The hacking crisis had originated in this building. On an unused desktop pc in the engineers lounge. We employed two guys, Franc and Gerard to monitor the servers and provide technical assistance where needed. I found that it ensured our systems ran a lot smoother, having an in house team. I now wished I'd installed cameras throughout the building. If we had, the culprit would be exposed, going about his or her heinous activities, and I'd be kissing my girlfriend someone else would be held responsible. And then I remembered why I hadn't.
Because I was a sleaze. Only ever interested in one thing.
Once in a while I'd brought a girl back here, before work, on my lunch break, after work, whenever. I'd always been discrete but I liked the option to use this place as an impromptu fuck pad. Now that had blown up in my face. Who didn't have closed circuit cameras on their premises? We didn't. Because I was too concerned about my seedy lifestyle, and I'd compromised the security of Radspace. Two days had passed, two days worth of instability, uncertainty, and no text from Kennedy. I'd spent last night replaying our conversation, trying to understand why I had to open my fucking huge mouth and divulge that I'd had her investigated.
Where was the leap of faith? Why hadn't I realized that the way she looked at me could only happen if she really felt something. She wasn't acting, she was falling, just like I was. Only now, she'd have hit a dead end, and all she'd do from hereon out is resent me. And I didn't blame her.
I'd always been so confident and self assured, so why did I believe her interest in me was anything other than genuine. Why was it so hard for me to believe that she liked me? Maybe because I'd never had a woman hang around as long as she had. I hadn't gone home, opting to sleep right here in the office. Rusty brought me sustenance in the form of a bagel here and a cheeseburger there, and he stood by him, closing up his own accountancy practice for the foreseeable future. Aldous and Gregor rallied round me, promising their custom would not disappear elsewhere. But their money alone wasn't enough to sustain all these jobs, the building, or my own livelihood. Now, just four days since the ceiling fell in on Radspace and and it just seemed beyond recovery. There had to be a point when I just held my hands up and called it quits.
Women were flocking to the press, telling stories of my so called sex addiction, the same terminology my sweet little sis had used. Maybe they were right, I didn't know anyone who sustained the lifestyle I did, at least not for as long as I did. Maybe I was fucked in the head and just wasn't aware of it. Or maybe this whole saga was making me question the very foundation of my life. I made a decision, with Rusty sitting on my desk, and Jen hanging in the doorway. I knew what she'd given up too. Sacrificing sleep to be here with me, distracting me with tales of our childhood, my favorite burritos from a street seller down by the park. And company.
Funny how suddenly just having someone sit with you while your head goes a million miles per hour, is comforting.
'I'm gonna settle.' I looked up at two surprised faces as we convened in my office a few days later. Surprised might not be accurate, horrified was more like it.
'James they'll find out what happened. You don't need to do that.' Jen crossed her arms over her body as Sam, one of my web guys and a guy I frequently went out with, entered the room.
I didn't care if he heard. I had to do something. We were drowning and without some definitive action we'd just dissolve.
'I'm doing it. I'll pay off those threatening legal action, they might not accept, I don't expect them to, what with their products being unveiled so unceremoniously.' I ran my hand over my exhausted face, bruises fading but still very much part of my new downtrodden look. 'I don't know how much longer I can do this, be here and see this place get run into the ground. Sam....' I gestured towards him. 'I'm gonna speak to every member of the team, and decide who I can afford to keep. I'm not bowing out of this game, I just know when it's best to depart a sinking ship.'
Sam nodded, eyes red and as he turned to leave the office, I couldn't help but wonder if he wanted to say something more. The guy looked rougher than I did. But we were all overworked and reeling from the catastrophe that had struck like a lightning bolt, from out of nowhere.
....................
I held the interviews over the next few days. My staff were anxious. Christmas was less than two weeks away and those with kids needed more than verbal reassurance. Detective Hopper agreed to sit in on the conversations and lend his expert eye. He still had an inkling all of this led back to somebody here. First off, I had to let Jerry go and even though he'd worked for me for the shortest amount of time, I felt like shit. He focused on a thread of my expensive thick pile carpet and nodded his understanding. Then he shook my hand and told me that he'd pray for me, and for Radspace. I was gonna bankrupt my savings, but I didn't want the guy suffering over the holidays. He seemed like a good guy. The kind of guy I'd share a beer with under different circumstances.
Maybe I had changed, because I was no longer interested in my profit margins. I cared that this guy was losing his stability.
I paid him three months worth of salary, and vowed that when I could afford it, I'd call him and reinstate his position. He was gracious, kind to a fault, bending over backwards to apologise to me, for something that wasn't his doing. Before he left the room, he gave me a Rusty esque bear hug and told me to keep my head held high. Janine was next, and despite her gross inability to perform to the standards I expected, I didn't want to fire her, she had a kid coming and she'd been loyal. Right now loyalty meant a great deal. A few members of staff had spoken to the press, and although the conversations were never defamatory, I preferred the guys that kept their heads down and strove to produce the best standard of work for our remaining clientele. The guys that rode the storm and pledged their allegiance.
I let Gerard go, a father of four, then Kevin, a guy I'd known since college, and in the end, six of them remained. Clark Sable would stay with us, as well as our web guys. I didn't feel the need to make them work the rest of the week, with three months pay each, and many of them qualifying for redundancy pay offs, they'd be okay for the time being. I however, felt like I'd just been divorced or something. Like my family had been ripped apart. The once bustling rooms were eerily silent, no banter between colleagues, no laughter, no excitement over newly secured deals.
Just me and the few remaining guys that I could afford to keep.
How the mighty had fallen.
How quickly a kingdom crumbles into ruins.
......................
Dejected and exhausted, I visited the companies keen on suing us.
Or rather, me.
I clasped my hands together, a different man to the guy they'd once shaken hands with and trusted in. I apologized, I practically got down on my knees and I told them the truth. That I hadn't ever envisaged a breach of this magnitude. Not in my deepest darkest nightmares. I told them I understood their desire to sue me, but that I'd lay an offer on the table and promise never to court their business again.
To my disbelief, they decided against legal action. I could see the pity in their eyes. A guy wearing a dirty suit, stubble days old, his eyes bloodshot and sunken. They wanted me out of their buildings, I believed that. I made them uncomfortable, the sex addict who wasn't wise enough to check the security of his network until it was too late. The guy who rolled up at your house and threw punches. I couldn't blame my guys in house, they couldn't work out how this happened, and I couldn't accuse anyone.
Not after what happened with Kennedy.
I'd heard stories about how experts could divert signals to make it look like someone had accessed information from inside our building, when really they were miles away. Maybe in an entirely different country. With our clients paid off, the police seemed less eager to put the same legwork into the investigation as they had to begin with. And Kennedy still hadn't been in touch.
I worried about her, and Jen saw it, as we sat in my office, rain hammering the windows, everybody else long gone for the weekend.
'Shes sixteen weeks pregnant.' I murmured, playing with the cable to my phone, as I sat on the floor, back against the wall. 'I don't even know when her next appointment is. I'm a fucking awful father as well as a shit boss.'
Jen looked over. She sat with her back against Kennedy's desk, chewing her fingernails. She used to do that as a kid, and when she was fourteen Dad bought her some gel to put on her nails that didn't taste so good. As far as I was aware, she hadn't bitten them since. But she'd seen me go through some tragic metamorphosis. I guess it'd spook anyone.
'You're not.' Jen cleared her voice, wringing her hands. 'So she hasn't contacted you at all?'
'No.'
'Not even via email?'
I frowned at her, knitting my brows and I instantly knew she was hiding something.
'What do you know Jen?'
She looked away, eyes fixed on the streaming rain. 'She tried to leave but she couldn't. She was just really hurt, and scared James.'
'I don't understand Jen.....'
'Her step dad got drunk a lot, and he liked to chase Fiona and Kennedy up the stairs to their room and work out his aggression.'
I swallowed, eyes pricking with tears. 'She told you that? Jen where is she?'
'Shes been really emotional.....really hormonal......she's got this fear that he's going to find her, even after all these years. I think he tried contacting her when her sister was ill and it terrified her. Not because she thinks he's going to hurt her again, but because she's reminded of her mother, and as it is she feels like she's becoming her.'
'But she's not.....she has me, or she did have, before I went all psycho....'
'Shes about to become a mother, J. She's worried that her choices will affect her child like her mothers did her. She doesn't trust that she's different. She's just scared. All of this happened so fast and one minute she's in London with you and you're crazy about her and the next minute you're telling her that your job is everything.....'
'It is, it's everything, everything I worked for.'
'But that's not everything James.' Jen's eyes filled with tears. 'You, and me, we're everything. Dad is everything. Rusty is everything. And that woman? James, she's your everything. Don't put her on the back burner. Don't let this all pass by and leave you standing in the dirt wondering where your life went.'
I held her gaze and she smiled, a sad kind of smile.
'Why am I so fucked up and you're so level headed and sane.'
She laughed, and covered her face with her hands.
'Just because its not on the outside, doesn't mean I'm not falling apart inside sometimes. Everybody crumbles in a different way. And right now? There's a woman over at my apartment, falling to pieces over you.'
................