Pursued (Diamond Tycoons 2)

His brother didn’t bother to say goodbye before hanging up and dialing another number. “Lisa Brown, how may I help you?”

Nic listened as Marc told their top diamond inspector the same thing he’d just told Hollister.

“But, Marc, I just got in a whole new shipment—”

“So put it in the vault and then get up here.” The impatience in his voice must have gotten through to her, because Lisa didn’t argue again. She agreed before quietly hanging up the phone.

It took Lisa and

Hollister only a couple of minutes to get to Marc’s office, and soon the four of them were gathered in the small sitting area to the left of his desk. No one said a word as Nic once again recounted his discussion with Darlene Bloomburg.

He got angrier and angrier as he told the story. By the end, he was literally shaking with rage. This was more than just his company they were screwing. It was his life, his brother’s life, his employees’ lives. If Bijoux went down for this—and he’d been in marketing long enough to know that if this story ran, they would absolutely take major hits no matter how untrue the accusations were—it’d be more than just Marc’s and Nic’s asses on the line. His employees would be under investigation and, if the hits were bad enough, also out of jobs. All because some ignorant reporter with a chip on her shoulder couldn’t get her facts straight.

As he tried to channel his rage, he promised himself that if this story ran he would make it his life’s mission to get that reporter fired. Hell, he’d get her fired even if it didn’t run. She should have known better than to make this kind of mistake.

“Who’s the source?” Marc asked Lisa after she and Hollister had absorbed the story—and its implications.

“Why are you asking me? I have no idea who would make up a false claim like this and feed it to the Times. I’m sure it’s none of our people.”

“The reporter seemed pretty adamant that it was an insider. Someone who had the position and the access to prove what he or she is saying.” It was the third time Nic had said those words, and they still felt disgusting in his mouth.

“But that’s impossible. Because what the person is saying isn’t true. The claims are preposterous,” Lisa asserted. “Marc and I are the first and last in the chain of command when it comes to accepting and certifying the conflict-free diamonds. There’s no way one of us would make a mistake like that—and we sure as hell wouldn’t lie about the gems being conflict-free to make extra money. So even if someone messed with the diamonds between when I see them and when Marc does, he would catch it.”

“Not to mention the fact that there are cameras everywhere, manned twenty-four/seven by security guards who get paid very well to make sure no one tampers with our stones.” Everyone in the room knew that already, but Nic felt the need to add it anyway.

“What this person is saying just isn’t possible,” Lisa continued. “That’s why Marc insists on being the last point of contact for the stones before we ship them out. He verifies the geology and the ID numbers associated with them.”

“There is a way it would work,” Marc interrupted, his voice a little weaker than usual. “If I were involved in the duplicity, it would explain everything.”

“But you’re not!” Nic said at the same time Lisa exclaimed, “That’s absurd!”

Nic knew his brother almost as well as he knew himself, and if there was one thing he was certain of it was that Marc would never do anything to harm Bijoux. The two of them had worked too hard to get the company to where it was to let a little extra profit ruin everything. They already had more money than they could spend in three lifetimes. Why risk it all, especially in such a despicable way, for some extra cash?

People died mining conflict diamonds. Children were exploited, beaten, starved, worked nearly to death. No amount of extra profit was worth propagating such blatant human rights violations. No amount of money was worth the stain dealing in conflict diamonds would leave on his soul.

“Marc’s making sense. It’s what they’ll argue,” Hollister said, and though it was obvious by his tone that he disagreed, Nic could tell his ready agreement bothered Marc.

Not that Nic blamed Hollister. This was more than a company to them, more than profits and bottom lines. More even than diamonds. Their great-grandfather had started Bijoux in the early twentieth century and it had been run by a Durand ever since.

When Nic and Marc took it over, they’d had to act fast to repair the damage their father had done through years of neglect and disinterest. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to run the company into the ground, but he’d always been more interested in the adventures—and the women—the Durand money could buy rather than the day-to-day work of being CEO.

Which was why Nic and his brother had worked so hard to rebuild things. For years, they’d put their lives into this company and in a decade had managed to take Bijoux from a floundering behemoth into the second-largest diamond distributor in the world. They’d brought it into the twenty-first century and had created a business model that would help those who couldn’t help themselves and that wouldn’t exploit those who needed protection most.

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Marc told Hollister after a long pause. “I want that story stopped. We’ve worked too hard to build this company into what it is to have another setback—especially one like this. The jewel theft six years ago hurt our reputation and nearly bankrupted us. This will destroy everything Nic and I have been trying to do. You know as well as I do, even if we prove the accusations false in court, the stigma will still be attached. Even if we get the Los Angeles Times to print a retraction, it won’t matter. The damage will have already been done. I’m not having it. Not this time. Not about something like this.”

His words echoed Nic’s thoughts from earlier, and the similarity was eerie enough to make the situation really sink in. From the moment he’d heard about the article, he’d been operating under the assumption that they would find a way to stop it. But what if they didn’t? What if it actually got printed? What if everything they’d worked so hard for actually went up in smoke?

What would they do then?

What would he do then?

Marc must have been thinking along the same lines, because there was a renewed urgency in his voice when he told Hollister, “Call the editor. Tell him the story is blatant bullshit and if he runs it I will sue their asses and tie them up in court for years to come. By the time I’m done, they won’t have a computer to their name let alone a press to run the paper on.”

“I’ll do my best, but—”

“Do better than your best. Do whatever it takes to make it happen. If you have to, remind them that they can’t afford to go against Bijoux in today’s precarious print-media market. If they think they’re going to do billions of dollars of damage to this company with a blatantly false story based on a source they won’t reveal, and that I won’t retaliate, then they are bigger fools than I’m already giving them credit for. You can assure them that if they don’t provide me with definitive proof as to the truth of their claims, then I will make it my life’s work to destroy everyone and everything involved in this story. And when you tell them that, make sure they understand I don’t make idle threats.”

“I’ll lay it out for them. But Marc,” Hollister cautioned, “if you’re wrong and you’ve antagonized the largest newspaper on the West Coast—”