Page 41 of Married to My Master

“Up to the board?” Jas asked, a shocked look on her face. “You can't be serious.”

“I am,” Emily said, her voice cool and devoid of emotion. “Look, I've seen the emails, and I even spoke to him. He doesn't want to reexamine any of this. He just views the complaints and legal challenges as a minor inconvenience. The suits and fines are just going to be a small dent in the profit margin for PV, Jas.”

“What can we do?” Jas asked.

Dane knew exactly what they could do. With this information, they could burn the whole place to the ground, then sort out the dead. Figuratively, at least. Leaking the information would be far worse than letting the FDA be the one to take action, or individual lawyers. A big reveal was the way to go—something that really grabbed the headlines by the throat and never let go till the corporation was just a bleeding carcass on the ground.

“I don't know,” Emily admitted, shaking her head as she logged into her PC and began to pull up the files. “I don't trust anyone there, anymore. Except you, of course, Jas.”

“Aw,” Jas said, clearly a little tipsy. “Thanks, Em.”

“Here,” Emily said, ushering them both around, so they could better view her computer screen. “This is what I pulled off the servers.”

Jas leaned forward and peered at the screen, her eyes squinting as she read through the files. Dane considered doing the same, but what was the point? He'd seen these already before. But, a sense of triumph and comeuppance did settle over him. These, after all, were the files he'd been looking for—the ones on which he'd staked his brother's future.

“Oh my God,” Jas said, as she leaned forward a little. “This is totally fucked up.” She looked at Emily. “We really did this shit?”

The CEO of BioSphere nodded solemnly. “That's shareholder dollars at work, right there. That's what they paid for.”

Jas sighed. “What should we do?” she asked, as she looked at Emily.

Dane loudly cleared his throat loudly enough that both women turned to look at him. “Go to that reporter at theTimes. She’s the one who’s been trying to contact you, babe.”

Emily shook her head as she ran her fingers back through her hair, a look of indecision on her face. “I can't do that, Dane,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation. She looked like a trapped animal suddenly. She was a woman stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Edward and his little fucking cronies are lining me up to take the hit on this. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already figuring out what to say at deposition. They are going to pin it all on me. If I go to Charlene Padilla now, I might end up taking the fall on the whole thing.”

Damn it, she was right. There were levels to this that he wasn't seeing, little pieces of the puzzle that someone on the outside, like him, could never possibly grasp. But, that was the thing about some puzzles. When you were trapped inside of them, like Emily was, it was almost impossible to see a way around the issue. The strategy, after all, had been built by someone on the inside, to defeat a person that was also on the inside.

No, the solution to that kind of problem was to go outside the box, to push the envelope on what was acceptable, and abandon what was expected. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at the screen, nodding to her obvious point. What he needed to do was get the word out. If he didn't do that, the woman he loved was going to be caught in the crosshairs.

And there was no way Emily was going to go down for this, especially not after everything she'd done for him. He couldn't let the woman he loved take the fall for him. What kind of man would he be?

# # #

Emily

“I don't know about this,” Jas murmured, her words slurred a little by the wine. Thankfully, she'd switched to water to try and give her body a little recovery time. “Dane might think you'll be in the clear, but you know how public opinion is. They might just flip on you because your name's up front, Em.”

Didn't she know it? Emily chewed on the back of her knuckle, thinking of another way out of this. The problem was, she was in one hell of a trap—one that had been built specifically for her. “I can't see any other way, Jas,” Emily said, after a long while.

Dane was busy trying to get Charlene Padilla on the line.

“And what's the deal with that?” Jas asked, jerking her thumb at Dane. “What's going on here? Why does he have that reporter's phone number?”

Emily sighed and looked away, trying to come up with something she could tell Jas. She certainly couldn't mention that he'd kidnapped her and held her hostage for the last week. But, she could at least tell her part of it, couldn't she? “Remember how Dane showed up at the office last week?”

“Just before the car accident?” Jas asked, a perplexed look on her face. “Yeah, right, I remember.”

“Well, he wasn't there for a business meeting. He showed up to bring something to my attention. His brother, Benton, is in prison for a murder he committed while he was taking Hymalete. He wanted my help with bringing out the truth and with getting some evidence about what Pharma knew about the medication, to see if he could somehow exonerate him.”

“Woah, there,” Jas said, as she set her glass of water on the table. “Hold up. You've been working with him to get evidence?”

Emily shook her head, then sort of shrugged. “Not up until now, really.”

Dane finally got Charlene on the phone right about then. Both women glanced up at him as he said hello to her, then got up to leave the room. They watched him go, then returned to their conversation.

“Look,” Emily said, leaning forward, hands clasped in front of her, “I thought it was kind of bullshit at first. Dane had some pretty wild claims that he was making. But, as I started to dig into the files and look at the paperwork, I realized they're valid. I wanted to stay loyal to Pharma—I really did—and see if I could make the changes the company needed from the inside. Then, all this happened, with Edward and the board being in on the whole thing and trying to scapegoat me.”

Jas collapsed into the chair Dane had just vacated and braced her head against a balled-up fist. “What now, then? Do I need to find another job?”

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