Page 114 of Ramsey & Emerson

At any rate, while I’d felt him wrapped around me last night, he’d been gone before I’d woken up this morning, and that was not something that I was going to allow again. No matter what, we were going to talk this shit out once and for all tonight, and I didn’t care if we fought it out until the morning, I was not going to let another day go by with me and Ramsey at odds.

The only problem was that I couldn’t continue to work with Adrian if I expected Ramsey to find any peace in this situation, and that was a sacrifice that was going to completely destroy me. I wasn’t ready to quit my job yet, but I had no idea how to make this work. Granted, I could always report Adrian for his attempt at sexual extortion, but it’d be my word against his, and his reputation as a crusader for children was every bit as impressive as mine, so it’d really be a toss of the coin. I also wasn’t used to going to other people to fight my battles, so I had some things to seriously think about today. However, I also had a very fucking busy day this morning.

“Oh, God…Emerson, you’re here,” Corrine exclaimed. “Have you heard?”

I’d just walked out of the elevator, and as Corrine made her way over to me, I looked around to see that no one was working. People were gathered in little groups, hunched over their phones, shocked whispers humming throughout the floor.

“Heard what?”

As soon as she was standing in front of me, she shoved her phone in my face, and I actually had to step back some. “Adrian Cossacks has been accused of embezzling millions from his two previous jobs,” she finally informed me. “He was actually stealing from the charities that he oversaw.”

I could feel my eyes widen. “What?”

“There’s more,” she said as she pulled her phone back, not giving me time to read whatever had been on the screen. “There’s also accusations that hehad sexual relationships with a few of the young at-risk girls that he’d been in charge of at his first job.”

Even though I knew that Maddox and Ramsey were behind this, and even though I knew now why Ramsey had been ‘working late’, I still found myself asking, “So, he’s been arrested?”

Corrine shook her head as the ringing phones went unanswered. “No, not yet. It was breaking news this morning when Roger Hilmar from Action News 40 aired documented proof shared by an anonymous source.” She shook her head again, astonishment etched all over her face. “The powers-that-be have been racing around all morning, wiping his name from every directory that we have.”

“Did the news say anything else?”

She grimaced a bit. “Just that the police have copies of his alleged crimes, and that a thorough investigation will be conducted into the allegations.”

“Like that matters,” I said. “Everyone knows that accusations are enough to ruin your life nowadays. Once upon a time, you needed proof to make your case, but not anymore. He’ll never recover from this.”

Corrine’s brows furrowed a bit. “You think he’s innocent?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. Since these types of accusations can be easily disproved, it’d make no sense for someone to make this up.”

“I just hope those poor girls will be spared,” she replied, genuine concern in her voice. “I’d hate for their names to become public.”

“If Adrian has any sense, he’ll make a deal with the DA as quickly and as quietly as possible,” I told her. “If he tries to drag those girls through the mud to save himself, it’ll just make things worse for him.”

“What a monster,” she remarked disgustingly. “What kind of asshole steals from a children’s charity?” She shook her head again like a disapproving parent. “And to target vulnerable girls that just want to be loved is the epitome of evil.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“Well, now that they’ve kicked the door down on this, I can’t even imagine what else they might find once the police begin to investigate him,” she went on.

Even though Maddox had assured me that Adrian’s closet of skeletons hadn’t included any pedophilia or physical abuse, I still hadn’t expected this. While it was abhorrent for a man in his forties to target teenage girls, it was especially wretched to target girls from broken homes. Corrine was right in saying that only a monster would do such a thing, and it felt awful to have been so wrong about Adrian Cossacks. I’d actually believed that he’d been one of the good ones.

I also knew that Ramsey never used up all his ammunition at once. Ramsey liked to draw out his torture, so I knew that there was more to Adrian’s demise than just the embezzlement and underage relationships. Ramsey liked to administer his poison slowly and painfully, so I knew for a fact that my husband and youngest son weren’t quite done with Adrian Cossacks.

“Did he come in this morning?” I asked, wondering if Ramsey had warned him of what was going to come. After all, Ramsey liked to play with his enemies before he crushed them under his shoe.

“Not that anyone has seen,” she answered in a whisper, which I didn’t understand since the entire floor was talking about him.

“Okay, well…we’ve still got work to do, so…so I’m going to head to my office, then call Jowan to see if upper management is going to give us any direction on this,” I told her. “I imagine that they’re already working on a public statement regarding this.”

“No kidding,” she muttered. “I just…God, he seemed like such a good guy. I can’t believe that we all fell for it.”

“Well, in the United States, you’re innocent until proven guilty, so it’s a bit too early to be making rash judgements,” I semi-lied. I knew that whatever Ramsey had exposed was the real deal.

Nevertheless, before she could say anything, Jeramiah Hope was making his way down the corridor, and everyone scurried back to their workstations like cockroaches when the lights went on. Though Mr. Hope wasn’t the director of our branch, he was close to it. I’d say that he was probably third man in charge here, so he was rather important.

At any rate, when it was clear that he was headed my way, Corrine quietly stepped away, though not far enough away that she couldn’t hear what was going to be said. Honestly, it didn’t even matter. While Rome wasn’t necessarily burning, this was definitely a fire that needed to be put out, and it was going to take all of us to keep the integrity of CPS intact.

“Emerson,” Mr. Hope greeted as soon as he was standing in front of me.

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