Page 79 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“No.”

“Of course, Marvin may have been talking to Wydover himself,” I muse. “It’s not as if he’d address him by name.”

If anybody would do something shady, it’s Wydover.

“Except Gail would’ve looked at Marvin’s connections to people like Wydover once he started agitating for a review,” Clark says.

“Exactly, but what if the connection is new?” I say. “Try this on for size—Marvin’s related to Gail, but it doesn’t get him a payout. It’s just not worth much.”

“Right,” Clark says.

“Marvin’s bitter. Because hey, he finds out he’s related to a billionaire and it gets him peanuts? Wydover hears about it and approaches Marvin. Wydover tells Marvin that if he, Marvin, can help shake our business loose from Gail, swing it to Wydover, Wydover would give him money.”

“It’s a lot of legal exposure for Wydover,” Clark says, “but then, the accountisworth millions.”

“Wait, what? Millions?” Tabitha says. “People pull way bigger scams for a fraction of that.”

“I’m not sold,” I say.

“Either way we have to tell Gail,” she says. “Marvin’s clearly up to something shady.”

“No, wait,” I say. “Not yet.”

“She deserves to know,” Tabitha says.

“Of course she does,” I say. “But right now it’s your word against Marvin’s. She likes you, Tabitha, but not enough to take your word over Marvin’s.”

She frowns. She knows it’s true.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. We’re going to put our investigator on Marvin, look at his financials and associations, see if we can find something Gail’s people didn’t,” I tell her. “We’re going to see which of our competitors has been dumping Bellcore, and look at Bellcore itself.”

Clark reminds me that he was at a charity golf outing with the Bellcore CEO. We decide Clark should be the one to reach out.

We work up a battle plan.

“Marvin said ‘pull the trigger,’” I say. “That suggests a specific negative event to me, considering that Bellcore’s flying high right now. Maybe something like bad publicity or sabotage of their upcoming medical device launch. Irregularities in testing. They know where their vulnerabilities are. They need to plug those holes. And keep us in the loop. And get our investigator back on them to make sure they’re not hiding something.”

Clark’s already got his phone. “I’ll get the ball rolling on all of these things,” he says. “You guys have that charity cocktail hour in twenty. I can blow it off, but you shouldn’t.”

I swear under my breath. Bad form to miss Gail’s charity things.

“Shouldn’t you dump the stock before it crashes?” Tabitha asks. “Right? To keep Gail from losing money?”

“I’d rather turn the tables,” I say. “I’d rather screw up my competitor’s plans to tank the stock and make them look bad. The best defense is an offense.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Tabitha says.

“Dumping that stock also tips our hand to whoever’s targeting us,” Clark says. “Not to mention the appearance of insider trading. Rex’s idea is best. If somebody’s doing something shady, this is our chance to ruin their plans and maybe even expose them.”

“If nothing else, we make them look like a fool for offloading a great stock,” I say.

Clark goes into my room and shuts the door, giving our guy instructions.

It’s just Tabitha and me. And her anger. And her hurt. It’s been all I could think about since she saw the list. Sitting there on one conference call after another, wondering where she’d gone, replaying the look of hurt on her face.

“Gail needs to know that Marvin’s not an honest person,” she says.

“He’ll still be dishonest tomorrow.”

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