Family Issues Ch. 10

"Destiny Mall on the table again?" Helen said. "Not just on the table. Marianne's team is working on a deal. I killed that stinker four months ago, that and the Fairmount Park project. Both have miraculously risen from the dead while I was gone."

"Stinker?" He absentmindedly rechecked his messages. "I remember you said it was an opportunity."

"What? I would never."

"Really? I'm certain there was an email from you several weeks ago that supported Destiny Mall."

Helen's lips pursed like she just chewed on a lemon. "Impossible!"

"I'm..." He checked his email, but then he had a phone call.

"What?" He sounded angry. "Carmela, we've been through that— No. No. I'm with Helen. Christ! Stop it! I'm not, I'm not even going to discuss it, Carmela!"

Helen pointed at the door. "Do you want me to...?"

William ended the call and shook his head. "I'm...wow." He rubbed his face. "My wife and I, we're having difficulties right now. Hell, that's the understatement of the century."

Helen nodded. She was never sure how to react in intimate situations.

"I know I can trust your discretion, Helen. The truth is that my marriage is... The ugly truth is that the only reason I fired Tina is that Carmela insisted that I sack her."

"What?"

"She thought I was having an affair with her. Don't ask. She thought I might be having an affair with you, too, Helen."

"What? Why, why would she think something like that?"

"It's nothing rational." He sighed deeply. "She wanted me to fire you too."

"What?" Helen's heart skipped several beats. Her job as a vice-president of Richardson & Williams defined her. At least until recently, it served as the main reason to wake up every morning, knowing that there was a place in her life where she was appreciated and valued.

"It has nothing to do with you. It's about Carmela and me and what we are going through right now. Don't be alarmed. I've only told you in case the two of you meet, and she acts funny towards you. It isn't rational, I know. But that's the ugly truth right now."

"Maybe I should talk to her?"

He shook his head. "It's best if you don't. I can't find the email, by the way, but I'm not senile. I'm sure Destiny Mall had your blessing."

"No way, William! Marianne's team is running Fairmount Park deal too?"

"Marianne's team? I think." That also was weird. William micro-managed. It seemed like his personal life deeply affected his ability to run his firm. "Yes, that's Marianne too."

"That weasel. First, Marianne wanted me on-board, then when she didn't get that, she went behind my back. I'll have a lot to say in the next CEO meeting."

"It's not as simple as it was, Helen. The board has been giving me a rough time lately."

Another scary change. William was always the navigator, and the board was happy to follow the routes he marked, relying on his instincts and experience to choose the profitable pass. "Let me guess. Suzan Owens?"

"Oh, that terrible woman. Sometimes I think she's bought the shares just so she can be a pain in my ass."

"Well, she doesn't run this company. You do. By the way, did you inquire about the ElasticDatica's invoices?"

His brow furrowed as he tried to remember.

"The MS Word invoices. Marianne's team issued the job."

"I'm sorry. I probably should have, but it had completely slipped my mind." He ruffled his hair. "I haven't been myself lately, Helen. This thing with my wife... I'll throw the ball back to you on the matter of Marianne and her team."

"My forte is an analysis based on accurate data, not people, William."

Absent-minded again, he took out his Ka-Bar knife and started playing with it. "You're my Valkyrie, Helen, there is nothing you can't do."

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Helen was terrible with people, but numbers were her buddies. Numbers didn't lie, they didn't manipulate, and they never made her feel small or freakish. Numbers talked to her. Spreadsheets and dry figures and charts turned into live, breathing creatures in her head. Trends, loans, credits, leases, mortgages, portfolios, market performance, and research were her best friends. She could spot opportunities where others saw risk and sniff out the danger where others would tread unaware. William spotted her fantastic skill early on. Maybe because his three daughters manifested the futanari gene, William approached her with none of the regular prejudice. He became her mentor and protector. She rewarded him with absolute loyalty.

Numbers didn't lie, and Marianne's investment offer on her desk stunk to high heaven. Destiny Mall was supposedly a vast new complex of malls in the area of the demolished city high-rises north of the river. The numbers were excellent, beyond excellent. The high rates of return were impossible. The only reason for something to look so good was if someone had cooked the numbers. When she looked deeper, it didn't even appear like a bad investment—it looked more like a real-estate Ponzi scheme.

But why the hell would Marianne want to hurt her own company? Maybe Suzan had shares in Destiny Mall? She wouldn't be the first board member not to give full disclosure about a conflict of interest. On the other hand, Destiny Mall was an enormous investment, and its failure could cause a massive dent in Richardson & Williams' shares. Suzan Owens was a shareholder. Why would she want her own shares to plummet?

She searched and found more of ElasticDatica's bogus MS Word invoices. Not all of them came from Marianne's team. Some of them were issued for Alan Mason, the new CFO who replaced Sarah Flores two months ago. Not a small number of them were issued by her office, by her own team. She stared at those, perplexed. What the hell was going on? She asked Jessica, but the analyst had no idea who issued the requests to ElasticDatica. Helen wasn't so sure now that ElasticDatica and Destiny Mall were even connected.

She knew she was missing something.

Maybe this was all about a hostile takeover? Maybe Suzan wanted the shares to drop so she could buy cheap? She stared at the numbers, but they for once remained mute. When she remembered to look up at the clock, she shuddered. Night had fallen.

Her head was buzzing with dark thoughts as she hurried back home. She was desperate to get there before Diana, to sit down with Kevin and convince him to change his mind. The image in her mind of her empty bed filled her heart with a void. She'd tell Kevin that she needed him more than he needed to keep his pride intact.

The penthouse was silent. Helen called his name a few times. Kevin wasn't in the kitchen or in the living room. She knocked on Diana's door, received no answer, so she opened the door just to make sure.

It took her time to register what she saw on the bed, and when she did her heart shattered into a million little pieces.

Diana's lithe body was a rolling wave, on top of the man Helen fell in love with. Her sister's fingers clasped the blond spikes Helen loved to run her hand through. Diana pulled Kevin's head backward and pounded his ass, hard. As Helen stared, shocked, Diana sunk her teeth into the back of his neck, the same neck Helen learned to kiss and snuggle into.

Kevin told her that kindness comes before everything else, but he would have been kinder had he stabbed her with a knife.

Diana stopped moving and, face flushed, turned her way. "What the fuck are you doing, perv? Get the fuck out!"

She needed to get away. To be anywhere else, just not here where her heart was breaking.

Helen somehow found the strength to activate her muscles again. She ran back to the hallway, ran past her room, and kept running into the stairwell and down the stairs all the way to the street. She kept on running, aimless, through the dark alleys and into the quiet park.

It's a well-known fact that if you want tornados to stop, you should kill all the annoying butterflies. It's like good old David Hume used to say, causation is defined in terms of a counterfactual relation. It's true. Our actions in the past echo in the future. Tom Murphy, a drunk from Kevin's former hometown, threw a firebomb during an LGBTF march in Phoenix. It started a chain of events that had yet to be resolved. Helen had once made a decision and caved in to Diana's pleas. She forced a purple-eyed stranger she believed was a lazy, spoilt gold-digger into a relationship with her sister. She never dreamed that her decision would haunt her six months later.

Helen found herself in the dark, empty park, sitting on a swing, wondering what the hell she should do next. She couldn't confront Diana, and she didn't know what she could say to Kevin. Hell, she couldn't even crawl back into the penthouse again. The image of them in the other room was too much. In the end, she decided to cry. Someone really should do something about those damn butterflies.

Happiness is rare. It's a delicate golden string that shimmers at the corner of your eye. One wrong move, one wrong touch, and it can slip through your fingers. Once you hold it in your palm against all odds, and suddenly you feel it slipping away, that's the cruelest thing there is.

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To be continued...

*****

Don't fret, it gets worse before it gets better.

You know the drill. I write the sexy stuff, you press the stars to fight off the haters and to make me want to keep on writing. Leave me a note too, they always make me happy, even if they say parts of the story sucked ass.

I'm still holding on to my original plan so 3 more chapters to go. Chapter 11 is a work in progress (3/4 done).

See ya soon.