Return to the Apex: No More Mr. Nice Guy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Days

Lawrence and his wife come to the tower to beg, Weston names a deadline, and Marin Ashdown offers him the notes on Thorpe Industries for a price.

At eight the next morning, Lawrence Thorpe was in my lobby shouting at a security guard.

I watched it on the monitor in my office with a coffee in my hand.

I had slept four hours on my own couch.

It was the best sleep I'd had in a long time, because nobody in that house had woken me to ask for something.

My assistant came in and set the statement from the butler on my desk beside the transfer records.

She had matched them overnight.

"Eleven point four million, Mr. Cabot," she said. "Over two years. Fifteen percent of every transfer went into that second account."

"Does Lawrence know we know?"

"Not yet."

"Send them up."

They came in together. Lawrence had slept in his suit, and Sabine's mother was holding her handbag with both hands.

I didn't stand.

"Weston," Lawrence said, and he tried to smile. "I think there's been a misunderstanding. Sabine was upset yesterday, and you were upset, and I'm sure we can all sit down."

"We are sitting down," I said. "You're welcome to the chairs."

Her mother sat. Lawrence stayed standing.

"The transfers stay stopped," I said. "That part isn't up for discussion."

"The payroll," Lawrence said. "Four hundred people. You'd put four hundred people on the street over a girl's mood?"

"I'd put four hundred people on a different payroll. Yours was paid out of my account, and eleven point four million of it ended up in yours."

I slid the statement across the desk.

Her mother looked at it first. Then she looked at her husband.

"Lawrence," she said. "What is this?"

"It's an accounting arrangement. A bridge." His voice cracked. "Weston, you know what it costs to keep a company like ours standing."

"I know what it costs to keep your house standing. I paid for the roof."

Her mother put the statement down on the desk very carefully.

She had poured my tea for six years. She had called me her second son.

"Weston, dear," she said. "Sabine is a child. She'll come around. You can't punish all of us for what she says when she's frightened."

"She wasn't frightened. She was sure."

"You have always been so patient with her."

"Yes," I said. "I have."

I let that sit.

"Here is what happens," I said. "You have thirty days to return the eleven point four million. If it's in my account on day thirty, I'll say nothing to your board."

"And if it isn't?" Lawrence asked.

"Then my lawyers deliver this statement to your board, and to the attorney general, on the same afternoon."

Lawrence's mouth worked.

"I made you," he said. "You were a kid with a laptop, and I introduced you to every man who ever gave you a dollar."

"You did," I said. "Thank you. I've paid you back every year for ten years, and then some."

My assistant opened the door.

Security walked them to the elevator, and Lawrence's voice carried down the hall the whole way, telling me I'd regret it.

I went back to my coffee.

Last time I had never thought to look at where the money went.

I had been busy being good.

My assistant came back in with a tablet. "Mr. Cabot, there's a woman downstairs who has been waiting since seven. Marin Ashdown. She doesn't have an appointment."

I knew the name. Ashdown Partners was a small firm that bought troubled debt and made a living out of other people's bad months.

I had never met her.

"Does she say what she wants?"

"She said to tell you it's about Thorpe Industries, and that you'd want to hear it before lunch."

I met her in the elevator bank, because I wasn't going to make her wait another minute.

She was shorter than I'd expected. Navy suit, chestnut hair cut at the jaw, a man's watch too big for her wrist.

There was a small white scar through her left eyebrow.

She was watching the Thorpes' elevator doors close down the hall.

"That was Lawrence Thorpe," she said. "He looked sick."

"He should."

"I thought so." She turned to me. Her eyes were hazel and not warm. "Marin Ashdown."

"Weston Cabot."

"I know who you are, Mr. Cabot."

She said it flatly and gave nothing else away.

"I hold nine million dollars of Thorpe Industries' notes," she said. "All of them overdue. They come due in thirty days."

That was my thirty days, and she knew it.

"You've been busy," I said.

"I buy things people stop being able to pay for. You stopped paying for the Thorpes yesterday, and I got the call from their bank this morning."

She looked at me for a moment longer than was polite.

"I can call the notes and take the company apart," she said. "Or I can hand you every one of them, the day you ask."

"For what?"

"Ninety days," Marin said. "In public, at your side. Starting tonight."

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