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I slauilt

Now Adarees of pissed off, instead of a thousand His face had returned to a nor earlier Heback with his ankles crossed and ar the stiff h ti to handle this, you know," I said

He clenched his teeth and looked away, appearing every bit as frustrated as I felt "Just tellwith the invest to do to our bid?"

I bit down the first--andto fucking tank it Investment bankers and their army of underwriters were a skittish, superstitious bunch The oing viral, they were going to pull out faster than an eighteen-year-old during sex with his underage girlfriend

I cleared my throat and formed a more careful answer "I don’t know We need to coe control They don’t like scandal, especially sex scandals" I took a breath and then released it The s over with Adauilty party is immediately My next phone call will be to that Internet security firm I use--"

I held up a hand and tried to stifle the panic "Whoa, pardner I told you I’d handle it, and I will Just leave it to me, okay? I’ll take care of it all But…we also have to be careful about throwing accusations around before we have any solid proof We don’t want to be guilty of sexual harassht be time to contact our lawyer, too"

Adam scowled "Jesus Christ Between last year’sto have to start bankrolling him"

I blinked, surprised that, in my panic, I hadn’t looked at this in context with last year’s events A devoted player of our gairlfriend’s house because she had un and shot her and then himself The parents had bla the media to tell anyone ould listen And, of course, they’d filed a lawsuit These events, along with others, much deeper and more personal, had shaken Ada What kind of shitty friend was I to add to his load?

"That ht just want to see what you can do about e Joseph full-time," I said

He shook his head "At least it’s not too late for us to pull out of this deal We could wait ‘til all the shit blows over…hold out for a better tiovernment, but companies back out of an IPO all the ti out of this

Every muscle in my body tensed I rocketed out of oddaood--out with the bad

I’d been working on this project for years, keepingthe cooal since the beginning, and it had takenwith it

Lord knew the last thing a control freak CEO wanted to do was to slice off a portion of his corporate pie and hand that power over to a board of directors For the longest tih the day we’d open on the stock exchange he’d become a billionaire

But then he’d fixated on a new pet project--one he needed the liquidity in order to develop And I’d seen that as my chance to swoop in and win hireed Trust Adaination rather than fattening his bank account It was an admirable trait, but one that I didn’t share with hiether well

I had to play this carefully The bankers weren’t the only ones ere skittish

I glanced at Adaivewith these bankers on a regular basis forthe hell out of the lot of thes are that dire"