Page 84 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
One rule for me, and another for Hope. But then, I was all good with that.
And here I was, thinking about her again, and about lunch, too, instead of what I was doing. Pure self-indulgence. I shook my head impatiently and got back into it. For about two minutes, because the phone rang. Walter.
He said, “There’s going to be an article in theJournaltomorrow. Not good. They’re asking if you want to comment. I’ve said no, but you should take a look at the draft and decide for yourself.”
It wasn’t the first time, but it wasn’t important. “What is it? The layoffs at La Strata? They had to happen. Hopelessly overstaffed. Or am I just a ruthless investor again?”
“No,” he said. “It’s your wife. I’m sending it to you now, and I’ll hold while you read it.”
“No, you won’t. Send it. I’ll ring you back if I want to comment.”
I kept it together. Whatever it was, I’d cope. Bad press had happened before. Power and bad press went together like bangers and mash. If it was personal…well, that wasn’t new, either. It didn’t matter.
Except to Hope.
No.I shook it off.
And then I read it. No headline, not yet. But the article was bad enough without it.
Revelations surfaced today of cracks in the foundations of one of fashion’s most successful and powerful houses, as it was learned that Hemi Te Mana, 37, iconic founder of the company bearing his name, is facing the possible loss of half his personal net worth in a marital dispute.
In a development that could have widespread repercussions for both the Te Mana corporation and the wider fashion industry, it was revealed that Mr. Te Mana has been married for the past seventeen years to 37-year-old Anika Cavendish, whom he left behind in their native New Zealand upon his emigration to the United States barely two years after their marriage. The pair never officially separated despite Mr. Te Mana’s widely reported single status and rumored connections with a series of women, beginning almost immediately upon his arrival in this country. The couple has no children.
The multimillionaire’s playboy lifestyle continued, sources allege, until his recent rumored engagement to 25-year-old Te Mana marketing assistant Hope Sinclair. Despite the lack of any public announcement, Ms. Sinclair is reported to be wearing an engagement ring into the office and to have mentioned her impending marriage to colleagues.
However, when Mr. Te Mana filed for a divorce from Ms. Cavendish last month, he was served in a separate filing with a suit demanding half the property accumulated during the seventeen-year marriage, in accordance with New Zealand family law. Such a division of Mr. Te Mana’s estimated $250 million personal fortune, retail experts suggest, could require a wholesale selloff of the corporation’s rapidly expanding holdings and seriously jeopardize its financial position.
Mr. Te Mana’s woes may not end there. The May-December romance between the Te Mana CEO and the much younger and more junior Ms. Sinclair has raised eyebrows and hackles at a company whose employee handbook features a five-page sexual harassment policy that requires immediate disclosure of romantic or sexual relationships between managers and their subordinates. As an unnamed colleague of Ms. Sinclair told this reporter, however, “Hemi has one rule for the rest of the company and another one for himself. If he puts his girlfriends on the payroll, who’s going to tell him no? Let’s just say that complaining has been proven to be more than our jobs are worth.” Another colleague noted that Ms. Sinclair’s former manager, Publicity Director Martine Devereaux, a highly esteemed Te Mana veteran of more than eight years’ service, left the company abruptly last year only a few months after the start of Ms. Sinclair’s employment as her direct report. Ms. Devereaux could not be reached for comment.
Experts agree that the potentially disastrous financial repercussions far outweigh any internal issues. Mr. Te Mana’s attorney, Walter Eagleton, refused to speculate on the situation, saying only, “The corporation is on solid financial ground, and we are confident that its future remains secure.” According to Ms. Cavendish’s attorney, Hamish McAllister, “Ms. Cavendish is not interested in vengeance, only in receiving what is rightfully hers under the law. For seventeen years, she has believed that she was in a real marriage, a long-distance one at Mr. Te Mana’s insistence, a relationship that began when she was just a teenager. We have every belief that the New Zealand justice system will follow the rule of law in its decision.”
Meanwhile, the fashion industry and over two thousand Te Mana employees worldwide can only watch and wait to see how the drama plays out.
I rang Walter back.
“She’s gone nuclear,” he said economically.
“Yeh. Aiming for that big settlement, I’m thinking.” I focused on breathing in cool air, breathing out the hot rage that wanted to enslave me. Rage was unproductive, and it had to go. I dealt with the facts, made a plan, executed, and moved on. No matter what the facts were. No matter that Anika was hitting me where it would hurt most, trying to shake the foundations of everything I’d built.
Before she took half of it.
“Settling could be worth it,” Walter said. “Without an affidavit from your roommate…” Rog had been tracked down at last in the UK, had said he “couldn’t remember exactly,” and had implied that a fair deposit of beer money—say, a lifetime’s worth—could jog his memory. Which was absolutely no help at all.
“No,” I said. “It’snotworth it. It would never have been worth it. If I’d offered a million, she’d have demanded twenty. Trust me, if she sniffs weakness, she’ll have my blood. That’s not going to happen. I’ll go proactive here, board meeting and so forth. And you’ll go proactive there. I don’t want ‘no bloody comment.’ Call that reporter and show him the documentation from the divorce IthoughtI had. Link to the articles about that attorney. Explain the bloody two-year waiting period. They want a story? We’ll give them a story. And go nuclear yourself. Tell them what the investigator’s found abouthersex life, and then tell him to find out more. I want to know what her neighbors have heard, what they’ve seen. She’s been screaming over there. I know it. Find out who’s making her do it.”
“I do not want to know this,” Walter said.
“Too bloody bad. You’re hearing it. I want to know who she’s brought home, and what she did when they got there. I want her past partners, and I want them talking. I want it all, and I want her to know I’m getting it. She wants to talk about my private life, take half the money I earned after she cheated on me with my friend and then dumped me? She wants to shame my fiancée and ruin me professionally? She wants to put lies out there? I’ll put thetruthout there, and I’m not the one living on an island with four and a half million people who don’t have enough to read about. The world’s a big place with a short memory. New Zealand isn’t.”
“And what about Hope?”
“Do everything you can do to keep her out of it. She hasn’t done anything wrong, and I want heroutof it. Whatever it takes.”
Hope
There could have been better ways to get the news.
Hemi had come home late the night before; so late, in fact, that I’d been asleep. And on Friday morning, he was gone by the time I got up.
