Sleeping With My Boss: A Standalone Novel (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story) (A Dirty Office Romance) (127 page)

“Do you mean to tell me that all of my
personal business, including statements I have made to you behind closed doors
and never meant to be public, are out there floating around somewhere with God
knows who? What the hell are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know yet, Miles. I’m not even
sure yet how damaging this is to any of us. I assume much of it depends on who
it is that has this information now.” I was as worried about those files
falling into the wrong hands as Miles was. I could feel everything I’d ever
worked for slowly slipping away.

Throughout the morning as I called one
pissed off client after the other, Miles kept calling back with another
question and each time before I got him off the phone, he would ask, “Who the
hell would do this?”

“I don’t know, Miles. I wish I did. The
police are working on it, but it’s only been a few hours.”

“You know what this will do to me?”

“Of course I do,” I answered with a heavy
sigh. “I’m so sorry, Miles. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I’m sorry, too – sorry I trusted you. In
this day and age, why wasn’t everything kept on the computer and password
protected, anyways?” he asked gruffly.

“A lot of information is.” I tried to
explain to him. “Unfortunately, the nature of our business requires us to take
files of data into court with us. Most of that is written information. I
promise you, Miles, nothing these people took can be used against you. It has
lost any credibility just by virtue of leaving the office. The law cannot touch
you based on anything you said in confidence to your lawyers.”

“What about the press? Are you gonna tell
me that they can’t use this information to smear me more than they already
have?”

When I didn’t instantly reply Miles
continued, “I didn’t think you could,” and hung up the phone.

I sat there with my head in my hands for a
while, letting the phone ring and knowing Marie would be picking it up on the
other line and taking messages, none of which I’d be looking forward to
hearing, I was sure.

I thought about Alicia. I hadn’t told her
yet about what had been taken, and what kind of fallout we would be facing. I
knew she would have her hands full with her parents today and I was trying to
give her a break. The police needed to talk to her in order to get an inventory
of what had been taken from her office, but I had been able to get them to
agree to wait until tomorrow. I looked around at the office I sat in at the
business I had built from nothing and thought about what I might do when it all
crashed down around me. I had no idea.

********

Mac and I had lunch behind the closed
doors of my office trying to strategize about what we would do now. The phones
had not stopped ringing and angry clients had even begun to show up at the
office. The press was running with it and as usual were making things worse.

“Have you talked to Alicia yet?” Mac asked
me.

“No, but she is my next phone call. The
police aren’t going to let me stall them much longer. They say now that they
need to talk to her today.”

“What about the open cases? Will we have
to talk with each judge independently to know how to proceed?”

“I’m afraid so,” I told him. “I have Nico
and Kyla working on compiling a list right now. Once that is done, we’ll
arrange a meeting that includes the clients, not just ours but in the civil
cases, the other side, our attorneys, and the individual judges and in the
criminal cases, of which we thankfully don’t have many, the district attorney
will have to be invited.”

Marie stuck her head in the room. “Excuse
me, Mr. Hanson, I have Ms. Winston on the line.”

I exchanged a look with Mac who took the
hint and said, “I’ll meet up with you when that list is ready.” He left with
Marie and she closed the door behind them.

“Hi, babe,” I said when I picked up the
line.

“Hi, how’s it going with the police? Was
anything taken?”

“I’m afraid so, Alicia. My office and
yours were the only ones breached. They took all of our files.”

“Oh my God, Adam! We have all of that
information on people who hired us and trusted us to keep issues private? Oh my
God!”

“Calm down, sweetheart,” I told her. “I
know it sounds really bad, but we’ll fix this, I promise.”

“Are the clients aware?”

“Yes, most of them have been notified.
They have been calling or showing up all day. It’s like a three-ring circus
around here. Alicia, I’m sorry, but the police need to speak to you, today.”

“Great, that will make my parents’ day,”
she said with a sigh. “Adam, why are all of these things happening to us?”

“I don’t know, baby. But we’ll fix it,
okay?” I knew it wasn’t much, but it was all I could think of to say right now.

I had thought a lot today about how I had
struggled to get through law school on scholarships and student loans. I had
worked twenty hours a day sometimes as an associate at the first law firm that
hired me, until I finally made partner, and then when I had finally saved
enough I had opened my own firm and brought Mac on as a partner.

It had been, up until today, the most
successful and respected firm in Manhattan. I knew that if I had accomplished
all of that once, I could do it again. I really did plan on fixing it all
somehow. I knew too, that it would all be easier with Alicia by my side.

CHAPTER
FIVE

ALICIA

I was numb and in shock when hung up the
phone with Adam. I didn’t want to imagine what this was going to do to the
firm’s reputation…to all of our reputations. I also had no idea how I was going
to tell my parents. It was just all too much. Adam told me he would have the
detectives come back in two hours. That would at least give me a chance to
arrange lunch for my parents and give them some type of explanation as to why I
had to leave them already. This was another conversation that I was not looking
forward to at all.

I arrived at the law office a little
earlier than Adam told me to. Once again, the sidewalk out front was congested
with reporters. I slipped in the back way this time and took the service
elevators up to the floor that housed the firm. I went straight to Adam’s
office, and although Mac, Kyla, and Nico were there when I arrived, Adam got up
and put his arms around me. We stood there like that for several minutes and
then I finally pulled back and said,

“Are we working on a plan?”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Kyla
told me. “Pull up a chair and help us out. Another great mind is always
welcome.”

I sat down and Nico began explaining to me
what they were doing. Nico, Kyla, and a few of the junior associates had
compiled a list of all my and Adam’s open cases. Then, they separated them into
civil and criminal cases.

As it turned out, Miles’ and Nelson’s
cases had been the only open ones that Adam or I had been working on as a
criminal case. The oil spill lawsuit was a different story. Adam, Mac, and our
teams had spent hundreds of hours interviewing and taking depositions on
witnesses. Most of that information was in the files that had been taken. They
had listed out the names of all of the people involved in those interviews and
also had a list of all of the judges involved on cases that have already been
assigned and the attorneys representing the other side.

“Wow, you guys have been busy. Great job,”
I told them when Nico had finished. “I don’t know that I have anything else to
offer until I’ve seen what the damage is in my office. If you’ll all excuse me,
I think I’ll take a look now, before the police arrive.”

When I opened the door to my office, I was
sickened at the sight. The damage that had been done originally was compounded
by the trail left by the police during their investigation. Black powder used
for picking up fingerprints could still be seen on the door the desk and other
furniture in the office. As I stood there, trying to decide where to start, I
heard Adam’s voice behind me.

“What a mess, huh?”

I turned towards him and said, “I’m not
even sure where to start.”

He put his arms around me again and held
me longer this time. “It’s going to be alright, baby, I promise.”

I didn’t say anything, just stood there
with my head resting against his chest. I wished we could go back to when our
love was new and business was thriving. I’d even be happy to have to deal with
Marjorie’s nonsense again, if it only meant that the old shrew was still alive
to antagonize us. Life had gotten so complicated so fast. I was a pro at
handling other people’s messes and drama, but I wasn’t quite sure how to handle
my own at that point.

Up until a month ago, life had more often
than not come easily to me. Yes, my mother could be difficult at times, but my
parents had given me every advantage in life and had done an excellent job of
shielding me from the bad things.

Adam held me back so he could look at my
face. “Is this the final straw?” he asked, looking genuinely afraid that I
might say yes.

“Of course not,” I told him. “None of this
is your fault. Now, let me take stock of what is missing before the police get
here.”

“Okay, but there’s one more thing,” he
told me, “I don’t know what if anything this means, but the pictures you have
of you and I on the shelf behind your desk were all laid face down.”

My eyes went to the shelf. “Why? That
seems a bit…personal, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “It does, and I don’t like
it.” I got a chill down my spine. I didn’t like it, either. What the hell was
going on?

Adam left me alone after that and by the
time the police arrived, I had compiled a list of what was missing. I had been
working on two civil cases; one was a woman who was suing a large corporation
for the wrongful death of her husband. He had been on the company’s private jet
on the way to a business meeting when the jet had crashed. The company had not
compensated the woman in any way, other than a very small life insurance policy
they held on her husband.

I had found out that the pilot who had
been flying the jet had been drinking earlier in the day, prior to the flight
taking off. The FAA had investigated and found the cause of the crash to be
equipment failure, but I thought that the pilot drinking prior to a long
business flight was still significant and could be used to force the company to
compensate the widow.

My other civil case was a domestic one.
The husband hired a private investigator to follow the wife, who in this case
was my client. The wife was cheating on him, and the man was trying to use the
infidelity to keep basically everything they had accumulated together over a
period of fifteen years of marriage. I disagreed with the infidelity, but did
not believe it entitled the man to take everything that the woman had helped
work for.

The two criminal cases, Miles’ and
Nelson’s, were the most complicated. In Nelson’s case, since we were already in
the stages of going to trial, I could get most of what we lost from court
documents or the DA’s office.

In Miles’ case I’d have no such luck and
it was going to suck. We would have to re-interview anyone that had already
been interviewed and re-compile a case file. We would probably also have to
fight the press. It made me crazy just thinking about it.

In that file were the documents Miles had
given me at the beginning, as well. There was background on Vick, information
Brett had found for me on David, and most damaging of all was Miles IV’s
admission that his son had killed his third wife. It wasn’t enough for the
police to arrest Miles V on, but it would be damaging in other ways if the file
was in the wrong hands.

I spoke to the detectives when they
arrived and gave them a run-down of what was taken. The nature of their job
made them inquisitive about who the clients were, but I stuck firm on only
telling them what type of case file it had been.

I called my own clients myself. The two
women weren’t happy, but they were reasonable and seemed to understand that I
was doing all I could. I left a message for Miles and had to reassure Nelson
ten times that this wouldn’t be his ticket to jail. It was an exhausting
afternoon.

When I finally finished all of that, I
said goodbye to Adam and told him I would call him later. I needed to get back
to face the music once again with my parents. I could only hope that they
hadn’t watched or listened to any news while I’d been gone.

When I got home and opened the apartment
door, I was surprised to hear a voice other than one of my parents. It was
Jack. I thought about just sneaking back out. I could only imagine what sort of
ideas he was filling my Mother’s head with about Adam. I was beginning to
distrust him and as much as I hated that my instincts told me it was the safe
thing to do.

“Jack,” I said as I walked into the
sitting room where they were all having coffee. “What a surprise.”

“Alicia,” Jack said, rising from his seat
next to my mother, “I’m sorry to just drop by unannounced. I didn’t realize
your parents were visiting. I had just been watching the news, and I wanted to
make sure you were okay.”