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Roger was the regional manager, he could be wherever he wished around the Del Mar and no one would lift an eyebrow. The coffee boiled and she poured the hot beverage into the cup with cream and sugar.
Her options were pretty narrow, Kelly thought as she carried the cup of coffee to the living room. The obvious person to go to with her suspicions would have been the supply manager but seeing that he was a suspect too, immediately crossed him off the list.
The other people she could contact were people who oversaw the South East region, which was led by Roger himself. She would go through the management when she returned to the office and figure out the best person to talk to about her suspicions. There had to be someone who would listen to her.
The following day, Kelly was among the first people in the office. She hung her jacket on the back of her chair and switched on her computer. An hour later, she had a list of three people. Each of them headed different regions and the third person worked directly under the Del Mar Group’s CEO himself. She started at the top and with trembling fingers, she dialed the number of the head office.
“Is he expecting your call?” a secretary’s efficient and distant voice asked.
“No, but I’m the manager of Del Mar in Palm Beach and I have a confidential matter that I need to bring to his attention,” Kelly explained.
“I’m sorry but the right person to speak to would be your regional manager. Please follow the appropriate chain of command. Thank you.”
It was the same with the other three. She was advised to talk to her regional manager and in one case got an earful from the secretary or whoever picked up the phone for breaking protocol. Frustrated, she shelved her efforts for the moment and went to the conference room to attend the staff meeting.
To her chagrin, Roger was there, and he sat smiling at her from her own chair. She looked around for an empty chair, as far from him as she could be. She played with her pencil until she felt everyone’s eyes on her.
“Kelly, we’re waiting for you,” Roger said.
She started the meeting, though her heart was pounding hard against her chest. What was he here for? She went through the whole meeting without incident and was relieved when it was over.
“Before you all return to your duties, there was something I wanted to speak about,” Roger said. “Soon, we’ll be making huge changes around here. Some of you will be promoted and others will lose their jobs. If you’re incompetent and cannot perform the small tasks asked of you by your bosses, then know you’re one of those waiting to be axed. We’ll not tolerate lazy and uninspired employees. Does everyone understand?” He looked at Kelly pointedly. Around the table people murmured in concern. “That’s it, have a good day.” Roger ended the meeting, and let employees shuffle fearfully out of the room.
All the while, Roger had kept his eyes on Kelly.
She had held his gaze and now she straightened her shoulders. He would have to fight her tooth and nail to get her to leave. She would not leave as quietly as Raina had. Roger needed to be reined in. If she let this go, he would only do it to the next person, and the person after that, and then the person after that. This needed to end, and Kelly had every intention of being the one to do it.
She flashed him a bright smile and turned to leave. She expected to hear his voice calling out to her but nothing came and she shut the door behind her.
The bad feeling came then.
She knew that her days were numbered anyway, and so far she had not done anything with the information she had. Sexual harassment was not enough though. That was often brushed under the table.
But Roger was a thief and she wanted him caught and put behind bars. Companies didn’t like losing money. If she sent the evidence of the pervert harassing her, it was likely that they would try to settle with her quietly, she would have to resign and Pervy Roger’s life would go on untouched. But stealing? He would have to answer for that—wouldn’t he?
Kelly flicked on her computer. She watched the video where Roger had grabbed her and she had to close her eyes to stop herself from watching the vile man abuse her. She forwarded through several other videos from the previous days and paused when she saw his figure enter her office.
She looked at the time stamp and realized that must have been from yesterday, Kelly thought. She pressed play and watched in fascination as he shut the door and sat behind her desk. He turned on her computer and moments later was typing furiously on it.
“Damn it.” Her voice was loud in the silent room. She knew the bastard was setting her up in the same way he had done with Raina.
Her heart constricted with fear. Raina had been lucky that the company had not pressed charges. Kelly knew that if Roger went ahead with his plan, she could very well find herself behind bars. There was no time to waste now. She had to find someone willing to listen to her story.
She returned to the company’s website again and this time she focused on the CEO himself. It would be her last ditch effort to get someone to listen to her. His name was Christian Del Mar. There was not much information about him on the company website—not even a picture.
She typed his name on a search browser. She hit the jackpot immediately. There were tons of information about him. Evidently the gossip blogs and society pages just loved him.
Kelly perused all the stories that came up in her search. Every once in a while she looked up nervously, worried that Roger would walk in, though it was unlikely. He had given up on her and had already decided to punish her by framing her. She read more about this man and hoped that he was a good person, though if he was anything like his uncle, Pervy Roger, she was in deep trouble. But Christian Del Mar was her last hope. If she couldn’t get him to look at her evidence she might as well start planning for a stay in the county jail.
She got his office telephone numbers and email addresses without much excitement. She knew that his assistant and secretaries would not let her through. She had to think of another way to speak to him.
As she scrolled through his impressive biography, she felt a little hopeful seeing the kind of person he was. He seemed to give a lot to charities and had apparently taken a year off to work with students in the developing world.
An idea came to her then and her heart raced. He had taken a year off to help the underprivileged, which meant that it was probably his passion. Surely he would not just stop after the year was up.
He probably had other talks and charity events scheduled throughout the year. With mounting excitement, and feeling a bit smug at her own cleverness, Kelly searched again, looking for a list of events, but coming up with nothing until she came to a college website announcing that Christian Del Mar of the Del Mar hotel group, would be giving a talk at Paramount College. It was free to students, but interested outsiders could buy tickets if space was available.
Kelly immediately fired off an email to book a reservation for herself. Then she returned to the browser and she hit another jackpot. There was a video on him giving past interview. Kelly clicked on him, knowing that she would need to recognize him at a glance if she was going to catch him before or after the talk.
