Changing Places with Yourself

Chapter 24

The next few days everyone fell into a pattern.  I let the guys park their cars in my private garage so that they could avoid the press in front of the building.  By that weekend Amanda had already filed for divorce and per her lawyer’s instructions put the “family” estate up for sale, after they had moved everything they wanted to into my building.  Tony warned Adam that he would have to get rid of the Playboy image if he wanted to keep the CEO position.  Adam found he had to work harder now because he had more duties that fell on his shoulder with his father gone.  I sent Dante over to work as his PA and for a short time, Grandpa and I shared Joyce’s expertise.  Bruce gathered info on what happened to the boys’ love life.  Tony's girl had just disappeared right after breaking up with him in the same way that Asher's had as well.  Allen had yet to contact, Andrew, the boyfriend his “Father” had made him give up.  I decided that situation was the easiest one to set right first.  So I had Joyce call and make a reservation at the best 5-star hotelestaurant in town and sent each an engraved invitation to join me for dinner that night.  Of course, they showed up but I didn't the Maître D informed that one of the biggest suites had been booked for their use for the rest of the weekend and dinner was already paid for.  Alan sent me a text with a video link of both of them saying “thank you” so many times I lost count.  Next, I had Steve dig up as much info on Andrea, Tony's love, and Dylan search for information about Allison, Asher’s girl.  For some reason, I had a feeling that Albert had a hand in driving them away, given how much dominance he liked to assert over their lives.  I had seen pictures of both ladies and they were gorgeous.  Talking with Amanda was very enlightening, she knew the girls loved her sons more than anything else, which is why she couldn’t understand why they would end the relationships without warning before seemingly disappearing off the face of the Earth. 

By now it was a couple of months later and mid-October.  Stewart came into the building trying to bully his way into my office after returning from a 4-month ‘vacation’ and finally hearing about the takeover.  Somehow he had also heard through the ‘grapevine’ that he had been completely cut out of Grandpa’s will, even though he was only his nephew.  I came out into the hall to confront him directly.  “Listen, you little gold-digging b***h, I will END you.  This company will be mine after Evan divorces you.  I will make it my personal goal to make your life a living hell from here on out.  I don’t know how you got Uncle Harold to take me out of his will, but I’m back and I will not let some ugly, dumb slut like you ruin my business.” he sneered.  “First off, this isn’t your company and it never will be.  Even if Evan divorces me now, the terms of your Grandparents’ Will have already been met, and I am the CEO since Grandpa retired last week.  Second, Harold is under no obligation to put you his nephew in his Will.  He’s not your Father or Grandparent, even then it’s his Will he can make it out however he wants.  Evan only gets $1 from the estate instead of the multi-million dollar trust fund he was expecting because of what he did against me.  Third, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BUILDING BEFORE I HAVE YOU ARRESTED FOR THREATENING ME AND TRANSPASSING.” I yelled the last at him as my guards grabbed his arms.  Given the graphic nature to the threats he was making toward me as they removed him, Bruce had Dylan take as back up Jerome to tail Stewart and see where he goes.  Bruce’s IT guys had unearthed some correspondence earlier that week between Stewart and Albert starting from the time when Andrea disappeared to a week before Albert was thrown in jail.  Together they were plotting on how to get Novell Industries away from Harold and me.  It seems that Stewart is the one who brought Amy back into Evan’s life to try to get him to dump me so Stewart could take control of the company.  After digging into the financial records it appeared that Stewart and his mother Clare were continuously finding ways to spend money they didn’t have anymore.  It now appears they were trying to figure out a way to get rid of me, so they could get their hands on more money through the company.  After her husband divorced her 2 years ago, she went through all the money from the settlement, $10.5 million, plus a $100 million that she had in a trust fund from her parents.  Currently, even with the alimony payments, $50,000, her ex-husband is making monthly, they’re still spending more money than they what is available.  They were beyond desperate to try to take control of her brother’s company when Grandpa retires.  Although they were aware of the fact that Grandpa had taken the three younger Stovard boys under his wings, they weren’t privy to the knowledge that Asher, Allen, and Tony are actually his grandsons.  Given the terms in Grandpa’s Father’s Will, since they are older than Evan, they and/or their spouses would inherit the company before me. 

I contacted Samuel in Kansas to get his best covert team watching over Clare and Stewart 24/7.  The reason I used my Kansas lawyer was I believe that there was someone in Claude’s office that had been compromised because Grandpa's new will had not been released yet.  Given what we know about those 2, no one would put it past them to bribe a lowly law clerk for the info.  My team of experts quietly worked on getting access to the bank records for all of Claude’s employees.  After two weeks I decided to sweeten the pot by making sure that some false information was there for others in his office to see.  We had discovered one of the interns, had family ties to Clare’s ex-husband, and he was the mole.  He told them everything as long as he was paid in cash and a sting was set up. Something told me, Stewart, given the agreement he had with Albert, was also behind the ‘disappearances’ of the missing girlfriends.  Samuel’s PIs had taken over the surveillance of him and found out that he picked up a prenatal vitamin prescription every month at the same pharmacy.  That month they followed him back to an abandoned apartment complex in a bad part of town.  Heat sensors determined that he had one guy in the main section, but further in two other individuals could be seen, it was unknown if they were male or female.  For 3 days they watched one guy, who would leave after locking the place up tightly at night.  Inside there were no lights or any other kind of heat that could be seen other than the body heat coming from the 2 blips further in the building.  He would return the next morning with too many bags of some fast food joint for one person his size to eat.  Claude made up another fake will that I had created leaving everything including the company to his “great-grandchild” in care of me until the child was old enough to take over.  Neither Stewart nor Clare knew that Evan was sterile and therefore they believe that I am pregnant.  Yes, I was using myself as bait again, but this time we kept the older generation in the loop of what was happening.  Evan didn’t have any contact with his great-aunt or Stewart.  The story in the press was he was in rehab on the west coast, kicking his drug addiction.  While Amy had been arrested for possessing and distributing drugs.  That makes them both unavailable to be used in any plan to grab me.  The intern took a copy of the phony will directly to them after he “saw” it lying on June’s desk.  It was ready for signing and he saw that there was an appointment scheduled for Grandpa to come in at 11 am, the next morning.  This was done to force their hand and not give them time to really think a plan out.  Their only choice was to grab me after work.  Only I was wired out the wazoo, and head for security teams following me.  Two guys grabbed me right outside the Novell building that evening and I was taken to the same location where the Stewart dropped off the vitamins.  Once there, I was thrown into a dark room dimly lit by one light with Allison and Andrea, a very pregnant Andrea were there cowering on the small bed in the corner.  They took a picture of me on the floor that they sent to Grandpa along with their demands.  These guys were beyond amateurs because when they grabbed me they didn’t search me in any way.  Then they used my phone to send the picture from leaving it on so that the GPS could be enabled by my security team allowing them to get a fix on their location.  Even though we had a very good idea where they would take me.

“Please don’t worry we will all be safe soon. Tony and Asher will be so glad to see both of you.”  I tell them.  They hug each other and start crying, “But their father won’t let us go.  He said he’s going to sell Tony’s baby once I give birth and then kill us both.” Andrea wailed.

“Albert is in jail and this will just be something more to add to his list of crimes for the prosecution by the DA.” I let them know as I pulled out my earwig from my left bra cup and slid it in.  My watch looked simple enough that they didn’t take it from me, but it has a mic plus a GPS locator built-in.  “Ok, guys, I’m set, both girls are here with me.  I was right, so those who bet against me have to pay up.  How close are you all to getting us out of here?” I ask into my watch.  Steve’s voice comes through my earwig loud and clear, “We are getting in place.  Thermal shows 2 bodies in the outer area and 3 deeper inside the building.  What’s the situation in there?”  “The 2 guys who grabbed me used guns to make me get in the van, consider them armed and dangerous.  I didn’t see anyone else when we came in, so if the team watching hasn’t seen them leave, they would be the 2 heat signatures you are picking up together.  The girls and I would be the 3 further into the building.  Have EMTs standing by, both appear to be malnourished and dehydrated, and Andrea is clearly pregnant.” I convey to him. “10/4 boss.  Bruce and his team are preparing to breach the threshold.  All of you need to get as close to the ground as possible.” I was informed.  I turned to the girls and told them to drag the mattress off the bed onto the floor then lay as flat as they can on it.  I took cover in front of them in case someone came through the door, then I let Steve know we were in position.  Seconds later, we could hear glass breaking and doors being broken down along with voices yelling out instructions from the main area.  A single gunshot rang out the sound piercing through the noise of everything else.  The door to the room was flung open as I tried to shield the girls.  Dylan yells, “Clear.  I got the girls.  They are in here.”  Several other of my security teams come in along with police and FBI officers.  We are escorted out to the waiting ambulances and Bruce walks beside me telling us that Stewart shot himself in the head rather than allow them to arrest him.  As the EMTs took our vitals, Dylan came up to let us know that Clare had been placed in custody since she was a willing partner in my a*******n.  All 3 of us were transported to the hospital, despite my objections, because I was ‘manhandled’ a bit when they tossed me in the van earlier and I had a few scraps.  Steve contacted Grandpa to let them all know it was over.  I asked him to have Mom bring Mrs. Stovard to the hospital, but not say anything to the boys yet.  Andrea and Allison begged me not to contact them.  I thought that given how long these girls had been held in that awful place it made sense that neither would be ready to see Asher or Tony yet.  I gave instructions to only have female hospital personal treating the girls since we didn’t know what they had been put through.  A Psych evaluation was ordered and after they were settled in their room for the night a doctor would come to do counseling with them.  I didn’t want them to feel pressured by the police to re-live everything they had been put through for the past few months tonight, so I told Dylan to keep the cops and FBI at bay until the girls were ready to talk.  They had to do r**e kits on both, but I made sure that the SUV officer was female and she didn’t ask too many questions.  When Mrs. Stovard came into the room afterward they fell into her arms weeping.  Since she had been briefed on the way there that Albert was behind their k********g, she kept apologizing repeatedly for his actions.  She let them know that neither Asher nor Tony had moved on and how much they missed and loved them both.  So not to add to their suffering, she didn’t tell them how lost her boys were when they got the break-up call, because Allison had told us that they were forced to make those calls at gunpoint.  Stewart had put the gun directly on Andrea’s belly saying he’d kill the little bastard if she didn’t call when she was grabbed from outside her doctor’s office after she found out she was pregnant.  He endangered the baby again when Allison was grabbed a few months later because he was an evil, vile, contemptible, loathsome, revolting, depraved organism, who reveled in the terror he made others feel.  Andrea was clutching her first ultrasound pictures tightly to her chest as she cried about how she had planned on telling Tony the night she was grabbed about the baby over a romantic dinner.  That was over almost 5 months ago and she was almost 2 months along when it happened, which makes her almost 7 months.  It turns out that Allison almost 4 months pregnant as well.  During their captivity, she kept up the appearance of having a monthly cycle so Stewart’s guys wouldn’t suspect anything.