Page 61 of Hush Money
“Do you happen to remember any of the questions they asked you?” he asks her.
She thinks for a moment.
“It was a lot about how old I was,” she says. “Not really about my prior work experience, but my age. And then they asked me what I liked to do for fun, and if I would be willing to work nights and weekends. When I said yes, they offered it to me. They also paid me by check every two weeks, but the money came from another account, not Everett Enterprises.”
She looks up at Julian.
“Again, I should have thought… It was my first real job out of college, and I just really needed the money. They told me that I was being hired under Mr. Everett’s personal account, not by the company, and I just thought…” She pauses for a minute, rubbing her temple.
“Hey,” I say, “this ishisfault. Not yours.”
Keaton clears his throat and scoots toward the edge of his chair. He looks right at Ally.
“Ally,” he says, and her eyes flick to him, “Evie is right. You didn’t do anything wrong here. I just want that to be out in the open, that no one in this room thinks you are responsible for anything that happened.”
She nods slowly, and he nods back.
“Okay,” she goes on. “I started working the following week. At first, it felt fairly normal. A lot of scheduling of meetings. My office was in the same wing of the building as Mr. Everett’s suite, so I was pretty separate from the rest of the employees. He gave me my own parking space in the private garage with his car, and I had my own key card to get in the executive entrance of the building. I was…” She lets out a sad laugh and shakes her head. “I was actually pretty excited about it at first.”
I squeeze her hand, and Wren puts her hand on her back.
“A few weeks into it, he asked me to join him for a board dinner at a hotel nearby. He asked if I could come to take notes. It was late at night, around ten, and he told me to ‘wear something that showed off my age.’ And you know what? I did.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Wren says to her. She sniffs, and the tears start to stream down her cheeks. I start to worry that this might be too much for her, but she keeps going.
“That night, we ended up in this massive penthouse suite at the Landry Hotel downtown. It started off with dinner then drinks. Then a few of the board members started leaving, thena few more, until it was just Mr. Everett and one other board member.” She bites her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. “His name was Rocky Breckard.”
Julian and Keaton flash each other another look, but this time, they look confused. Like maybe they don’t know who this guy is.
“Rocky spent the next few minutes rubbing my shoulders, telling me how ‘tight’ my body was, and telling me I could model. I thought he was just drunk, until Mr. Everett got up to leave. He pulled me aside and asked me if I could do him a favor.”
She pauses again, and it feels like the room is so quiet that I can hear my own heartbeat. Finally, she collects herself and goes on.
“He asked me if I could ‘make Rocky more comfortable.’ He said he had flown in from Miami, and they were close to reaching a deal. He was pretty sure that if I threw myself into the ring, he could get Rocky to close it.”
Her voice cracks, and I throw my arm around her.
“Oh, sweetie,” I whisper.
“Do you want to stop?” Wren asks her. But she shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “I need to say this.”
KEATON
Ifeel sick. I feel physically ill. But I keep my eyes trained on her. I try to keep my body language relaxed so I don’t make Ally uncomfortable, but I am grasping here. I want her to go on. I need her to finish her story. But in the same breath, I want to cover my ears and run away like a child.
Just as my leg starts to bounce, I feel a warm hand on it. I look down at Evie’s perfect hand clutching onto me, her other arm wrapped around the brave woman in front of us. My eyes meet Evie’s.
“I’m right here,” she mouths. I nod subtly then fix my gaze back on Ally.
“I…I felt like I couldn’t say no,” she says. “I felt like if I told him no, I for sure would have lost my job. But there was also something…maybe the fact that I felt so alone? I don’t know. There was something that told me that even if I said no, the answer would still be yes. So I did it. Mr. Everett left the room, and I had…I sealed the deal with Rocky. When we were finished, he left two thousand dollars cash on the nightstand. I left it there and ran. I have never felt that unimportant in my entire life.”
Evie wraps her arm around her tighter. Ally takes a break and lets slow, quiet sobs run through her body before she collectsherself. I have the urge to reach out and hug her too. But I get the feeling that the last thing she needs is another Everett man initiating physical touch without her consent. So I just sit here quietly. Julian and I catch each other’s eye several times. And we keep listening. We listen to her tell us how this happened more than a dozen times over the course of the year with more than a dozen different “colleagues” or “board members,” none of whom are actually employed by Everett Enterprises. Then one fucker got too rough with her, and she threated to go to the police. Cato let her leave, but reminded her about the motherfucking NDA again. Just like he did with the first one. And God knows how many others.
After a year, she had finally had enough. She didn’t even put in her two weeks. She just stopped showing up. We listen to her tell us that, a few months after she stopped working, she had a breakdown. She checked herself into a facility when she had some suicidal thoughts and that her therapist has been super helpful. She still hasn’t told anyone else in her family or any of her friends about it, because she wasn’t sure how much the NDA covered, and she’s been afraid.
So this woman has just been sitting on this.
