Page 76 of Reckoning

“Conrad isn’t ever interested in whose fault it is. The blame lands where he assigns it, and that’s often on me.” She squeezed my hand. Fuck, I said too much. I pulled away. “This isn’t about me.”

I could feel that she was stung, wondering why I was suddenly closing myself off again. But I couldn’t have this conversation with her right now or ever. She would not understand.

Dozens of reporters had gathered around every entrance of our building, blocking the drive to the underground garage. Joshua eased the car through the bodies and cameras while they shouted questions through the blacked-out glass. I looked at my feet while Madeline squeezed my knee tightly.

I stole Maddie up to my office as quickly as I could, then left her with her laptop and instructions for using the internet.

“Lock the door when I leave,” I told her, “and don’t open it for anyone but me. There’s a bathroom through that door”—I pointed to one side—“and I’ll get some food up here for you at some point.” I turned to go, but her voice stopped me.

“Thank you, Meyer.” She tugged my sleeve, pulling me back to her just briefly. “This isn’t your fault.”

I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated that I hadn’t had time to style it before we ran out. “You don’t know that.” Sure, Shawn had been the one to bring us the contract, but I’d read it over. Something had slipped by me, and that was no one’s fault but my own. I should have been more careful.

“I do. I can hear it in your voice and see it in the way you’re reacting. You’re not responsible for this. You’ll figure out who was and make them pay for it.”

Her optimism was catching. I knew she was as upset as I was, thinking about all the human suffering that was going on as we stood here staring at each other, but she was still reaching out to try to comfort me. She saw just how off-kilter that call with Conrad had left me, and she zeroed in on that feeling just long enough to stop it from overwhelming me.

I had a task to do here, and it had nothing to do with my father. It had to do with an empire that I had worked my ass off to protect.

*

I made Shawn put up that damn contract on the projector, and we went through it line by line. I had read it myself before signing it, but clearly, I had missed something. But even after hours of reading and re-reading and discussing, we couldn’t come up with anything. Our general counsel saw no problems with it. Even Conrad couldn’t find a problem.

“They just didn’t care. They signed a contract and violated it. They wanted the weapons more than anything else, and they didn’t care about adhering to any terms.” I gestured to the news footage playing on loop on the TV in the corner. “Clearly, if they were going to be doing this with our product, they didn’t give a shit about breaking a contract.”

“Then we’re in the clear, right?” Shawn sounded like a child who just found out he wasn’t going to be grounded. “This isn’t our fault.”

“We still sold to them.”

I put my head in my hands, tugging at my hair, trying to think. “Who did this contact come from, Shawn? How did they contact you?”

He fumbled with his pen. “It was kind of an internal referral.”

Conrad stopped where he was pacing by the window. “What do you mean?”

I sat back in my chair, unconsciously distancing myself from that tone. Even Shawn, who didn’t know the real threat behind it, shrank deeper in his seat. I frowned at his reaction. This wasn’t the real Shawn. He was a grade-A asshole with a spine made of pure steel who never shrank away from Conrad if he could help it. When Conrad came down on me in meetings, Shawn usually fired back at him and got the conversation back on track to help me avoid a public flogging.

“What aren’t you telling us?”

He tapped the pen up and down on the table. He licked his lips and started to speak, closing his mouth at the last second.

“Spit it out, Shawn!”

He froze as he looked at me. “It was Anita.”

We were too stunned to move for a second, and then Conrad slammed his open palm against the window. The sound reverberated through the room, and I felt the vibration in my teeth.

I shot a meaningful glance at the lawyer. He opened his mouth to protest, but a look from Conrad changed his mind.

“I’ll be in my office,” the lawyer said and made a hasty exit.

Standing, I leaned across the table to Shawn. “What the fuck do you mean it was Anita?”

He swallowed, looking at his hands. “She told me she had a contact who couldn’t make deals in the US, so she wanted to facilitate it. That’s why the investment was so big. Some of it was her money, money you’ve given her over the years.” He nodded at Conrad without meeting his eyes. “She’d been saving it up without telling anyone.”

Conrad swiped his laptop off the table, sending it slamming into the wall. “And I’ll bet you got a nice private cut too, didn’t you?”

I thought that he was actually going to hit Shawn. He was shaking with the restraint of holding himself back.

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