Hooked By Love Page 11

  I didn’t have time to contemplate it, so I pushed myself to my feet and crossed over to the photocopier. It took me a few minutes to print everything I needed and put them in order.

  I didn’t feel guilty for doing any of this. I wasn’t the one in the wrong. My uncle was. A noise from upstairs made me freeze—footsteps. I wasn’t alone after all. With the stealth of a thief, I quickly replaced all of the papers as neatly as I could back into the folder, shoved it at the back of the drawer and closed it. The footsteps stopped. Move Zack! Move!

  Putting the key back under the desk, I grabbed the evidence, stuffed it inside my jacket and dashed for the front door. I was outside within seconds, closing the door quietly behind me. I wouldn’t worry about who was in the house. I had an urgent delivery to make.

  Chapter 21

  Amber

  By late afternoon, I had Harry, Christina and Jennifer bustling through the Internet for me. Two of our counsellors had left because they were convinced the centre would fall, but not because of me or my apparently fickle reputation.

  ‘Oh my God! You’re not going to effing believe this,’ Jennifer said, walking into my office with eyes so wide I thought they might pop out.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An anonymous delivery,’ she said, handing me a thick A4-sized envelope. On the front, the words ‘This will help you sink the O’Neils’ was scribbled in large clumsy handwriting. ‘Shelly found it on her desk when she got back from a fag break.’

  I took the package from Jennifer and tore it open like a cat getting into a pack of Dreamies treats. I frowned as I scanned the sheets of paper in the folder.

  An hour later, Jennifer and I sat in silence with our mouths agape, looking at the damning evidence.

  From the leaked information, we discovered Berkley-O’Neil had made a contribution to the local authority under section 106 of the Planning Act and in return, the authority waived the company’s responsibility to build affordable housing, as well as a community centre.

  ‘Look at this.’ Jen revelled as she leant on my desk. ‘Over the last ten years, Berkley-O’Neil haven’t once had to comply with local authority rules on the percentage of new builds that have to be built with affordable housing.’

  ‘Meaning?’ I asked.

  ‘Meaning, the local authority let them off every time. I know that under section 106 they’re given some leeway if they make a contribution, but come on! Every time!’

  We scrutinised the papers closer and found that the O’Neils and their associates, Berkley Trust, had bribed planning committee members, in particular one Jason Lee, to approve their planning applications.

  ‘How on earth have they got away with this?’ I asked, delving deeper into my curiosity of this shady business.

  ‘Who’s going to question them?’ she asked and dropped another folder on my desk. ‘If the planning committees are in on it …’

  ‘But you’d think someone in the local community would have complained or something?’

  ‘Maybe they were paid off too,’ she replied.

  ‘Well this lady is not for turning! If I didn’t believe in God before, I sure as hell do now,’ I told her and kissed her hand while she gloated with a dramatic sway. ‘We’re going to name and shame those bastards. They’ll be sorry they ever bought this building and more so, that they tried to use Amber Cross as a pawn to get by the unfairness of it all.’

  ***

  The following day, after starting work at 6:00 a.m., my three colleagues and I ordered breakfast with fresh coffee, made some tea for Chris and cancelled all our appointments for the morning. Our regular programs and counselling sessions would continue in the afternoon, once we had put the media death trap in action for tomorrow.

  ‘We’re going to wipe the floor with them,’ I told my band of merry partners when we finally compiled all the evidence in an orderly fashion.

  ‘You almost sound happy to torch your boyfriend.’ Christina winked.

  ‘This isn’t about revenge, Chris. This is about shining a light on a company that has managed to hide in the dark for way too long.’ I clasped my hands in front of me. ‘Okay, back to business. Channel 4 will be here at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, so wear your best coats.’

  ‘Jerry Bantry and Jessica Pullman will interview Amber and me and then the telly magazine people will collect the footage from us at noon,’ Jennifer reported.

  I couldn’t help but think how devastating it would be for such a majestic company as Berkley-O’Neil to be exposed by those they’d sought to destroy? If we had our way, not only would we get to keep our building and our jobs, but we’d also topple Berkley-O’Neil like one of their cheaply constructed properties, crumbling them to the ground.

  When we finally took a well-deserved lunch break before the afternoon influx of troubled youngsters came in and demanded our attention, I fell back in my chair, relieved to catch a breather. But it wasn’t all roses and butterflies when my mind started wandering. I was so blood drunk, so hell-bent on crushing Josh and his brother’s company that I’d neglected to keep track of my emotional hostility, born from his betrayal.

  In truth, I felt a little bad about attacking Josh and the company he tried to keep on course out of respect for his father’s hard work. I wanted to believe him when he said he was truly helpless, but every time my heart softened to him, I remembered how he almost dragged me to bed with him, just as Craig had tried to do.

  It seems to be a family strategy when you boys are faced with a foe you can’t buy off, hey? I played with my pen on Josh’s photo from one of the folders. My eyes fell into his again and for a moment, I could hear him breathe again, feel his hand dropping to my blouse …

  ‘Are you still with us?’ Christina asked.

  I jumped at the sight of her. ‘You startled me, Chris!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She slowly walked toward me with two cups of tea and set one in front of me, her demeanour seeming personal.

  She looked back at the doorway before she started talking again. ‘I know you want to save the centre, Amber, but I want to make sure you really want to do this.’

  ‘The truth needs to be told,’ I replied nonchalantly as I sipped the tea. ‘No company is immune to it. Even Berkley-O’Neil.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But how do you feel about bringing Josh down?’

  ‘Why would I care?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I know you care too much about everything.’

  Christina had the sort of face that made people want to confide in her. Even the most closed-up teens surrendered to her persuasion.

  ‘Yeah I suppose I do feel a bit guilty for hitting him this hard. That I’ll admit. I … God help me, but … I don’t want him to hate me. But I have no choice. This is as harsh as I have to be to get out of this pickle. I have no choice but to … hurt Josh.’

  ‘It’s a pity. He seemed sincere when he was here. Just keep in mind that maybe he’s trapped between family commitments and doing the right thing,’ she suggested and sipped on her tea. ‘I don’t think he’ll hate you for fighting for what you believe in, even if that fight is with his family.’

  ‘That’s the part that worries me. What if he thinks I’m a sore loser, some feisty bitch who’s pissed off because she didn’t get her way?’

  What if he never wants to see me again?

  The more I thought on it, the more it surprised me that I actually cared what he thought of me. That was unusual. If the entire world hated me, I wouldn’t give a damn. But for some reason, the thought of Josh O’Neil hating me killed me inside.

  Chapter 22

  Josh

  ‘Josh, get in here,’ Craig shouted from his office again. His voice possessed that hysterical squeal at the end of each sentence that he got when he was very upset but felt too helpless to do anything about it. ‘Josh!’

  ‘All right, I’m coming,’ I called from behind my desk, having to abandon the financial discrepancies I’d come across when Craig had neglecte
d to pay some of our overheads. Several accounts appeared to be in deficit, while others were overabundant, and I didn’t like the look of that uneven distribution over equally important accounts.

  For now, I’d appease the howling big baby, otherwise he’d never leave me be. When I entered into his office, he had the television on again and was leering at the screen, his pupils practically glowing red in hatred.

  ‘Who’s winding you up now?’ I asked calmly, grabbing a Coke from his bar fridge and making my way to the office sofa.

  A crowd was chanting and shouting in some noisy upset on the telly. I breached the seal of the can, thinking at first the ruckus was about something political, but then I saw her.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Look familiar? Déjà Vu?’ Craig almost shrieked.

  ‘Oh my God, Amber, what are you up to now?’ I said to the image on the screen, but I was quite aware of what she was capable of and, after her tirade in my office, I knew this wouldn’t be pretty.

  ‘Have a look at your bitch, little brother!’ Craig raged, his face crimson as he clutched his Scotch. ‘Did you hear that?! We’re corrupt? Some insignificant little bitch from Camden has an opinion about us, but she doesn’t stop there, oh no! She plastered our name all over a fuck load of social media pages and news channels and set consumer watchdogs all over our associates!’

  ‘She what?’ I gawked at her on the flat screen. She was speaking to several journalists in front of the centre. ‘How can she make such accusations?’

  I was dumbstruck by the level she’d stooped to because I couldn’t do anything to stifle the eviction plans and stop the demolition. After all the trouble I’d gone through to show her how much I cared and all the personal things we’d shared, how could she discard it all and do this to me? How could she hate me this much that she would launch a media circus to take down and smear the reputation of my father’s company? I couldn’t believe that the sweet, playful woman I’d almost made love to a few nights before had resorted to such base methods to destroy us. We were nothing like that. The reports on our wrongdoing had been falsified, hadn’t they? Weren’t they?

  ‘Craig, what’s she talking about?’ I asked.

  ‘Who knows? Crazy slags, all of them! She’s been poking at us since the first notice, Josh.’ He slammed his glass down on his desk and grabbed his jacket, pulling it on as he headed for the door. ‘I’m going to pay my solicitor a visit to see where we stand with her making slanderous accusations. I’ll make sure I take that bitch down! I want her out of the way, out of that building and fucking gone, once and for all!’

  I wanted to agree with my brother, and moreover, I wanted to teach Amber a lesson for defiling my father’s company’s name like that, but for some reason, it felt right to leave her to do her thing. More than anything I wished I could thwart her filthy campaign against us, yet something in me told me not to act in haste. What if she was right? What if there was some truth to what she claimed we were involved in? Craig had a fit every time I asked to see the tax records. I’d highlighted several transactions I was unsure of in the monthly reports, but again he reacted angrily when questioned and I never got to the bottom of it. His underhandedness was, after all, the reason I’d elected to come into the fold after so many years of resisting. Craig was very capable of destroying this company with his unorthodox and sometimes unethical business conduct, but could it be as bad as Amber was making out?

  I scooped up the remote to turn up the volume to hear what she had to say. Seeing her took me back to our night together. I could still remember the smell of her hair and the slight tint of her perfume just above her collarbone. I watched her lips move and felt them warm and soft on mine.

  ‘The Berkley-O’Neil company is rotten to the core and it’s time the people of London stood against their unscrupulous dealings,’ she told the journalist interviewing her.

  Behind her a crowd had gathered, holding up signs like Save Young Minds, Fight for the Centre or Down with Berkley-O’Neil. One slogan caught my eye in particular because it was so harsh—Ban the Berkley Bullies—but what shocked me to my core was the face underneath the banner.

  ‘Zack?’ I breathed out his name. Zack, of all people. ‘What the hell is he doing there?’

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. The camera panned and stopped on Amber again.

  ‘You have to understand we’re not a business, we’re a charity, and that means we care about people, not money. Our centre serves a collective, and we serve society on behalf of young people who can’t manage by themselves.’

  Her voice sounded so different through the speaker of the telly, but it still held that familiar chime. Amber made a few good points, if I could ignore her thrall over me, and her valid argument had me thinking.

  ‘Where will you go if you feel as if the world is against you? Young people who feel suicidal, who are alone in an intolerant world, they find a home with us. We understand when nobody else, not their parents or teachers or priests, understand. And why? Because most of us have been there.’ Her conviction evoked a deep sense of admiration in me. ‘People need the centre. Berkley-O’Neil does not.’

  It was getting dark outside while I watched the reporter on TV share the links of Internet pages running petitions against us. The storm that Amber had unleashed on us was rather unsettling, and I wondered if her anger toward our company was because she felt jilted, or solely because the eviction was going ahead.

  ‘You saw that too?’ Craig’s secretary remarked from the doorway. She walked to his desk and laid several papers down. ‘What do you really think she’s after?’

  I could only shake my head. With everything involved in this case, I honestly didn’t know what Amber Cross was really after, but from what I knew about her psyche, she wasn’t the overreacting type.

  ‘Justice,’ I replied. ‘She’s not wrong about the importance of that centre to community.’

  ‘I know, but I didn’t want to raise the issue while Craig was here. My sister sent my nephew to the centre because he was having a hard time coming to terms with being gay. The counselling he received there was second to none,’ she told me. ‘He’s at university now, doing really well for himself. I dread to think what would have happened if he’d had nowhere to turn.’

  ‘Wow, so they’re not exaggerating about their abilities.’ I nodded. ‘Sounds more like a … sanctuary.’

  ‘It is. Look, If Craig comes back tonight, can you make sure he signs those papers please? I’m finished for the day.’

  She pointed at the open files on the desk before leaving Craig’s office. Amber had disappeared from the screen, but the crowd was still on camera. I leant forward, searching for Zack again. My nephew. My off-kilter, lost and angry nephew.

  Why would he oppose our company, a company he held an equal share in? I just couldn’t make sense of it.

  Whatever the case, things were way out of hand. All of this scrutiny on our company unnerved me in a way I never knew possible. Perhaps I could work some loophole around the demolition? If I could somehow stall it, Craig would lose his extension on the permits and he’d have to reapply. Property redevelopment wasn’t my forte but I knew the basics of how it operated beyond the average person. Maybe I could lose some of the documents needed to secure the demolition company or halt the funding of the permits before they got approved. I leapt to my feet and ran to the door. Mary hadn’t left yet. She was tidying her desk.

  ‘Mary, can you do me a favour before you leave?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me with an expectant gleam in her eye that I ignored. I didn’t date employees—especially now that I’d met Amber.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, fluttering her lashes.

  ‘Can you find a high-end property litigation firm for me, please? It’s urgent,’ I said.

  She looked confused. ‘But—’

  ‘And keep this between the two of us, if you want others like your nephew to get the support they need. Let me know who you find. I’ll be in my office.�
�

  ‘You’re aware we already have our own representation, right?’ she asked as I started up the corridor.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ I muttered under my breath.

  Chapter 23

  Josh

  I drew up beside the pump at the petrol station. Exiting the car, I exhaled a long held in breath. Can my day possibly get any worse?

  Not only had I discovered that Amber Cross was at my throat more than ever, but Zack had become even more aggressive towards the family.

  The smell of rubber and fuel filled my nostrils as the slight evening breeze soothed my sweating brow. It was so good to see families sitting in the adjacent restaurant, enjoying their time together without the hefty issues most families dealt with on an average day. I wasn’t that naïve that I thought they didn’t have their problems, no doubt they did. But they’d chosen to set aside their dramas to have dinner together, wisely away from home.

  Absent-mindedly, I walked into the kiosk to pay. On the counter lay a copy of Camden Post staring me in the face like a little lapdog with an attitude that kept snapping at my heel and relentlessly yapping in my ear. The headlines screamed how the Berkley-O’Neil property developers were exploiting planning authorities.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘Can you believe that?’ the clerk asked, sobering my thoughts instantly.

  ‘What?’ I asked, blinking.

  ‘That those bastards have been getting away with rotten dealings for years just because nobody had the guts to expose them. It’s because they have so much money. They probably bribe everyone to keep quiet,’ the forty-something man judged in his raw Cockney accent.

  ‘Have you lived around here long?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nope. But I know that company is bad news. My brother and sister-in-law were chucked out by those arseholes two years back, when they bought the flats they were renting. Thrown out of their home of five years for that bloody unsightly concrete car park in Levinson Road! Now they live in squalor because of the property prices.’