52 Reasons to Hate My Father (30 page)

“I’m not going to be recognized in
this
.” I gesture to my outfit.

“Um, hello!” he says, dumbfounded. “You’re Lexington
Larrabee
. The
daughter
of the man who’s brokering this deal. You can’t just walk into LaFleur’s house and expect to go unnoticed.”

I step toward Luke and place a reassuring hand on his cheek. “Oh, Luke,” I say in a sympathetic voice, “you’re forgetting one of the most important lessons I’ve learned throughout this whole journey.”

“What’s that?” he says, eyeing me suspiciously.

I flash him a wry smile. “No one notices the help.”

ESPIONAGE 101

I pin the tiny microphone brooch to the lapel of my uniform and whisper, “Testing, one two three. Can you hear me?” A surge of giddy electricity jolts through me. This is too cool.

After a soft crackle, I hear Luke’s voice come through my earpiece. “Yes, I can hear you.”

“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”

I hoist myself up onto the low-hanging branch of the tree then push to my feet. I grab hold of the balcony railing to steady myself and toss my legs over. Once I’m on the other side, I lean over and give Luke a thumbs-up. I can see him watching through the windshield of his car parked down the street.

I quietly push on the sliding glass door and squeeze through. I find myself in what appears to be an unused guest room. I open the door to the hallway and tiptoe toward the stairs, leaning over the banister to see if there’s anyone in view on the first floor.

The coast is clear so I start down the stairs, trying to keep my footsteps as silent as possible. I recognize the large entryway and salon—after all, I was just here—and silently make my way to the study.

The door is closed. I knock gently and when there’s no answer I twist the handle and enter, shutting the door softly behind me.

“Okay, I’m in,” I whisper, leaning my head toward my brooch.

“What do you see?” Luke asks through my earpiece.

I hurry over to the desk and start riffling through paperwork. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “It looks like reports of some kind. Lots of charts.
Revenue projection
,” I read from the top of the page in my hand.

“No,” Luke replies decisively. “Those are probably stock reports. You need to find some kind of contract, a written agreement, between LaFleur and those three board members. Something that outlines their promise to vote him in as CEO when the deal goes through.”

I put that page down, exhale loudly, and start sifting through more paperwork.

“It’s probably not going to be right there on his desk,” Luke suggests.

I nod. “You’re right,” I whisper, and start pulling open drawers. But there’s nothing even remotely similar to what Luke described.

Then I reach the bottom drawer of the desk. It’s locked. I tug on the handle, trying to yank it open but it won’t budge. And I can’t very well take the whole desk back out the window with me.

This has to be it, though. Why bother locking a drawer unless it has stuff in it that you don’t want people to find?

I just need a freaking key! But that could be anywhere. Including
on
LaFleur himself. And as far as I know, he’s probably with my father at his office right now. At least I hope that’s where he is right now. Although anywhere but in the house would suffice.

“Dang it!” I swear.

“What’s wrong?” Luke responds, sounding panicked.

“There’s a locked drawer. It has to be in there. But I can’t get in it.”

“Can you pick the lock?” he asks.

“Listen to Mr. Goody Two-shoes now,” I jest. “Encouraging me to pick locks.”

“What can I say? You must be a bad influence on me.”

“Or a good one.”

He laughs. “So, can you pick it?”

“No!” I cry back. “I don’t know how to pick a lock. Do you?”

“What do
you
think?”

“You mean they don’t teach you that in college?” I ask snootily.

“I must have been sick that day.”

“Wait,” I say, getting an idea. I glance down at my uniform. The last time I was wearing this thing, I couldn’t figure out how to turn on a vacuum cleaner. Or even how to use one. But I figured that out, didn’t I?

I hastily pull my cell phone out of the pocket and open up YouTube. I type in
How to pick a lock
and get about a hundred results. The first one, however, has three million views and a four-and-a-half-star rating so I figure it’s probably my best bet.

I select it, turn the volume down low, and press play, scouring the desk for the two paper clips the video says I’ll need. Watching the woman in the video closely, I unbend the first paper clip and then tweak the end to create a small hook. Then I completely straighten the second paper clip, kneel down, and insert it in the bottom of the lock, turning it clockwise. Following the step-by-step directions in the video, I slowly slide the hooked paper clip on top and feel around for something called
the pins
.

I grunt in frustration as I struggle to pop each pin but after a few minutes of trying, I don’t think I’ve even gotten one.

“What are you doing?” Luke’s voice comes through my headset, causing me to lose my concentration.

I sigh. “Trying to pick this stupid lock. Hold on.”

I take another deep breath, lean in closer, and try again. My hook finally makes contact with the first pin and I’m able to push it upward. I hear a tiny click. “It’s working!” I whisper excitedly.

I follow suit with the second one, then the third, turning the bottom paper clip slightly as I go until the last pin pops and the lock turns all the way to the right. I pull on the drawer handle. It opens.

There’s only one thing inside. An unmarked manila folder. Eagerly, I pick it up and flip it open.

“Agreement to elect Pascal LaFleur to the position of CEO of the new Larrabee Media Corporation.”
I read the top line of the first page aloud.

“That’s it!” Luke squeals so loudly into the headset, it nearly bruises my eardrum. “Is it signed?”

I flip to the last page and find four signatures. The first three I recognize as the names of the board members from the photograph I printed from the Internet and the final signature belongs to Pascal LaFleur himself.

“Yes!”

“Okay,” Luke says authoritatively. “Now get the heck out of there.”

With a huge grin, I fold up the documents and stick them down the front of my uniform. I return the empty manila folder to the drawer and push it closed with the side of my leg. I start back to the door but just as I reach for the handle, it begins to turn, seemingly on its own.

I gasp and search for a place to hide but there’s no time. The door opens and in walks the man of the hour himself. Pascal LaFleur.

Our eyes meet for a brief moment and as soon as I’m capable of reacting, I cast my head downward, breaking our stare.

I sink into a shallow curtsey. “Hello, Mr. LaFleur,” I say, trying my best to remember and imitate Katarzyna’s distinct Polish accent. “Welcome home.”

He stands there glaring at me for a moment, and then glances suspiciously around the room. I keep my head down, avoiding eye contact, trying to quiet my breathing. I pray that he can’t hear the way my heart is thumping in my chest.

“Holy crap!” Luke says in my ear. “He’s there? I didn’t even see his car pull into the garage. What are you going to do?”

I want to whisper back that screaming into my ear is
not
helping but obviously that’s out of the question.

“What are you doing in here?” he says, his French accent harsh and nasal.

I plaster a clueless expression onto my face and motion to the room. “I was to clean the room.”

What I wouldn’t give to have a feather duster in my hand right now. Or even a bottle of all-purpose cleaner. I really hope he doesn’t realize how hard it is to clean a room empty-handed.

He continues to stare down at me, his eyes burning into the top of my head.

Please believe me,
I implore silently.
Please
.

“I told the maid service I didn’t want anyone in here,” he finally says, and I feel my lungs exhale.

“I’m so sorry,” I offer, scooting past him to get through the door. “Is my first day, sir. I will not make same mistake twice.”

He lets me pass but his eyes follow vigilantly as I hurry down the hallway toward the salon. I make a show of fluffing the couch cushions in the salon until I see him disappear behind his office door.

Then I tiptoe through the entry hall, quietly slip out the front door, and make a mad dash to Luke’s car, praying that Monsieur LaFleur doesn’t notice the empty manila folder in the bottom desk drawer or the two straightened paper clips on the floor until we’re long gone.

UNWRITTEN

It’s dark by the time we arrive at my father’s offices downtown. Luke parks the car and moves to unbuckle his seat belt but my hand lands atop his. He peers up at me with a curious expression.

“Do you mind waiting in the car?” I ask him. “I need to do this alone.”

He nods but doesn’t move his hand. It stays securely underneath mine. “Sure.”

“You’re positive he’ll see it before he goes to the shareholders’ meeting?” I ask him.

“Yes,” Luke assures me. “If you leave it on his desk, I’ll make certain he sees it as soon as he gets to work in the morning.”

I bite my lip. “Okay, good.”

I give Luke’s hand a quick squeeze, then clasp the documents in my arms, and swing the car door open. I hurry across the parking garage to the elevator.

I use Luke’s key card to open the door to the reception area and again to open the door to my father’s office.

I locate a notepad bearing the Larrabee Media logo and rip a sheet from the top. I scribble a quick message urging my father to read these documents carefully before making his final decision about the merger. Then I paper clip the note to the stack of documents I stole from LaFleur’s office and place them on the desk, right on top of his keyboard, where he’s sure to see them when he comes in the next morning.

And now it’s time to leave.

The only problem is, my feet won’t move. I’m frozen here, my eyes glued to the evidence I risked everything to obtain.

My father has sacrificed so many things for this company. Including time with his family. His wife. Me. He even sold me out to the press just for the benefit of this merger.

He was never around. He was always away on business. Sometimes it felt as though Larrabee Media was always his true love, his true passion, and the rest of us were just abandoned hobbies. Half-finished model airplanes left to gather dust in the garage.

So why am I so eager to save something like that? Why am I rushing to make sure he doesn’t lose control of it?

What on earth am I thinking?

Ever since I saw that picture of LaFleur in the magazine and figured out his plan, I’ve been on some mad rampage to be a hero and save the day. To take down the bad guys and rescue the damsel in distress (in this case, my father’s job).

I never even stopped long enough to consider what would happen if I
didn’t
show him these documents. If I just quietly slid them back down the front of my uniform and pretended none of this ever happened. If I allowed tomorrow’s shareholder vote to continue as planned.

I know exactly what would happen. My father would recommend the merger, the stockholders would vote it through, and immediately after the contracts were signed, the board would vote to have him removed.

My father would be out of a job. And not just any job—the job that kept him from being my father. The job that prevented me from having any real relationship with Richard Larrabee.

If my father is too blind to see that this company has ruined our family, then maybe someone needs to show him. To hit him over the head with it. And maybe that someone should be me.

I slowly reach down and clutch the papers in my hand, marveling at how much heavier they suddenly feel now that they’ve been given so much weight.

Tomorrow it could all be over.

Maybe
this
is supposed to be the silver lining of this whole thing. These fifty-two jobs that my father has forced upon me. Maybe the good buried deep beneath all the rubble and chaos of the bad is this realization. That I can get my father back. Simply by withholding this information from him. I can destroy the one thing that has kept him from me. From all of us.

If I had never taken on this seemingly endless series of low-wage jobs, I never would have overheard that conversation between LaFleur and his cohorts. Maybe this was some grand scheme set up by the universe in an effort to show me the way out. To show me the light at the end of the tunnel.

And now all I have to do is walk toward it.

But as desperately as I’d like to believe that, something about it feels amiss. It’s too deceptive to be a message from the universe. Aren’t universal transmissions supposed to be pure and uncorrupted?

Keeping this information from my father just so that I can have him to myself is nothing more than glorified manipulation. I should know. It’s been a skill of mine for many years.

On the other hand, maybe this is the universe’s way of proving to me that I still
want
there to be a light at the end of the tunnel. That I still care enough to look for one. That I haven’t given up yet.

Maybe the real silver lining is realizing that although I might have fifty-two reasons to hate my father, I really need only one reason to love him.

And maybe that reason isn’t spelled out on a list. Or written in a book. Or featured in a magazine article. Maybe it’s a reason that can’t be published. A deleted chapter from my life story. Or better still, a chapter that hasn’t even been written yet.

And I know exactly what I want that chapter to say. How I want to be remembered.

As the girl who saved her father’s job despite all the reasons he gave her not to.

Because that’s what families do.

THOUGHTLESS