Page 38 of Chasing Paradise

She’d also cleared her plate.

I took hers away, sliding mine in its place.

“You need to eat too,” she objected.

“I’m not hungry.”

Because we were getting to the part where my whole damn life imploded.

“So, what’s next?” she asked after another forkful of food.

“There were all sorts of site plans, flyers, bookings…”

“But?”

“But something… felt off.”

“Off how?”

“I couldn’t put a finger on it. No matter what questions I had, I kept getting the same answers. Eventually, I was told to stop asking questions. They were focusing on the IPO and they didn’t have time for my bullshit.”

“Hmm,” Violet said, brows lowered.

“Yeah, that was my feeling too. And while the reports kept making big promises and the stocks kept skyrocketing, I got more and more uneasy.”

“Okay. So where does the insider trading come in?”

“I was heavily invested. A hundred thousand shares. Close to going public, shares were upward of two hundred each.”

“Two hundred? On the promise of a few eco lodges in the rainforest?”

“No, the plans had expanded well beyond that. They were promising resorts all over the world once the IPO went through.”

“But you had a feeling.”

“I had a feeling. A bad one. The more I asked questions, the more they pushed me out.”

“So you, what? Tanked the IPO?”

“I didn’t intentionally do anything. I just didn’t like the feeling I was having, so I sold all my stocks right before it went public. The stock crashed. I got investigated for insider trading.”

“So, if I believe you—and that’s a big if—why would you get blamed? Can’t you just… sell whatever stocks you want?”

“Essentially, yeah. But not if the SEC thinks you have insider knowledge of something. Like the company’s value being inflated.”

“Did you?”

“I had no solid proof of anything. Just a gut feeling that told me I needed out.”

“But if the company’s value was inflated… how? Why?”

“That’s what I’m doing in this part of the world again. I want to find those damn eco resorts. If they exist at all. And I want to prove that they’re not what my uncle and his company said they were for the valuation. I want to prove that the only ones committing stock fraud are the company and its leadership, not me.”

There.

It was out.

She could believe me. Or not. But that was the whole of it. More or less.

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