Pursued (The Diamond Tycoons 2) (7 page)

He and Marc were invited to weddings, christenings, birthday parties…and they went, every time. Fostering a sense of community, of family, within the company was incredibly important to him—probably because he’d never had much of a family beyond his brother. The fact that someone would be so disgruntled, so angry,
so vengeful
, that the person would deliberately sabotage them like this…it made absolutely no sense.

“And?” Marc ground out the words. “What’s she exposing?”

God, Nic didn’t want to tell his brother this. Didn’t want to see how devastated he was going to be at the accusation. Not when Marc had poured his heart and soul into making Bijoux not only a success, but also a company with a heart and a social conscience.

Still, it had to be done, and Nic might as well rip the bandage off as quickly, as cleanly as possible. “According to her, she’s exposing the fact that we’re pulling diamonds from conflict areas, certifying them as conflict-free and then passing them on to the consumer at the higher rate to maximize profits.”

Marc’s mouth actually dropped open, and for long seconds he did nothing but stare at Nic. “That’s ridiculous,” he finally sputtered.

“I know it’s ridiculous! I told her as much. She says she has an unimpeachable source who has given her credible evidence.”

“Who’s the source?”

“She wouldn’t tell me that.” Nic fought the urge to slam his hand into the wall as frustration welled up in him all over again.

“Of course she wouldn’t tell you that, because the source is bullshit. The whole story is bullshit. I know where every single shipment of diamonds comes from. I personally inspect every mine on a regular basis. The certification numbers come straight to me, and only our in-house diamond experts—experts whom I have handpicked and trust implicitly—ever get near those numbers.”

“I told her
all
of that. I invited her to come in and take a tour of our new facilities and see exactly how things work here at Bijoux.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said she had tried to come for a tour, but PR had put her off. It’s too late now. The story is slotted to run on Friday, and they really want a comment from us before it goes to print.”

“Friday’s in three days.”

“I’m aware of that. It’s why I’m here, freaking out.”

“Screw that.” Marc picked up his phone and dialed an in-house number. They both waited impatiently for the line to be picked up.

“Hollister Banks.” The voice of their lead counsel came through the speakerphone. He was obviously out of his earlier meeting—and just as obviously hadn’t yet gotten the urgent message Nic had left for him. He sounded far too cheerful.

“Hollister. This is Marc. I need you in my office now.”

“Be there in five.”

His brother didn’t bother to say goodbye before hanging up and dialing another number. “Lisa Brown, how may I help you?”

Nic listened as Marc told their top diamond inspector the same thing he’d just told Hollister.

“But, Marc, I just got in a whole new shipment—”

“So put it in the vault and then get up here.” The impatience in his voice must have gotten through to her, because Lisa didn’t argue again. She agreed before quietly hanging up the phone.

It took Lisa and Hollister only a couple of minutes to get to Marc’s office, and soon the four of them were gathered in the small sitting area to the left of his desk. No one said a word as Nic once again recounted his discussion with Darlene Bloomburg.

He got angrier and angrier as he told the story. By the end, he was literally shaking with rage. This was more than just his company they were screwing. It was his life, his brother’s life, his employees’ lives. If Bijoux went down for this—and he’d been in marketing long enough to know that if this story ran, they would absolutely take major hits no matter how untrue the accusations were—it’d be more than just Marc’s and Nic’s asses on the line. His employees would be under investigation and, if the hits were bad enough, also out of jobs. All because some ignorant reporter with a chip on her shoulder couldn’t get her facts straight.

As he tried to channel his rage, he promised himself that if this story ran he would make it his life’s mission to get that reporter fired. Hell, he’d get her fired even if it didn’t run. She should have known better than to make this kind of mistake.

“Who’s the source?” Marc asked Lisa after she and Hollister had absorbed the story—and its implications.

“Why are you asking me? I have no idea who would make up a false claim like this and feed it to the
Times
. I’m sure it’s none of our people.”

“The reporter seemed pretty adamant that it was an insider. Someone who had the position and the access to prove what he or she is saying.” It was the third time Nic had said those words, and they still felt disgusting in his mouth.

“But that’s impossible. Because what the person is saying isn’t
true
. The claims are preposterous,” Lisa asserted. “Marc and I are the first and last in the chain of command when it comes to accepting and certifying the conflict-free diamonds. There’s no way one of us would make a mistake like that—and we sure as hell wouldn’t lie about the gems being conflict-free to make extra money. So even if someone messed with the diamonds between when I see them and when Marc does, he would catch it.”

“Not to mention the fact that there are cameras everywhere, manned twenty-four/seven by security guards who get paid very well to make sure no one tampers with our stones.” Everyone in the room knew that already, but Nic felt the need to add it anyway.

“What this person is saying just isn’t possible,” Lisa continued. “That’s why Marc insists on being the last point of contact for the stones before we ship them out. He verifies the geology and the ID numbers associated with them.”

“There is a way it would work,” Marc interrupted, his voice a little weaker than usual. “If I were involved in the duplicity, it would explain everything.”

“But you’re not!” Nic said at the same time Lisa exclaimed, “That’s absurd!”

Nic knew his brother almost as well as he knew himself, and if there was one thing he was certain of it was that Marc would never do anything to harm Bijoux. The two of them had worked too hard to get the company to where it was to let a little extra profit ruin everything. They already had more money than they could spend in three lifetimes. Why risk it all, especially in such a despicable way, for some extra cash?

People
died
mining conflict diamonds. Children were exploited, beaten, starved, worked nearly to death. No amount of extra profit was worth propagating such blatant human rights violations. No amount of money was worth the stain dealing in conflict diamonds would leave on his soul.

“Marc’s making sense. It’s what they’ll argue,” Hollister said, and though it was obvious by his tone that he disagreed, Nic could tell his ready agreement bothered Marc.

Not that Nic blamed Hollister. This was more than a company to them, more than profits and bottom lines. More even than diamonds. Their great-grandfather had started Bijoux in the early twentieth century and it had been run by a Durand ever since.

When Nic and Marc took it over, they’d had to act fast to repair the damage their father had done through years of neglect and disinterest. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to run the company into the ground, but he’d always been more interested in the adventures—and the women—the Durand money could buy rather than the day-to-day work of being CEO.

Which was why Nic and his brother had worked so hard to rebuild things. For years, they’d put their lives into this company and in a decade had managed to take Bijoux from a floundering behemoth into the second-largest diamond distributor in the world. They’d brought it into the twenty-first century and had created a business model that would help those who couldn’t help themselves and that wouldn’t exploit those who needed protection most.

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Marc told Hollister after a long pause. “I want that story stopped. We’ve worked too hard to build this company into what it is to have another setback—especially one like this. The jewel theft six years ago hurt our reputation and nearly bankrupted us. This will destroy everything Nic and I have been trying to do. You know as well as I do, even if we prove the accusations false in court, the stigma will still be attached. Even if we get the
Los Angeles Times
to print a retraction, it won’t matter. The damage will have already been done. I’m not having it. Not this time. Not about something like this.”

His words echoed Nic’s thoughts from earlier, and the similarity was eerie enough to make the situation really sink in. From the moment he’d heard about the article, he’d been operating under the assumption that they would find a way to stop it. But what if they didn’t? What if it actually got printed? What if everything they’d worked so hard for actually went up in smoke?

What would they do then?

What would
he
do then?

Marc must have been thinking along the same lines, because there was a renewed urgency in his voice when he told Hollister, “Call the editor. Tell him the story is blatant bullshit and if he runs it I will sue their asses and tie them up in court for years to come. By the time I’m done, they won’t have a computer to their name let alone a press to run the paper on.”

“I’ll do my best, but—”

“Do better than your best. Do whatever it takes to make it happen. If you have to, remind them that they can’t afford to go against Bijoux in today’s precarious print-media market. If they think they’re going to do billions of dollars of damage to this company with a blatantly false story based on a source they won’t reveal, and that I won’t retaliate, then they are bigger fools than I’m already giving them credit for. You can assure them that if they don’t provide me with definitive proof as to the truth of their claims, then I will make it my life’s work to destroy everyone and everything involved in this story. And when you tell them that, make sure they understand I don’t make idle threats.”

“I’ll lay it out for them. But Marc,” Hollister cautioned, “if you’re wrong and you’ve antagonized the largest newspaper on the West Coast—”

“I’m not wrong. We don’t deal in blood diamonds. We will
never
deal in blood diamonds, and anyone who says differently is a damn liar.”

“I already made those threats to the managing editor,” Nic said after everyone absorbed Marc’s words. “And while I agree they’ll sound better coming from our lead counsel, we need to do more than threaten them. We need to prove to them that they’re wrong.”

“And how exactly are we going to do that?” Lisa asked. “If we don’t know who they’re getting information from, or even what that information is, how can we contradict them?”

“By hiring an expert in conflict diamonds.” Hollister had obviously gotten with the program. “By taking him up to Canada where we get our stock, letting him examine the mines we pull from. And then bringing him back here and giving him access to anything and everything he wants. We don’t have any secrets—at least not of the blood-diamond variety. So let’s prove that.”

“Yes, but getting an expert of that caliber on board could take weeks,” Lisa protested. “There are barely a dozen people in the world with the credentials to sign off unquestioningly on our diamonds. Even if we pay twice the going rate, there’s no guarantee that one of them will be available.”

“But one is available.” Nic glanced at his brother when he said it, knowing very well that Marc would not appreciate his suggestion. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and he would do anything—anything—to stop this from happening. Including dig up his brother’s very painful past. “She lives right here in San Diego and teaches at GIA. She could totally do it.”

Marc knew whom Nic was talking about, and he didn’t take the suggestion well. Big shock there. Nic waited for him to say something, but when Marc did nothing but stand there silently, Nic couldn’t help goading him. “Dude, you look like you swallowed a bug.”

“I can’t call Isa, Nic. She’d laugh in my face. Or she’d deliberately sabotage us just to get back at me. There’s no way I can ask her to do this.”

Nic rolled his eyes. “Weren’t you the one saying we can’t afford to screw around with this? Isa’s here, she has the experience, and if you pay her well and get a sub to carry her classes, she’s probably available. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“You should give her a call,” Hollister urged.

“Yeah, absolutely,” agreed Lisa. “I’d forgotten about Isabella Moreno being here in San Diego. I’ve met her a few times and she’s really lovely—we should totally get her. I can try to talk to her, if you’d like.”

“No,” Marc told Lisa harshly, after a few uncomfortable seconds passed. “I’ll take care of getting her on board.”

He didn’t sound happy about it, but he looked resigned. And wary. Which was good enough for Nic. His brother was an arrogant bastard, but Bijoux meant everything to him. He’d get Isa on board, even if it meant he had to crawl to do it.

In the meantime, Nic would meet with Ollie and scour the article that should be in his inbox by now. If the worst case happened and this thing actually went to print, he wanted to be ready with the best damage control the industry had ever seen.

Seven

T
he next few days were excruciatingly slow as Nic waited for Isa’s findings. He was sure Marc felt the same torture, but at least his brother was out in the world, actively working to save their company. He’d taken Isabella to Canada and now he was here, in the building with her, checking out their diamonds. Proving, unequivocally, once and for all, that whoever had given the
Times
its information had been wrong. All Nic was doing was sitting here, feeling as if he was fighting with both hands tied behind his back.

It wasn’t a good feeling.

But then, how could it be when everything he’d worked for, everything Marc had worked for, could go up in smoke any minute? Simply because someone with a grudge had lied about them. Simply because some reporter had said so. It was infuriating.

Nic and Ollie had put together a damn good plan for damage control over the past seventy-two hours, but Nic really hoped they’d never have to use it. Hollister had managed to get the article pushed back a few days, though not canceled, and now the only thing left to do was wait.

Wait for Isa to certify their diamonds as conflict-free.

Wait for the
Times
to decide what it would do about the article.

Wait for security to comb through the company files and find out the identity of the source.

Too bad he hated waiting with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Yet, it seemed as if it was all he’d been doing lately. Even before this whole thing started. Ever since Nic had met Desi, really. He’d texted her a few times right after they’d been together, but she’d never responded. He’d dropped down to once a week after that because he hadn’t wanted to harass her. He’d just wanted…her. If he hadn’t, he would have given up after the second day.

But he hadn’t given up. Instead, he’d waited seven weeks for her to respond to him and she never had. Not one returned text, not one phone call, nothing but total and complete radio silence. Which was why he’d finally given up on her, why he’d gone so far as to erase her number from his phone. He liked her a lot, but if she didn’t feel the same way about him, he wasn’t going to spend the next year moping around about the one who’d gotten away. Not when they’d spent less than twelve hours together total.

He’d thought if he shoved Desi out of his mind—and took her off his phone—he wouldn’t have to think about her again.

Too bad it hadn’t worked.

Determined to get her out of his mind once and for all, he grabbed his laptop. Started fiddling with the winter marketing plans. He’d had a great idea about them when he’d been wandering his empty house at three that morning. He should probably write it down before it disappeared.

But he’d only just opened the advertising budget spreadsheet when the intercom on his desk buzzed with his brother’s voice. The sound cut through Nic’s not-so-pleasant thoughts, giving him the distraction he’d been looking for. “Come to my office, will you? I want to talk to you about something.”

“Be right there,” Nic answered, glad beyond measure that he finally had something to do. Sure, he had his normal workload, but none of that interested him right now. Nothing did, except putting this story to rest once and for all.

Grabbing his phone and his cup of coffee off his desk, he made his way to Marc’s office. As Nic walked down the long corridor that separated their corner offices, people called out hellos from every door that he passed.

He returned the greetings as naturally as he could, but he could tell his staff knew something was wrong. There were a bunch of questioning looks, and even their greetings were more subdued than normal. Not that he blamed them. He hadn’t exactly been his normal exuberant self lately, either. It was pretty hard to act as if everything was all right when he and his brother might very well be captaining a sinking ship. They’d already been hit by the iceberg. Now they just had to wait to see if they’d somehow manage to stay afloat.

“What’s up?” he asked as he let himself into Marc’s office.

“I want to talk about the December ad campaign. I want to hit it harder, want to make sure we’re everywhere we need to be.”

“We will be, I promise.”

“Still, I want to put more money toward the campaign. Another fifty million or so—”

“We don’t need another fifty million—”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what we’ll need if—”

“I do know. And that’s why we’re retooling part of the campaign. There will still be the ads that focus on giving her diamonds, etc. But we’ll also have ads about making the world a better place, bringing holiday cheer to those who have none—it’ll have Bijoux’s name on it, but there will be no mention of buying anything, no mention of gifts. Instead we’ll focus on children in developing nations, with a particular emphasis on conflict diamonds and those who are forced to mine them.”

“That’s really smart, actually. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I do, occasionally, know what I’m doing, you know.”

Marc snorted. “Well, let’s not get all crazy now.”

“Yeah, ’cause I’m the crazy one in the room.”

“Excuse me? I will have you know that I am exceptionally sane.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say, bro, right before they chop off an ear. Or some other more important body part.”

“I assure you,” Marc told him, completely deadpan, “I have no intention of chopping off
my
ear or anyone else’s.”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Insanity might look good on you.”

“But it already looks so good on you.”

“I think you’re confused. This isn’t insanity, man. This is confidence.”

Marc studied him for a second before shaking his head. “Nah. It’s insanity.”

Nic couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. It felt good to share a little banter with his brother, especially when things had been so tense lately. As he sank into a chair on the visitor’s side of his brother’s desk, he told himself it was a sign that things were looking up.

Harrison, one of the attorneys working their end of the situation and one of his closest friends at the company, walked in a couple of minutes later. He’d barely sat down before the door opened again and this time it was Isa who walked in, carrying a thick manila folder in her hand.

She grinned at all of them before perching on the corner of Marc’s desk and sliding the folder across the dark cherrywood.

Mark looked at her inquisitively, at least until he opened it and saw what was written there. Then he broke out in a huge smile as he asked, “We got it?”

“You absolutely got it,” Isa told him. “I didn’t find one irregularity.”

Adrenaline raced through Nic at the confirmation and he jumped out of his chair, pumped a fist in the air. “I knew it, baby!” he all but shouted. “I knew that reporter had a bad source.” He gave Marc a second to look over the documentation she’d provided, then ripped the folder out of his hands and headed for the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” his brother called after him.

“To make a copy of this file. And then I’m going to go down to the
Los Angeles Times
myself and force-feed every single page of this to that jackal of a reporter. I hope she chokes on it.”

“I feel obliged to warn you of the illegality of such actions.” Harrison somehow managed to keep a straight face as he said it.

Nic flipped him off on his way out of the office. And though he wanted to celebrate with Marc and Isa and everyone else who had helped clear Bijoux of any wrongdoing, his job wasn’t done yet. He needed to make sure the
Los Angeles Times
—and one particular reporter—got this information. And while he could, and would, have it emailed over, there was no way he was leaving this to the whims of someone’s email habits. He was hand delivering this baby himself.

Besides, he really wanted to see D. E. Maddox’s face when he plopped the report on her desk.

Since it was midmorning, the drive from their offices in north Carlsbad to the headquarters of the
Los Angeles Times
was less than an hour and a half. On the way, he plotted what he would say to Maddox and her managing editor. About a million expletives came to mind, but since he was a gentleman and not in the habit of cursing at women—even women who had nearly destroyed his family’s business—he worked out a little speech instead. Short, pithy, to the point and—yes, he admitted it—more than a little smug. He might be a gentleman, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t gloat a little. Especially about something like this.

He pulled into the parking lot exactly one hour and fourteen minutes after he left his office in Carlsbad—okay, maybe he’d sped a little, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t anxious to get this whole thing over with and behind him. Behind Bijoux.

He figured he’d have to talk his way around a few security guards, maybe a receptionist or two, before he’d be able to get to either Maddox or Bloomburg. But it turned out that the huge compound that had once belonged exclusively to the
Los Angeles Times
now housed some kind of call center and a few other businesses that had nothing to do with the news. Which meant Nic waltzed right through the central lobby, where he checked the building’s directory and got onto an elevator that took him straight to the newspaper’s main floor.

He stepped off the elevator into a huge newsroom packed with desks. It was almost empty, which wasn’t a surprise considering he’d arrived in the middle of the lunch hour. Except for a couple of stragglers, the few people who were there were huddled around a table at the front of the room, talking animatedly—probably about how to ruin the reputations of other businesses in the area. Which, okay, might be an unfair assessment, but he wasn’t exactly feeling kindly toward the paper at the moment, or anyone who worked there.

There was still no receptionist to check in with, nobody to even give his name to. And while he knew security at Bijoux was over the top because of the nature of their business—and because they housed diamonds in their state-of-the-art vault—he admitted to being a little shocked at just how laissez-faire this place was about security.

Still, it worked in his favor, so he wasn’t complaining. The paper had certainly had the element of surprise when it had contacted him less than a week ago. Now he was returning the favor. Neither Maddox nor Bloomburg would ever expect him to show up here. He’d find Maddox’s desk and be waiting for her when she got back from lunch.

A big guy with a camera hanging around his neck finally stopped him when he was halfway through the room. But when Nic told him he had something to deliver to D. E. Maddox, the guy waved him toward a desk in the back corner. It was, surprisingly, one of only three desks in the cavernous space that actually had someone sitting at it.

Which was even more perfect. He’d prefer to confront Maddox and get this over with as quickly as possible.

As he approached, she had her back to him, which gave him a perfect view of what looked like miles of platinum blond hair. The sight tugged something inside of him, making him think of Desi and the night he’d spent with her hair fanned out on his pillow. He shoved the memory down—the last thing he needed right now was to be distracted by thoughts of her—but for some reason she just wouldn’t leave his head. It was only when he got closer to the woman that he understood why that was.

As he approached her at an angle, he could see her profile clearly. Could see her high cheekbones and lush full lips. Could see her sun-kissed skin and the dimple low on her right cheek. Suddenly it didn’t seem so far-fetched that she reminded him of the woman he had spent the past eighteen weeks trying to forget.

“Desi?” He hadn’t meant to say her name out loud, hadn’t meant to attract her attention until he’d had a second to deal with the shock of finding out that D. E. Maddox, hated reporter and company annihilator, was none other than the woman he’d taken home for one unforgettable night.

But she turned toward him as soon as he said her name, her eyes widening as she realized who it was standing only a few feet from her desk. He expected her to look guilty, or at the very least, apologetic. Instead, her eyes burned with a fury that made the anger in his own gut look like nothing.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded as she pushed to her feet. “Slumming it?”

Slumming it? He couldn’t even figure out what she meant, let alone how he was supposed to respond to the bizarre accusation. How could he understand when he was still reeling from the realization that
Desi
had been investigating him for weeks? That she’d been right under his nose for the past few days and he hadn’t had a clue?

“Well?” she asked, and it was the impatience in her voice that finally kick-started his brain into gear.

“I’m here to deliver this to D. E. Maddox,” he said, brandishing the folder like the weapon it was. “But I have to admit I’m a little surprised to see
you
sitting at
her
desk.”

“I don’t know why you would be.” She had the audacity to shrug. “It’s not like you know anything about me.”

“So you’re really going to do this?” he demanded as the fury inside him kindled into ugly rage. “Pretend that nothing happened between us.”

“Nothing did happen between us,” she answered coolly. “At least, nothing important.”

“So that night was what? A setup for this, then? A way for you to get to know your assignment before you ruined his business and his life?”

“I didn’t ruin your life or your business. You did that all on your own when you decided to trade in conflict diamonds.”

“I told your managing editor the other day and now I’m telling you. Bijoux does not deal in conflict diamonds.” He dropped the folder on her desk. “I’ve got the proof that we don’t right here.”

She didn’t even bother to glance down at the file. “And I have proof that you do.”

“So show it to me.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Of course not. Who cares if you run a fake story as long as you get the attention you need, right?”

“I don’t fake evidence,” she said as she stood up and started around the desk. “And I didn’t fake this story.”