieces in the house in the Hamptons. But her grandmother had never sold any of the art in her collection after she’d bought it, and he hadn’t either. And he wouldn’t, because it would have shown financial weakness, Nina realized now.