Page 77 of So This Is Christmas

“Jazz, it looks like.” That was what he’d been listening to in the car while he waited for her in the church on Thanksgiving.

“Yes.”

She wanted to ask him how that had happened, how an upper-crust European boy fallen on hard times who had grown up to be equerry to a king had become a jazz aficionado, but her phone rang. She glanced down. Tonya. “Oh, shoot. This is my boss. I have to take it.”

“I can step out if you’d like privacy.”

“No need.” She picked up. “Hi.”

“You were right about Brad.”

She sat down with a thud. “Wow.”

“We found months’ worth of emails between him and Noar Graf. They started out coming from his CZT account, and they were above board. They became increasingly personal in nature, though, as they discovered interests in common. Then they stopped entirely, so we figured he had switched to a personal account except for emails that other people needed to be copied on. We were going to hire a forensic IT specialist, but then Dave”—that was the firm’s IT guy—“figured out that Brad had his personal Gmail on his office computer, and it was set to stay signed in.”

Fucking Brad. “What an idiot.”

“Indeed. Although to be fair, he wasn’t expecting to fall off that roof and not be back in the office for weeks. But it’s all there in black-and-white. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed at how easy it was.” She snorted. “Like, at least let me feel like a spy for a day?”

“Have you confronted Brad yet?” Matteo appeared at Cara’s side with his eyebrows raised. She moved over to make room for him next to her on the sofa.

“No,” Tonya said. “We’re convening an external legal team tomorrow. We have more than enough to fire him, it’s just a question of how far into criminal territory his actions go. It seems as though his plan—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you mind if I put you on speaker? I’m with Matteo Benz, the king’s equerry, at the moment, and he might as well hear it directly from you.”

“You trust him?”

“I do.”

“All right.”

Cara switched to speaker, performed introductions, and Tonya filled them in on what they’d learned from the emails. The plan had been for Noar to amass as many shares as he could. He would own them, but he and Brad were going fifty-fifty on their gains going forward. It didn’t particularly seem like Noar was doing anything to drive down value, merely that they were counting on CZT’s work to make the company more profitable. They’d even gone a ways toward pre-deciding what Brad’s recommendations were going to be.

“Honestly, having read through these emails,” Tonya said, “I’mnot sure Noar Graf was smart enough to purposefully drive down the value of the company.”

“I’d thought the same,” Matteo said. “If he was dragging the company down, he was probably doing it without even trying.”

The three of them shared a resigned laugh. “So you’re firing Brad,” Cara said, letting it really sink in.

“Unless you’d like to do it. You are his direct boss. We can probably work out a Zoom firing.”

“No, no, go right ahead with my compliments.”

“You spoke to the king today, yes?”

“Yes, but only about Noar, not about Brad.”

“We’ll need to take responsibility for our part in this—responsibility for Brad, basically. I think it’s important that he hear from a partner.”

“Of course. You want to fly in? We can set up a meeting.” She looked at Matteo. “Right?”

“Of course,” he said hurriedly. “I can arrange a meeting whenever you like.”

“I don’t think you need me to fly in,” Tonya said.

“Okay,” Cara said. “We’ll set up a Zoom link.”

“Actually, Cara, can you take me off speaker?”

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