Wife's Bitter Revenge Against Neglectful CEO Husband-Chapter 73: King Searches for Answers

King

King couldn’t believe Teela hung up on him. She didn’t even give him a chance to explain after all the trouble he had taken to fashion an amicable reason for the change of heart.

He stared at all the handwritten evidence strewn across his desk. He certainly couldn’t tell her about this. Not yet. He was still wrapping his head around it.

After leaving Teela last night, he couldn’t relax. Too much had happened in such a short period. All of those kids, those haunting eyes filled with fear and the last fading glimmer of hope. King had seen that look before, had felt it for himself.

King had Min drop him off at the office. Sure, he probably should have stayed with Ben and supported his brother—correction, half-brother—but something niggled in his memory.

He let himself into the executive offices. The deserted office was as desolate as King’s heart at the moment.

The motion sensor-controlled lights turned on automatically when King entered his office. It was the same office his mother had occupied when she was CEO. King hadn’t so much as changed the throw pillows on the couch.

How could he? In his heart, the office was still hers. The company was hers. Even though King owned the majority of the shares, he still considered himself just the trustee to someone else’s—to Lettie’s—empire.

And now, Teela had rubbed it in his face that the empire was likely built on dirty money.

Motherfuckingsonofabitch.

King had built an entire career on an ethical foundation. For what? When all this shit hit the fan, everything he had worked for would be destroyed.

The thought left a sour taste in his mouth. The accompanying guilt over putting thoughts of his career ahead of the lives of all those kids gutted him.

What kind of man was he anyway? Not the man he thought he was.

King looked around the office. He knew his mom better than anyone. She was the least technically savvy person King knew. She would never trust a computer with the evidence Teela and her people sought. It would be in this office or at home.

Going home right now wasn’t an option, so that left scouring the office.

King sat at his desk and went through the drawers that he didn’t use on a daily basis. From there, he moved to the bookshelves behind the desk. Inch by inch, he looked for anything that might lead him to answers. He moved from those shelves to the private closet, where he kept spare clothes for emergencies.

It was in this walk-in closet that he discovered a panel behind the clothes racks that he had never noticed before. It seemed like there was a lot in his life he never noticed. Teela kept telling him that. Now he could see it for himself.

He probably wouldn’t have noticed it this time if he hadn’t been looking for it. He ran his hand over the panel, trying to identify the edges and to find a way to open it.

There were no screws or visible hinges, but he did find a sliding cover over a keyhole.

King had no idea where to look for a key, and frankly, he lacked the patience to look. Mom didn’t trust anyone. Odds were good the key was with her.

He went back into the office and scanned it. Where was a sledgehammer when he really needed one? Instead, his eyes landed on a trophy that he had won as a Businessman of the Year. It was pointed and had some heft to it. It might shatter, but who cared? At the rate this was going, his whole world was doomed to collapse any minute now.

The crystal punctured the panel with a couple of sharp jabs. The panel was made of lightweight metal. King cut his hand as he tried to jerk the panel out of the way now that he had a handhold.

"Shit."

He jerked back and watched as blood seeped from the wound. Oddly, the pain felt, well, not exactly good but like a wake-up call.

King cleaned up in the bathroom and bandaged the wound, and then he tried again while using a hand towel to protect his hands from the sharp edges.

While he couldn’t open the panel, he was able to peel the metal back enough to see inside.

He pulled out three bound journals and an accordion folder about four inches thick.

After hours of going through Mom’s stash, King’s hands shook.

It was all a lie—everything. Lettie wasn’t his mom. She wasn’t Joshua’s mom. Daniel was her only child. The rest of us were stolen property that never sold—stale goods that Mom—no, Lettie, not Mom—had decided to use to her advantage to create this image of a deserted mom of four who made it big off her hard work and perseverance.

Fuck. No wonder none of the brothers looked alike.

Dad was a lie. King had been stalking an innocent man. King had a real family out there somewhere. It couldn’t be more screwed up than this one.

Oh geez. King had brought Teela into this mess. She’d married a man who didn’t even know who he was.

For one of the few times in his adult life, his self-confidence dropped to zero—less than zero.

It was then King made his first call to Teela. He needed to hear her voice, to know she didn’t hate him. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t answer the second time either or the third.

King kept reading the documents. Lists of names, dates, and dollar amounts dating back thirty years. The first few dates were spaced a year or more apart, as if Lettie was only dealing in the trade enough to stay afloat, but the time between sales dwindled as Lettie grew bolder. By the end of the ledger, she was dealing in a dozen souls at a time.

The last date was a week before King took over the office.

Why did Lettie leave all of this with him? Was there a part of her that wanted to get caught?

How did he tell Ben and Joshua about this? Especially Ben who had just bought Lettie’s last lie that he was the product of a rape.

King wasn’t ready to share any of this with anyone. He was too ashamed, but he knew when he was ready, he had to tell his brothers first. They didn’t deserve to be blindsided the way he was.

In the meantime, he couldn’t face Teela knowing he was hiding secrets this big no matter what secrets Teela had kept from him.

That was when King decided he had to let Teela go until he got his life in order. Until he could bring himself to hand over the evidence against Lettie that would likely send her to prison for the rest of her life.

And then his gaze fell on Min’s name. He followed the line across to the dollar amount. Fuck. That sweet little boy from his youth who had lost his parents to a fire lost his childhood and innocence for less than what King paid for the shoes he wore.

That was the final straw that broke King. The dam broke and all the sorrow, pain, and guilt poured out in tears and cries of anguish that faded into the shadows of the empty executive floor.

By the time he got Teela on the phone, he had cried himself empty. All that was left was exhaustion, confusion, and the vaguest thoughts of taking the easy way out and just ending it all.

Yeah, a quiet death might be preferable to the sheer hell that was about to befall the Heavenlys. He could leave all this for Lettie to deal with because he had no doubt that Teela would find a way to bring the old lady down. He wasn’t sure why.

Teela was a housewife. Sure, she had a college degree, but she had no work experience beyond the few days she’d worked at Crazy Code doing what? Receptionist duties? Marketing? It was strange that he had never asked. Now, he never would.

How could he be so confident that she was the one who would bring the family down? In part, it was because of the circle of friends she had accumulated in such a short while.

King knew Michael Allen because he socialized in the same circles as the Heavenlys. He had resources and a reputation for being King’s equal in the technology industry, and for using his resources to lift up people he felt were due a hand up. Jake was obviously ex-military and loyal to a fault to Teela. Even Min, who had been by King’s side for years, trusted Teela. Min trusted no one but King before.

So, Teela had resources available to her to accomplish anything she set her mind to. It was just too bad what she set her mind to was destroying King’s reality.