Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59690 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59690 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
She yawned. “Why are we awake? It’s so early.”
I laughed. “I think it’s noon.”
“Oh,” she whispered. “That sounds like a problem.”
“Not for us. We don’t have anywhere to be for a while. You got off work, and so did I. I’m just waiting to hear from the board about what they’re going to say to my father. I should probably find my phone,” I said, shifting out of the bed.
She reached for me with a whine. “Wait!”
“I’ll be right back.”
“But no work!”
“Soon, baby girl,” I promised.
She huffed but lay back in the bed again and closed her eyes. I bet she’d be asleep in a few minutes anyway. We’d barely gotten a handful of hours of sleep.
I found my phone in my discarded suit coat after sliding into boxers. My battery was dead. I grumbled and found a charger in the room to attach it to. After a minute, the thing beeped.
And then didn’t stop beeping for several minutes.
“What the hell?”
“What’s that noise?” Harley asked with another yawn.
“My phone.”
“Something happen?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.”
I had a few dozen text messages, voicemails, and missed calls. Jesus. Had everyone found out that we’d eloped? Were they losing their shit?
Harley couldn’t know about this. I wanted to shield her from any negativity for as long as I could. We’d have to plan a honeymoon for some time later, but I wanted to enjoy the rest of our day off and stay away from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the world had other plans.
When I listened to the first voicemail, my stomach dropped. I barely made it through the next, and by the last one, I was shaking. I scanned the text messages in a haze. Oh fuck.
“Harley, we have to go.”
She sat up in the bed, holding the covers over her body. “What? Go where?”
“Home.”
“Why? What happened?”
“My father.”
Her eyes widened. “What did he do?”
“What didn’t he do?” I asked. I tossed the phone to her, opened to the text messages I’d received from the board this morning while I was snuggled up with my new wife. “It turns out, there are about thirty women stepping forward with sexual assault allegations.”
Harley’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God! That’s horrible.”
“Yeah. They date back to the ’90s and go up to only a year ago. Some of them even said they tried to complain to HR before and were quietly let go. It seems that what happened with Eve and Dayna was just one of many, and being willing was apparently a rarity.”
Harley winced. “Fuck.”
“Pretty much.”
“My mother called to tell me about it, too. She had heard about some of the rumors, but my dad always played it off as lies. Until they all came forward, that is.”
“They were all telling the truth, but no one believes women,” Harley said. “Women literally get nothing from these allegations, except hate. Why would we come forward if it wasn’t true?”
She was so right. And I felt terrible for every single one of them.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Get us home and find out where we go from here.”
23
CHASE
We didn’t go home first.
If I had to cut the day after my wedding short, fine, but I wasn’t going to be without my wife. We dropped off Bailey. She asked to be informed as to what was going on. I just couldn’t leave Harley out of this. She was everything to me, and she deserved to be at my side through this.
I’d spoken to Joseph, who was on the board, on the way back into town. He’d set up a meeting that afternoon to discuss how to move forward.
My father had been sacked.
From his own company.
I still couldn’t believe it.
After everything that had happened with Dayna, I’d thought he could get away with murder. The man was infallible. He always had been.
And yet something had finally felled the giant.
I hated that this was what had done it. I’d known he was a monster. But I hadn’t really known how bad it was. I was glad that the company had moved with decisive action to get him out of there. It should have happened long ago.
I navigated into the parking lot and took my regular spot at the front. Harley’s legs were kicked up on the dash. Her head was buried in a thriller that she’d started on the back from Ruidoso. She looked up at me over the edge and grinned.
“Hey, handsome,” she said.
“Are you sure you don’t want to drive home?”
I wanted her there, but I didn’t want her to have to deal with any of this either. It was a conundrum. One that I still couldn’t quite reconcile.
“We’ve not been married twenty-four hours. In no way am I going home without you.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” I said, reaching for her hand. She stuck a finger into the book and dropped it into her lap. “But you don’t have to come inside either. This is Sinclair business.”