Irresistibly Undeniable

by Zoey Derrick

  He clears his throat. “So I see you’ve gotten my letter?”

  Dyson’s eyes bounce between me to Mick and back again. “Can we discuss the other stuff first, before you get into all that?” Dyson snaps and I stare at him.

  “What is going on here, Dyson?”

  “Ms. McKidd?” Charlie says.

  “Vy or Ireland, please.”

  “Ireland, I represent Dyson personally and all things pertaining to Tiger’s Eye and Tigress and we’ve discovered you are the original author of the Home Together business plan from two thousand nine at ASU. Is this correct?”

  “Yes,” I say with hesitation.

  “As Mr. Cole has already informed you, that business plan was then modified to accommodate a for profit company, correct?”

  “Yes,” I say, confusion rolling around in my.

  “In oh nine,” Mick cuts in, “Tigress’s foundation was formed using a model you had proposed…”

  “I already know that. How about you stop beating around the bush and tell me why you’re hashing out old history?”

  Dyson speaks up, “In 2009 when that business plan won the contest, ASU received a very large donation from me and the writer of the plan was supposed to receive a twenty-five thousand dollar scholarship but the school couldn’t find Ivy M. Kidd so the money was returned repeatedly. The money was then placed into a trust fund and the hunt began to track down this person who wrote this business plan because it was going to be modified and incorporated into another business entirely.”

  I stare at him. He was looking for me without realizing he was looking for me. My heart hurts a little at the thought and I’m furious with the school for screwing with my submission. He would have found me years ago if they hadn’t fucked up. Fucking fate, she’s a bitch. And karma? Don’t get me started on her. She was trying to punish Dyson and I got shafted too. Fucker.

  Charlie moves back to the table and starts pulling things out of a file folder. “Here are the contracts that were drawn up in oh-nine, and a few in twenty-ten that outline the silent partnership with the absentee Ivy M. Kidd. We figured you’d want to see these, considering…” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; I finish it for him in my head. This is Dyson’s way of helping me. At least that is the first thought that comes to my mind.

  “Remember, in my office the other day, you said something about offering up your advice for free?”

  I nod absently at him. “Well, you weren’t,” Mick chimes in. “Dyson established a trust and with each year that has passed, Ivy M. Kidd was paid royalties according to her percentage of ownership in Tiger’s Eye, the parent company, and a separate percentage for Tigress.” Mick slides something else across the table. It appears to be a bank statement but there is a thumb drive attached to a clip at the corner. I hesitantly reach for it. Looking at the top part of it, I see Bank of California, followed by my name, a P.O. Box address I’ve never seen before, then some details of the bank account that make my knees go weak and Dyson catches me before I hit the floor. “Don’t,” I tell him and I pull out a chair and sit down. My head spins and Dyson’s hurt expression makes my heart break.

  “This can’t be right.” I look at Mick.

  He smiles. “I assure you, it is. But part of the contract and alterations to the contracts over the years include when the company went public. There are stock shares in the company that are about three times that much money. This is what’s liquid and available to you now.”

  I set the paperwork down, and I stand up. “I don’t want it.”

  “Ireland, don’t,” Dyson urges.

  I glare at him. “I signed an agreement when I did that contest that I was not held liable and that no further compensation would be given to me regarding my work. I will hold to that agreement.”

  “That agreement only applied to Home Together,” Charlie cuts in. “When the plan was modified to meet Tiger’s Eye’s corporation standards, that contract no longer applied. There is no legal ramification for accepting this money.”

  “And ASU continues to receive huge grants from the Tigress name as a way of compensation for providing the business plan,” Mick says.

  “There’s nine million dollars in that account.” I point to the statement. “I have less than three thousand dollars in my savings account. You can’t expect me to just accept this kind of money when all I did was write a business plan for a college project. It’s ridiculous.”

  Dyson’s words in New York come flooding through me, I’ll offer you half a million plus a ten million dollar signing bonus. I glare at him. “Is this why you want me to work for you? So you could have slid this under my nose without me thinking twice about it?”

  “No, not at all. This meeting has been planned since this weekend. Since I found out you and Ivy M. Kidd are one in the same. No matter how hard we searched, Ivy M. Kidd did not exist. Charlie went to ASU, was able to pull the class records and the list of participants regarding the contest and we were able to confirm you were a part of it, it was in fact your plan that won and your plan I now use to run my business by. It is also your plan and your changes we discussed openly and freely in my penthouse in New York that will be rolled into a newer, better plan. One that accommodates the expansion and type of business I want Tigress to be. You said it the other day about giving away free advice. Well, you’re not giving your advice away for free. This is what your advice from seven years ago is worth today.” He takes a deep breath. “This is not my way of helping you. This has nothing to do with us, not in the slightest. This has everything to do with me honoring a contract and an agreement I made seven years ago. Whether this ended up being you or someone else, the payout would be the same, Ireland. It just so happens to be you.”

  His words knock me back and I stare at the statements in front of me. I shove them away and I fight the tears of frustration from boiling over. “Did your mother know about this? Would she have told my mother?”

  “No, why would you think that?” His eyebrows knit together in confusion.

  I take a deep breath. “She left me out of her will, Dyson. Gave all the money she had to my brother because of Anna and the baby on the way with a cryptic, private note to me that said all things would be taken care of. Is this,” I flip the pages on the statement, “what she meant?”

  I watch him look to Mick for help and my eyes follow over to Mick. “No, this,” he gestures toward the table, “has nothing to do with what was in your mother’s will.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “But you know something about that, don’t you?” Though I can’t wrap my head around why. “That letter you sent me?” He nods. “You weren’t very forthcoming in that letter.”

  “Because the discussion I need to have with you is one that needs to be done privately.”

  He very pointedly looks at Dyson. I look over at him and I see worry and fear in his eyes. He has a right to be worried because right now, I don’t know what I think of him at this moment. “He can stay.”

  Everyone except me visibly relaxes in the room and I stare at Mick. “Spill it.”

  Charlie cleans up all the papers on the table, stacks them up and slides them all into an accordion file folder. Mick hands him another stack of information and he adds it to the file folder and Charlie slides it over to me. “Everything you need to access that account is inside that folder. Including debit cards, statements, account passwords, it’s all there,” Mick says. “If you’d like, I will continue doing with the money what I’ve been doing for the last seven years.”

  “Which is what?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Nothing really, just moving some investments when needed. Though nothing has been liquidated to date. It is all yours to do with as you please. However, as an advisor, I will advise you when I see fit, good or bad.”

  “And if I tell you to give it all to charity?” I ask.

  Dyson stiffens and sadness washes through his eyes. He really wants me to keep this money, really wants me to help myself. I suddenly fe
el very exposed. He laid in bed with me last night and cuddled me, held me, was there for me and now I feel like it was all a lie.

  I look back to Mick, desperate for a distraction from the betrayal I’m feeling at the moment. I will deal with all this shit later. “So, what exactly do you know about my mother?”

  Dyson and Charlie take a seat. Mick begins to pace the room. “I’m about to tell you a secret I’ve held on to for nearly twenty-five years. It has more to do with your father, than it does with your mother.”

  “My father’s dead, I don’t see how he’s relevant.”

  “Oh, he’s not dead, Ireland. He’s very much alive.”

  “Fuck!” Dyson growls as the world dips and fades then starts spinning.

  Mick continues, “You were born in New York City, March twenty-fourth, nineteen ninety one to one Lauren V. McKidd. Your birth certificate, it’s blank under father, is it not?”

  I nod, not really realizing what’s going through my head as he talks. “But it also states Kansas City, Missouri as my place of birth, not New York.” That moment, the day with Dyson, when we rounded the corner, the déjà vu I experienced.

  “It was amended in nineteen ninety-three when your mother moved you and your brother to Joplin, Missouri to remove your biological father. It was an agreement he made with your mother that his name be removed from the certificate in exchange for financial compensation. Your mother reluctantly agreed to the exchange, but in the end, your father had convinced her it would be better that you not know who your father is. In the end, it was better that only he knew. Mick takes a drink of water from a glass on the table; disappointment flares in his eyes like he wishes it were something stronger. For me, time is standing still and my mind is racing a million miles an hour at the words Mick is telling me.

  “My father is alive.”

  “Publicly, no” Mick states. “Publicly, your father died May thirty-first of two-thousand eleven. At which time he was forced to enter into the witness protection program in exchange for testifying against some seriously powerful people. At that time, myself, along with one other employee who works for him, were the only ones privy to the situation outside of the law enforcement individuals who were handling the situation. At the time of his ‘death’,” he uses air quotes, “His assets were divided equally among his three children. Most of that division was handled by myself and in an effort to keep your mother’s and your name out of it, the assets you acquired were locked away, per his will, until such a time as your mother’s death, or until you turned twenty-five.”

  I gasp, fighting to put air in my lungs, fighting to wrap my head around everything this man is saying to me. “What about Dusty?” I breathe.

  Mick simply shakes his head. “His father, your mother’s husband, died before Dusty was born.”

  All the stories from my childhood start to click into place. We never talked about my father. Or Dusty’s for that matter. We always just said he was gone. Neither one of us ever considering that we both had separate fathers. Why would we? We looked enough alike that it never even crossed my mind he wasn’t a full blooded brother. When in fact, he’s a half-brother, and I have two more siblings I never even knew about. “I have to get out of here.” I stand up.

  “We’ve thrown a lot at you tonight,” Charlie chimes in as he hands me a card, his business card. “This is for me, and this,” he slides another one over, “is Mick’s. Inside of that file you will find everything related to Tigress.”

  I look to Mick. “Who is he?”

  He looks pained by my voice and my expression. “Robert Enders.”

  Chapter 59

  Dyson

  “Pieces” - Rob Thomas

  Suddenly, Mick’s client list makes perfect sense. Robert Enders’ Estate.

  She is so mad at me. I expected that. I expected her to accuse me of trying to rectify her horrible financial situation by throwing my money at her, which is not at all what I’m doing, and I can only hope she will see it that way.

  “You say that name like it’s someone I should know. I’m sorry, Mick. I have no idea who that is.” Her tone is clipped, short. She’s irritated and rightfully so. I would be too if I were in her shoes. At least I knew my father, as much of an asshole as he was, I still knew him.

  “He is the owner of Bold International, Inc., a PR and Marketing firm based in Los Angeles and New York. His daughter, your half-sister, runs the company now. Your half-brother is…well, let’s just say there is a good chance you’ll never get to meet him. He and Bobby never got along and as far as I know, he doesn’t know Bobby is alive.”

  “Where is he?” she asks him and I’m curious about this answer myself.

  “I can’t tell you that. Not that I don’t want to, but there are only a handful of people who are aware of where he is. I can attempt to put you in touch with him, but I can tell you that it’s not an immediate process. It took me more than a week to tell him your mother had passed away.”

  She closes her eyes and shakes her head back and forth, but reaches onto the table, grabbing the overstuffed accordion folder and Mick hands her another, not as thick, file folder, that has all the information pertaining to her father.

  “Your father left you a large sum of money.”

  “How much?” she asks.

  Mick hesitates. “I can say it aloud, or you can read it in there for yourself.” He points to the folder in her arms.

  “It can’t possibly be any worse,” she states and I watch Mick visibly cringe, giving me and Ireland the impression that it is worse than what I’ve just handed to her. “What in the ever loving fuck?” she growls and storms out of the room taking everything with her in her arms as she goes. I run after her.

  “VeeVee!”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snaps and keeps walking. I freeze. I stand there and watch her walk away, and with each step she takes I feel my heart ripping to shreds as she goes. My life is walking out the door and I don’t have any idea what to say to her. How can I fix this?

  Once she disappears from view, Charlie and Mick come out of the conference room. “Give her some time, she’ll come around. I know, her sister did the same thing when she found out her father was still alive.”

  I grab Mick around the throat and push him up against the wall. “That woman who just walked out of here has no one and she’s just learned the only family she knows isn’t entirely her family. Tell me how the fuck would you feel?”

  I let him go. He straightens up. “Believe me, it’s not easy and no, I didn’t handle it very well, but this has been weighing on me for years. I can’t even tell my wife about it and now I have to go tell my wife’s best friend she has a sister she didn’t know about. So forgive me if I’m not all sunshine and roses, Dyson.”

  “Fuck!”

  I get the impression my night is not going to get any better.

  That was the understatement of the century when my doorbell rings about an hour after I got home from the office around nine thirty. I’d stayed at the office, hoping to get Byron working on some things when it comes to Ireland and her long lost family. All I have is a name. Mick didn’t even disclose to me who her sister is. I’m not sure what I’m more pissed off about? The fact that Ireland has a family she never knew about or the fact that I truly have no answers.

  I bound down the stairs on the hope that it’s Ireland standing on the other side of the door. I swing the door open and freeze. There is a disheveled woman standing on the other side of my door. Her hair is in perfect order, but her makeup is a mess, like she’s been crying. “Cami?”

  “We need to talk?” she states. “Can I come in?”

  “Uh, sure.” I step aside, holding the door open for her. “Upstairs,” I tell her and she climbs the stairs. “Is everything alright with Tristan?” I ask as a way of conversation, or a way of getting to the bottom of why she’s knocking on my door.

  “Tristan’s fine. Well, freaking out, but he’s fine.”

  We step into my
living room. “Can I get you something to drink? Water, wine? Tequila?”

  “Bourbon?”

  I smile. “A woman after my own heart.” I lead her to the dining room table. Best to keep this formal, I don’t want Tristan getting the wrong idea about what’s happening here.

  I step into the wine cellar and pull out a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s 15 year-old family reserve and open it. Letting it breathe before pouring it into two low ball glasses. Usually I throw down about two fingers, but she looks like she could use a little more.

  I take the glasses back to the table and slide one over to her. She picks it up and I go to warn her but my words die on my tongue when she slams back a good portion of what I gave her.

  “What’s going on with you and Ireland?” she asks and I immediately raise an eyebrow.

  “Up until a few hours ago, I would have thought everything was perfect, but now…”

  “What did you do to her?” Her face is hard like she truly thinks I’ve done something to hurt her, “Sorry,” she says before finishing off her glass.

  I cock my head at her. “I’ve not done a single thing, well, that’s not entirely true, but nothing to warrant her running out on me and turning off her phone.”

  “I went to her apartment. Her blonde bitch of a roommate answered and said she wasn’t at home. I don’t like that girl.” She wrinkles her nose.

  I snort, “That makes two of us.”

  “Back to my question.” She gives me a pointed look of ‘don’t deflect’. The look she gives me reminds me of Ireland, it makes my chest ache.

  “Are you going to be as evasive as Mick with me about whatever the hell is going on? I’m assuming you know something because you’re asking the same questions he did and frankly, I need answers, not a thousand more questions.”

  “No, I’ll answer your questions, but I need to know what it is with the two of you. The last time I saw either one of you, she was taking you out with her knee and kissing my husband.” Though she smiles a little at that, she doesn’t say anything further.