Mary had handed in her resignation letter- more like emailed it after the meeting and Heather couldn't blame her. The work load pressing down on her was what caused the headache plaguing her not the fact that her secretary abandoned her when she needed her the most, nope that didn't bother her.
"Ma'am." Her new secretary Macy smiled apologetically, "Your father is on line three."
"I already said I don't want to speak to him Macy, tell him I went hiking or something."
"There are no mountains close by-"
Heather's icy glare shut her up, she took everything literally and left Heather wondering if she had a brain in her head.
"Oh! I understand now." Macy walked out of the office quietly, leaving Heather to curse Mary in peace.
The will her father was carrying around could do as much harm as a virus in a computer and there were always counter measures for that. He was feeling cornered now hence his need to speak to her. Imagine the uproar if this leaked, Heather faulted Mary less for leaving, she'd become a liability.
Her eyes strayed to the phone sitting idly on her desk just like every other day she had holed herself up in the office keeping the company afloat and warding off the deeply stained hands of her father, sorting the documents and going through the company's ledger brought so many unbelievable things to her attention.
Her father-Maxwell had dipped his hands into places Heather didn't dare think about, Gibb was the best man for the job but after Renee warning, her trust in him waned. If he was working undercover for her father then it would be better if she uncovered this trail on her own.
Half of the high ranking company staffs changing as far back as twenty years had embezzled enough money to make a bank jealous. These men had paved way for their children to come into the position and continue the family business- stealing from her father.
Maxwell might be an unstable business man but he was anything but dumb, did he know these people were stealing from him? Did he knowingly allow them continue stealing from him? Was she going to stir a hornet's nest the moment she went after them? Was that what her father wanted? Did he always know this moment would come and allowed them steal; steal enough that when he was going down, they went down with him.
Pushing the files away, Heather glanced at the phone again. Shelby was one call away, it wasn't enough; one call didn't change anything. The craving for her lover was now a longing, one so deep it was burrowing a hole in her chest. One way or another, she needed to sort out this mess or her lover would only move farther away.
°°°
"Ma'am."
"What?" Heather controlled her voice, Macy was an itch she scratched till she became a sore open wound. The woman got on every single nerve in her body.
"There's a man here to see you."
"If it's my father, I will fire you."
Macy's eyes widened, her hands waving around frantically. "No ma'am I swear, it's not your father, he doesn't have an appointment just said you'd want to see him."
"If he doesn't have an appointment then send him away."
"Not when I can just walk into your office."
Macy turned to the man now standing in the office then to Heather with a panicked expression. "I did not let him in, I specifically told him to wait for me in the-"
"You can go Macy." Heather slapped her diary shut, the man was already in her office; might as well deal with it. "How may I help you?"
"I'm offended you don't recognize me." The man stood with his hands in his pocket, a boyish grin on his face.
Not in the mood for whatever union he had planned, Heather spared a glance at Macy who scurried out of her office. "I don't recognize you, I hardly forget a face either way can I fix a time for this? As you can see I have a lot of work that need to be done."
"I can help with most of it."
Firing Macy crossed her mind, she was not cut out for the job but neither was this boy-man standing in front of her. "I appreciate the offer, Macy has it covered."
"She doesn't even know what a spreadsheet is."
Tired of the small talk, Heather clasped her hands together. "You should leave Mister?"
"Gibb. Gibb Babanin."
Gibb? The Gibb? Heather schooled her features as she did a double take on the man in front of her, was this her father's trump card? This was a man who'd worked with her for years, he probably knew everything about her. Did her father send him in for blackmail?
"I can hear the gears turning in your head, Renee probably told you who was footing my outrageous bills."
"I kept wondering why you stayed over the years, should have known." Heather said bitterly. "How long did my father keep you on a leash?"
"Never." Gibb stayed standing. "You father wanted me to be your shadow, I did my digging on him and boy oh boy, he wasn't my type but you seemed so eager to follow him so I followed you."
"What you're trying to tell me now is that my father never had a hold on me from your end?" Heather found that hard to believe.
"I sent your father reports for every job we did together, none of them actually contained what actually happened. I protected your privacy as much as I could, the MacLean case on the other hand was like none other he'd asked you to do."
"How so?" Heather leaned back in her chair, if her father wanted to play games then she could as well take a break.
"This isn't the first time he got involved with the MacLean's. Salvatore and MacLean existed before you were even born. Your father and Shelby's father were business partners right from business school, graduating top of their class they joined hands to make it big for their families. Several of their business plans and risks started paying off several years later but Darrius's biggest risk of all was that land in Texas, the land that flowed with oil. You were born around that period, three years or four when the biggest risk of all opened the floodgates for the unholy things that went hand to hand with greed. Darrius realized only too late how far his partner would go and his wife followed soon after."
"You're not saying what I think you're saying." Heather was listening with rapt attention now, "My father is responsible for Shelby's parents death."
"Yes and I have the evidence to prove it. The land was left in the care of George who protected it and their child Shelby with his life, Maxwell steered clear off the MacLean radar for many years until George fell sick and he swooped in to take advantage of that forcing him to sign the will he'd fabricated by himself. You were the final piece of the puzzle, in fact the will was useless if you did what you do best and ran her off the land but you fell in love instead. Maxwell didn't stop seeing potential, you were in love with her and if you got together the land was still yours and then his, that was until the plan blew up in his face and a simple land case has opened up everything he spent his entire life hiding."
Heather grabbed the trash bin under her desk, retching painfully she emptied the contents in her stomach into it, puking until she was dry-heaving. Accepting the bottle of water and tissue from Gibb, Heather rinsed her mouth fighting the urge to puke again. "Getting this clearly, you're saying my father is a murderer?"
"Among many other things."
"Why're you just coming out now? When did you find this out?"
"A couple months ago, I was weighing the money over my conscience."
"You're here so conscience won." Heather nodded slowly, "I cannot believe my father is that type of monster, we have our ups and downs but murder? No, he can't."
"You will once you see the contents in this flash." Gibb brought out a flash from his breast pocket. "I have compiled everything I know about your father into this flash, you only know about the MacLean's but trust me, there's more."
The flash was small yet felt heavy in Heather's palm, her father was a terrible businessman- murderer? Shelby's parents? How could they work if she found out about the truth?
"I need to leave now." Gibb interrupted Heather's inner monologue. "This flash had to be delivered to you."
"There's a delivery option these days." Heather joked.
"I didn't want it getting mixed up or intercepted." Gibb smiled. "It's too important a parcel to not deliver personally."
"Thankfully I knew you- Gibby boy." Maxwell appeared in the doorway, a crazed smile on his face. "I knew that flash was never going to be sent by a delivery company but I kept my eyes peeled just incase, here you are delivering yourself to me on a platter of gold."
"What is the meaning of this father?" Heather slipped the flash into her shirt. "I thought Macy told you I wasn't available."
"Don't worry about that darling, she's going to be unavailable for a while." Maxwell mimicked a bullet to the brain.
Heather's heart leapt to her throat, her father didn't just shoot someone. "You didn-"
"What? Kill Macy." Maxwell said casually like they were talking about the weather. "Of course not, if you hurry and pass the drive over then maybe you'll have enough time to call an ambulance."
"Don't give it to him Heat." Gibb warned. "He's a psycho who'll kill us all when he gets what he wants, Macy might as well be already dead."
"Trust me she's not." Maxwell removed his coat, Heather spotted the red dots on her father's white shirt.
"Please tell me that's not blood." Heather covered her mouth with her shaky hands.
"Oh!" Maxwell dabbed at it with his handkerchief, "She's quite a fighter that one."
"Are you insane? You just killed someone."
"She's not dead yet, pass the drive over and no one else has to die."
Heather gritted her teeth, deciding to call her father's bluff. "There's no way you'd do anything to jeopar-"
A loud 'bang' permeated the air, making Heather as stiff as a board; the soft thud coupled with a groan drew her attention to Gibb who was on his knees cradling his side. Crimson red, that was the color that seeped through his fingers endlessly.
"The time for chit chat is over, pass the drive over."
Heather rushed to comply, untucking her shirt in the process to get the drive; tossing it across the office at her father who was standing with a gun pointed at Gibb. "You have the drive. You should leave before the police get here"
"The police isn't coming to your rescue." Maxwell picked the drive, pocketing it. "By the time they do get here, your bodies will be cold."
"I told you not to give him the fl-" Another 'bang' pulled a scream from Heather as Gibb's fell on to his back, eyes wide open; a bullet lodged in his head.
"He never did know when to shut up." Maxwell tsked.
Heather's breaths were coming short, Gibb was dead meaning Macy was probably dead too. "Who are you?"
"The monster they made." Maxwell rocked on his feet and laughed. "I am the father you don't recognize, I mean trading ideas in a board room is way different than me pointing a gun at your face."
"You killed Gibb." Heather couldn't stop looking at the emptiness in his eyes.
"Hmm." Maxwell shrugged. "This other part is the grand finale, imagine the look on your lover's face when I break the news of your passing to her, throwing her off the ranch would be child's play."
"You won't get away with this." Heather glanced at the phone on the table wishing she had made the call.
"I already have." Maxwell patted the pocket the flash was sitting in.
The next 'bang' rocked Heather off her feet and into her chair, her shoulder felt like it was on fire, before screams could bubble out of her throat, the next bullet buried itself into her neck cutting off her sounds, filing the air with the sound of her choking on her own blood.
"Say hello to Darrius for me." A tear escaped her father's eye. "You two were the only things I loved the most in my life, why'd you have to make me kill you? Goodbye my love, I win this round"
The loud sound of the gun firing reached her ears before the bullet did, sending her into an unwanted abyss. The comfortable darkness that accompanied death.