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“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.
