Page 40 of Billionaire Corruption

“And your accounts?”

“They won’t find anything there.”

But we both knew the problem lay deeper than that.

“Am I going to be arrested?!” There was a low level of hysteria to her voice.

I put my hand on hers and squeezed.

“No, I won’t let it come to that.”

“How?”

I remembered hiring Alana three years ago. The previous COO moved on to another job and I spent months looking for the right candidate. It had to be somebody I could trust. It wasn’t only about experience and qualifications; I was looking for someone who had a very specific character and mindset.

Alana had been working in the UK at a large corporation, but she wanted to come back to the States. She was divorced and keen to come home. We had a video conference interview, but I still wasn’t convinced. She flew out to New York for the last interview. She checked all the boxes and seemed like the right candidate on paper but there was something that bothered me. She was tall and thin, with the crazy white hair, and had a way of fiddling with her hands. I was wondering if she was neurotic, perhaps too anxious for the job. I came out and asked her directly about her mental health.

She seemed to relax straight away. Instead of being frazzled by the question, she seemed to welcome it. She looked me in the eye and said she had no mental health issues, but that she had a lot of nervous energy. She ran obsessively, every day and she liked routine. Maybe, she said, she was a bit OCD, but that was the extent of it.

That settled it for me. I told her the job would be complicated, that there would be long hours, travel and stress and she seemed happy about all of it. We’d worked together well over the years, understood each other too.

“I think Jerome has been taking some unnecessary risks,” I said carefully. She sat back into the cushioned booth and processed what I said. She knew what it meant.

“I see,” she said.

I wasn’t sure that it would be enough.

But that evening, I got a call from Brock.

“Everything is under control,” he assured me.

“I thought we had insurance for this kind of thing,” I said.

He was quiet for a while.

“It seems there has been a change of leadership in that particular unit at the FBI. But I’m dealing with it,” he said in a way that did not invite further questions on the topic.

“Did you know my father was involved with AcconnTerra in Mexico?”

He was quiet for a while.

“How did you hear about that?”

“Jesus, Brock, I’m the CEO!”

“There are some things you don’t have to know about. For your own good. I’ve told you this before. It is the way the company has been set up.”

I had heard this story before. Brock had been one of the founders of Ladden Ltd and he was the majority shareholder.

“I’m taking care of this,” he said again, a little less forcefully this time.

“I’m not going to jail,” I said, and he laughed.

“No, nobody is going to jail.”

I wondered how he could be so sure.

“This is a storm in a teacup,” he said. “They want you to squirm. Don’t.”

---