Give in to Me (Heart of Stone #3)(40)
Author: K.M. Scott

Nina returned to stand next to me, and I wrapped my arm around her again to pull her close. This time it wasn’t to make a point like it had been earlier but because I wanted her with me in this. When she’d asked to be treated like an equal partner, I’d immediately dismissed the idea, even if I hadn’t told her that. Equal partner with me meant she was going to have to deal with the vipers and sharks that made up my world. I didn’t want her around them.

The problem was that she was going to be around them as long as she was by my side. The people who would see me out of power at Stone Worldwide would use anything and anyone to achieve their aims, and that included the one person who meant more to me than anyone else in the world. So if she was going to be my wife, I had to let her in and make her my equal.

Looking up at her as she sat on the arm of my office chair, I watched her sweet expression as she talked with Daryl like they were old friends. As closed off and cold as I was, she was open and kind—the type of person the bastards I dealt with every day loved to devour, using her gentle nature against her. Even the thought of that happening to her made my blood nearly boil, and I instinctively squeezed her closer to me.

She looked down at me and smiled. “I guess Tristan is ready to go, Daryl.” Leaning down, she whispered, “And I think you look more like Johnny Depp than the Biebs with your hair like that.”

“What?”

“You know. In that movie Chocolat. He wore his hair like yours is now.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she looked so sweet that I didn’t have the heart to tell her. “Daryl, let’s get back to what you found out.”

“You bet. So the two drugs are the same from the same company. Rider Pharmaceutical. The problem is that Rider is just a front. It’s a company in name only. I knew there had to be a much bigger company behind it, so I set about looking for what that could be. Take a guess what the name of the company controlling Rider is.”

“One of the major pharma companies?” I guessed.

Daryl shook his head. “No. Much closer to home.”

“Don’t tell me I own Rider Pharmaceutical.”

He made a smacking noise with his lips and grinned. “Yep. I’m looking at the proud owner of Rider right now. Seems your little business was a gift to none other than Karl himself.”

“Who gave him a company?” Nina asked.

I could have told her. As soon as I heard it was a gift, I knew my father had given it to Karl. Why I could only imagine. I let Daryl continue his story, though.

“Courtesy of Victor Stone, the former CEO of Stone Worldwide and the father of your intended, Nina.”

“So what’s the big deal? Karl runs Rider, which Tristan owns. All he has to do is fire Karl, right?”

Nina’s eyes searched mine for the answer. “It’s not that easy. Since legally, my father made him the director of Rider, which is what he must be if he’s been given the company to run, I can’t simply get rid of him. The board of directors will have to get involved.”

“And Karl’s likely been hard at work on them in your absence. They’re unlikely to just let you make that huge change and once they get involved, Karl’s going to have the upper hand, “ Daryl added.

“I don’t understand. Why would he have the upper hand?” she asked.

Daryl stroked his beard, pulling it to a point. “Because we have no proof that he’s doing anything wrong with the company. Without that, there’s no legal basis for getting rid of him.”

“What I need to know is what’s happening with Cardiell.”

“Nothing yet. Hopefully, we can find out what’s going on and stop Karl before anything bad starts again,” Daryl said more seriously than I’d ever heard him before.

“I don’t care what’s going on. If Cardiell hurts one person and I could have stopped it, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”

Nina slipped her fingers through mine and squeezed my hand. “Then we just have to figure out what he’s up to and stop him.”

Daryl nodded his agreement. “It’s my guess he’s looking for that notebook because he thinks there’s something in there that might cause him a problem. Now we know that’s not the case, but that means that we need to find that missing sheet of paper someone tore out of your father’s notebook.”

That was easier said than done. If ever there was a case of trying to find a needle in a haystack, this was it. We had no idea where to even start looking. “Daryl, we need to eliminate any place we can if we ever want to find this piece of paper, assuming it even exists at all.”

“I agree, so let’s tick them off one by one. Your offices. Any chance it’s there?”

Shaking my head, I dismissed this idea quickly. “No. The only files in my office are ones that I’ve been through hundreds of times before. I can promise you it’s not there.”

“Okay. Your penthouse. Any chance his goons have missed it there?”

“No. I had the place cleaned out before I moved in. Until I met Nina, there wasn’t anything but a few suits, shirts, and ties.”

Daryl took out a pencil and began crossing things off in his little notebook. “Miami and LA are out. The places are basically empty. No files there.”

“What if we aren’t supposed to be looking for files? What if that sheet of paper is in an envelope or something?” Nina asked.

Looking up from his notes, Daryl cocked one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Nina stood and walked over to the painting hanging on the far wall. Lifting it, she held it up for Daryl and me to see. “What if the paper was hidden someplace like this, like you see in mysteries? Not a file cabinet or anything like that but just someplace it could be hidden where no one could find it.”

As she ran her hand across the back of the picture frame, Daryl nodded. “She might have something there. Can we still cross off the penthouse, the other houses, and your office if we think about things that way?”

I ran through each place in my mind, mentally scanning each room of each location. My office had no artwork or anything hanging on the walls. I had no diploma or commendations to replace my father’s, so once I took his down, the spots they’d once covered remained bare. Only the art Nina had chosen hung in the penthouse, and there was nothing left in the other houses.

That only left this house.

“I don’t think there’s anything in those places, Daryl. I think if it exists, it could be here.”