Brother to the Boss (Managing the Bosses 8)

“Tell me what you have on Nicholas.”

Jamie moved back toward the twins, who were sitting on a blanket on the floor, playing with blocks. She crouched down next to them, but Alex could tell that she was still listening to their conversation.

“Right,” Mark said, pulling out a file folder he’d been carrying under his arm and dropping it on the table. “So last time,” he went on, “you didn’t have Nicholas arrested because you couldn’t prove anything against him, which meant that he was free to come back. This time, you still can’t prove anything against him on a business side. He’s too careful for that. I’m not sure this’ll even work for police evidence, but you can definitely get it out to the press, and no one is going to want to set him up as a partner in Reid Enterprises after that. It’s time to use the media the way they like to gobble sh

it up on you.”

Mark opened the folder and revealed several pages of typed information, as well as a small stack of pictures. Alex picked the first one up and found himself looking at a car with the front crushed in, skid marks on the road behind it.

“What is this?”

“That,” Mark said, “is the car that Nicholas hit, killing the driver.”

There was a gasp from Jamie and then she was standing beside them, looking down at the pictures, too, one hand over her mouth.

“How do you know that it was him?”

“There was a witness on the scene who called in the license plate of the hit and run driver. Strangely enough, the call never came to anything. The officer in charge of the case just dropped it, and everyone kind of forgot. Meanwhile, a formerly very nice Aston Martin showed up in one of the less savory parts of the city, all identification removed. No owner ever stepped forward to claim it, but Nicholas did file a police report stating that his own car, coincidentally the one that showed up two days later, had been stolen.”

“If the car was stolen, or even if he claimed it was,” Alex said, “then there’s no proof that he was driving it.”

Mark pulled another photo out of the pile, this one a traffic camera shot showing Nicholas behind the wheel of a car. “This was taken the night of the crash. Just minutes before, actually. No one followed up on it.”

Alex took a step back from the file on the counter, his thoughts spinning. Nicholas had hit someone and run, then paid the police to cover it up. You couldn’t pay the police, could you? Or it might only take one bad cop.

“I can’t believe he would do something like that,” Jamie said. She paused. “Actually, I can.” Shaking her head, she turned back toward the twins, who were completely oblivious to the tension going on over their heads, cooing and giggling as they built block towers and knocked them down again.

Alex stared at the photos. “If we take this to the press,” he said slowly, “that’s it for Nicholas.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Mark grinned. “And I think we take it to the police, too. But even if they can’t do anything about it, the press isn’t going to let his money get in their way. He can’t pay them all off. They’re going to have a field day with this.”

“And like you said, once people know that he’s a killer, they’re not going to accept him anywhere near Reid Enterprises. Even if he still keeps his stock, the board isn’t going to listen to a thing he says. He could sell it cheap and do a little damage, but the company is big enough to recover from that.”

For the first time since he’d discovered that Sunrise Investments was buying up his stock, Alex could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once this was dealt with… He turned to look at Jamie, watching her wiggle a block as she held it out toward the twins, Lilli reaching to grab it. Once this was done, he could give some of the workload to Zander, and spend more time at home with his family, where he belonged.

“So,” he said, turning back to Mark, “how do we do it?”

“Should we go to Nicholas first?” Jamie asked. “Let him know what we have and ask him nicely to back away? Maybe he would take the chance to get out without losing his reputation.”

“Why should we do that?” Mark asked. “He hasn’t done anything but torment you and Alex. Do you think that he actually deserves a chance? Playing nice with this guy isn’t going to stop him. He needs to be hit hard. He’s ruthless.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he does or not,” Alex said. “If we go to him with it before we go to anyone else, he’ll find a way to get out of it. He has a lot of money, and good lawyers. It has to be enough of a shock that he can’t get out ahead of it.”

Jamie sighed. “Okay. You’re right. I guess I just hate the idea of going after someone like that.”

“He came after us like that,” Alex reminded her. “He’s not worth your sympathy, Jamie. You remember what he did to Gina.”

Jamie’s expression hardened and she nodded. “Yeah. I do. Okay. Nicholas goes down.”

***

It was easy enough to get the story out to the press. All they had to do was anonymously send photocopies of the relevant files to half a dozen different publications, and the rest would be done for them. The files they sent to the police Alex also sent without his identity attached. He didn’t want it getting back to Nicholas that he’d been involved. Not when it could put Jamie and the twins in danger.

The news hit fast. There were more than two dozen articles on the hit and run in a matter of hours. Alex didn’t read them but he did skim through the headlines, Jamie reading over his shoulder.

BILLIONAIRE’S BIG MISTAKE.

Sunrise Applications CEO Paid Off Police.