Kim pulled her hand away, seeming to draw into herself. Her family was a sore point for her. She rarely talked about them and when she did, she tended to get emotional. “No. I don’t pay much attention to what the corporation does. I didn’t have any interest in it when my parents were alive. I have even less now. My cousins handle all the business. I don’t even make decisions for the charities anymore.”
He didn’t like the fact that it was one more thing connecting her to McDonald. “When did the company get in bed with Kronberg?”
Tag sighed and sat back. “A few months before Solo’s so-called work began. I’ve got someone looking into whether or not Levi had been in contact with anyone from the company. It’s a neat way to set Solo up to take a bad fall. We’ve got the additional problem of the plane crash that killed your parents.”
Kim’s eyes went wide. “I thought it was mechanical failure.”
“It’s awfully coincidental that all these dominoes fell at the precise right time to put Levi in a position of extreme power. The plane crash happened a few weeks before all of this was set to go down,” Chelsea said.
“Okay, let me make sure I understand this.” Ezra was putting it all together in his head, the plot of Levi’s forming like a spider’s web. “He set Tucker in motion. Tucker works for McDonald, and anything he gets his hands on will be considered above suspicion. Somehow Levi gets your name in the records that are smuggled out on the data drive.”
“The same one that was lost in Paris when McDonald caught him,” Tag continued. “But Green couldn’t have known that would happen. He assumed his plan would work and that he would have the data, including the shit he falsified. When he’s sure he’s got everything in place, he sets it all in motion.”
Kim stared down at the table. “He likely had my parents killed.”
Chelsea’s expression had gone distinctly sympathetic. “Tell me what would have happened if you’d been arrested shortly after your parents died. Before you had a chance to settle things.”
“Everything would have come to me. Because he didn’t, I divested myself of a lot of the responsibilities that came with inheriting,” Kim explained. “If he’d arrested me back then and he’d managed to dose me and convince me to marry him, legally he could have done a lot with those shares. Honestly, he still could. There’s no permanent legal document giving my cousins my shares. All I would have to do is show up and the vote would be mine.”
“So this might be a play to take over the company your family runs.” Tag nodded to Chelsea. “Can you have Phoebe put together an overview? I’d like to know all the financial dealings of the company.”
“It’ll take a while.” That company had multiple arms and they went into a whole lot of pies. “So Levi wants power, and he set himself up to be the head of Kim’s family.”
“It probably would have worked, too, if Tucker hadn’t lost the data,” Tag pointed out. “He could have had you swept away quietly. Ezra was working in Africa at the time.”
“I wouldn’t have even known she’d been arrested.” Levi had planned carefully, and he’d been incredibly patient. He wouldn’t have heard a thing until he’d gotten back to the States, and then likely he would have been told that Levi and Solo had gotten married. He wouldn’t have looked in on her. He wouldn’t have made sure she was okay. He would have quit and walked away and been a bitter fucking drunk the rest of his life. “But once the data was lost, he couldn’t fake it again. He’d placed his bet and if he’d come up with proof in another way, it wouldn’t have worked. I bet he really talked up this project, and its failure in the beginning is why he got moved to less than stellar ops.”
“It must have killed him knowing that shot was gone.” Kim sounded a bit hollow and he wished she hadn’t needed to hear these hard truths.
He wished they were still in bed and she was clinging to him the way she had this morning. They’d been in complete darkness, but he’d woken with the knowledge that she was right beside him. He’d rolled her over and kissed her awake. When her arms had come around him, the world had felt right for the first time in forever.
“And it must have thrilled him when he realized Tucker wasn’t dead. So that’s where we are right now. I’m moving cautiously on this one. Solo, I know you want your name cleared,” Tag began.
She shook her head. “Of course I do, but I understand it could take a while.”
Tag paused for a moment as though he wasn’t quite sure how to handle her. “If it’s at all meaningful, Connor Sparks reached out to me and asked to be kept up to date. I’ve put him in our loop.”
“The president could shut all this down.” It bugged him that he hadn’t already.
“No, he can’t.” Chelsea closed her laptop. “Not unless he wants to start congressional hearings on his overreach and put the guy he recently endorsed in the crosshairs, too.”
“Does the president know Levi’s planning on forcing the competition out? I put it in my report,” Kim said.
“Yes, I talked to him this morning and he’s looking into it. The situation is delicate,” Tag explained. “Apparently that was something Levi didn’t have to fake. I don’t want you to worry about it. The president can handle the political stuff. Our job is to prove Levi’s data wrong, and that begins with you documenting every job you did during that time. I need all the information you can give me. Damon will hunt down people who can support your alibi in Europe.”
Kim groaned. “I don’t suppose you can get into my place
