Page 28 of A Man of Prestige

I laugh. “It’s a long story. But essentially Conner built this out of spite. He loves this fucking little house. I’m pretty sure he’s going to move into it someday and forget about his castle over there.

She looks at Conner’s home.

“Holy shitballs! His house is…it’s literally a castle.”

I pull her to me. “Don’t get any fairy-tale ideas in that head of yours. My house is just as nice. It’s just not…well, it’s not Conner.”

She giggles. “It is most definitely not Conner.”

I turn and walk up to the door. “You ready?” I ask as I squeeze her hand.

I can tell she’s nervous, but she shouldn’t be. My friends have no reason to hate her. Not anymore.

She nods as I open the door and we step into the house. Vivienne is sitting on the sofa next to Conner and Alexis is sitting on Sebastian’s lap on the oversized chair in the corner of the room. I want to roll my eyes at them.

“OK, so what’s with the meeting?” Conner says, clearly wanting to get back to what he was doing before, which I’m guessing from the look of his disheveled hair, was Vivienne.

“We have new information.” Everyone looks from Ella to me.

“Ella, this is Vivienne and Alexis. And you remember Conner and Sebastian,” I say as I remember that she doesn’t know half the people in the room.

“Hello,” she says softly.

We launch into what we’ve just learned, wasting no time. It’s now or never.

“Wait!” Vivienne stops us after we get to what we just learned.

“Damien Malroy?” she asks.

Ella nods.

Vivienne jumps up and starts to pace. She turns to Conner. “Do you have some sort of whiteboard?”

Conner rolls his eyes. “Viv, does it look like I have a fucking whiteboard in here?”

She groans and looks around and then holds up a finger. She grabs a plastic placemat and a marker from a drawer. She sets it down on the table and starts drawing and putting names down as she begins to explain.

“I knew all my years of research would pay off, eventually,” she mutters. “Look. It was reported that about a dozen years ago, Jared had a thing for young women. I mean back then he was only in his thirties, but still a little creepy. He knew Adam because they were both in TOD, although I’m not sure if Jared is a member of the brotherhood. He may just have pledged the fraternity. But somehow Adam and Jared were acquainted. How do I know this? Because there was this party back then. It was at Damien Malroy’s place. He has a place right here in D.C. in Georgetown. Some underage girls were there, one staggered out on the street and got hit by a car and killed. There was a whole investigation. But she was drunk and it was ruled an accident. However, in the police investigation into that, a few of the other girls that were at the party had some photos on their phones. And one of them was a picture of Jared with Damien, all buddy-buddy. Now, I have never heard of them hanging out before or after that night. Not to say they didn’t hang out, it was a while ago, but they clearly knew each other, and based on those photos, they were friends.”

“Wait, you knew that Jared was friends with an arms dealer-slash-sex trafficker and failed to mention this?” Conner growls.

Vivienne rolls her eyes. “He’s friends with all types of shady people. You didn’t ask, and until right now, it wasn’t relevant. Or at least, I didn’t think it was. May I proceed?”

Conner waves a hand at her and Vivienne glares at him. I smirk. It’s nice to see a woman put Conner in his place.

“Let’s for sake of argument say that Jared shared with Damien something about the drug his company was making. Maybe he tells Adam too? And Damien says something about how he could use that drug for…his exploits. I mean, think about it, a drug that he can inject in women and they basically wouldn’t remember anything yet be able to do stuff. It’s ten times better than a roofie. But wait, there’s more…”

“Hell yeah, there is!” Alexis jumps. “There was an investigation into Damien’s company, Palarus Astra. They were shut down around that same time for tax evasion. Someone in my federal income tax law class was just talking about that. Some speculated that Damien had used the company to launder money from his illegal activity.”

“Exactly, so Mr. Malroy was in the market for a new way to launder money and he also happened to really like a drug made by one of his friends,” Vivienne says animatedly.

“Which means that Mr. Malroy might have bankrolled Confervo’s and Halfagher’s work in Geneva, and they may be trying to further hide it by merging and making it look like they need each other when in reality they are both swimming in illegal funds,” Alexis says as she hops off Sebastian’s lap. “But then there’s the admiral.” She pauses and looks at me. “Adam somehow got a coveted military contract. Yet it all seemed to evade publicity, which tells me—”

“That someone higher up is protecting him,” Ella finishes her sentence.

“Exactly!” Alexis squeals.

Vivienne holds up her placemat drawing showing how Jared, Adam, Damien, and Vance are all connected. She leaves open another box above Vance and points to it.

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