Page 31 of Break My Rules

“I know all that,” Robert replies, looking annoyed. “I was in the meeting, too.”

“Look, I’m not here to make your life harder,” I say, putting my hands up. “If you don’t want me around, I’ll just go and leave you to it…”

“You think you’re getting off the hook that easily?” Robert finally grins and shoves a thick stack of folders over to me. “Nice try, but we could use all the help we can get.”

“Even me?”

“Even you. Come on,” he adds, leading me out and down the hall. “You can work out of Dad’s office while he’s gone. It’s safer that way. Tricia’s probably the only secretary here who’s immune to your charms,” he says, giving me a knowing look.

“You underestimate me,” I smirk. And the fact I’m a one-woman man right now. “But no need to worry. I’ll keep my hands to myself, and my eyes on the…Annual Adjusted Forecasting Matrix,” I say, reading the folder on the top of the pile. I whistle. “Not exactly a blockbuster title, is it?”

“The title doesn’t matter, just the topline.” Robert says, grabbing yet more files from a desk as we pass. “The quarterly newsletter is going out to investors, and I need you to pull some highlights. Good news we can use to keep them happy, tide them over until the big trial results announcement next month.”

“The Alzheimer’s drug?” I ask, and Robert looks surprised.

“You’re keeping up to date with our trials?”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not completely oblivious to what goes on here,” I tell him, even though if it wasn’t for Tessa’s connection to the project, I probably wouldn’t know anything about it. But since her sister worked on the early trials phase, I know that the project matters to Tess—a way of Wren’s legacy living on. “How are the trials going?”

“They finished a few months back,” Robert replies. “Now they just crunch the numbers and fast-track through peer review before we can announce.”

“That’s good.” I glance at the folders Robert’s given me, but there’s nothing about our new drugs or interesting research, just thick, dull-looking files about cost-cutting.

“Isn’t this newsletter a job for the PR department?” I ask, sighing.

Robert makes a face. “Dad insisted on doing it himself. The personal touch. So…”

“… Now you're fucked without him,” I nod. The downside of a control freak CEO. “Got it. Anything in particular you need?”

“Anything with a positive spin. Overhead savings, new grants, helpful side effects for the diabetes drugs. Everything you need will be in the internal update reports.” He pauses. “You have been reading the internals, haven’t you?”

“I may be a few weeks behind,” I reply. More like years. “But I can handle it,” I assure him. “Good news, massive profits, rah-rah Ashford.”

“Alright…” Robert looks reluctant, but one of the other staff members scurries over and pulls him away for a meeting, so I let myself into my father’s office, and get started, grabbing the first folder at random.

Leveraged Cost Analysis – Southern Europe division.

Oh boy.

Five hours,two espressos, and some gourmet donuts from the snack room later, I’ve got financial projections and medical terminology coming out of my eyeballs. There are a dozen reasons why I’ve stayed away from Ashford all these years, and the dry, corporate nature of the work is moving fast to the top of the list.

Adjusted laboratory expenditures – United Kingdom.

I yawn, scanning the next folder. I’ve already pulled a number of positive stories from the files, and almost have enough to keep any investor happy with Ashford’s world-beating prowess, but as I scan the financial breakdowns of our Oxford location, I pause.

That can’t be right.

I frown at the dense print, but the numbers don’t change.

‘Incidentals,’ the spreadsheet calls them, but they total over 50,000 a month above usual spending levels, and when I check the footnotes at the very back of the report, I find they’ve been paid out personally to Dr. DeJonge.

I quickly search for her name in our internal staff database and discover she’s the lead scientist in charge of the Alzheimer’s drug project. There’s a photo of her, too: chic, dark-haired, with a severe bob and cool blue eyes.

Valerie DeJonge.

She’s the French woman my father was arguing with at the Lancaster party. And he’s been paying her a massive amount off the books for almost a year now.

Dammit.