Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

“Shit,” Mark whispered, scared. “What are we going to do?”

Alex was sobered by the fear.

“He’s coming after me,” she whispered. “Can I get out of here somehow?”

“You can get onto the roof of the adjacent warehouse from the balcony,” Oliver said nervously, “but it’s at least ten feet down.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll kill me if he finds me here. And you too.”

Mark turned as white as a ghost. The banging on the door grew louder. Alex ran into the living room and tore open the balcony door.

“Alex,” Oliver hissed. He grabbed her arm as she raised her leg over the balcony railing. “You can’t…Alex!”

“I have no choice,” she replied. “I don’t want to get you into trouble. Take care of yourselves. I’ll be in touch!”

Before Oliver could say another word, she jumped ten feet from the balustrade down onto the warehouse roof and disappeared in the darkness like a shadow.

Sergio stood in the hallway outside Oliver Skerritt’s door, his hands deep in the pockets of his cashmere coat. He was dead certain that Alex was sitting next to this guy right behind the door. He even thought he could smell her. Armando and Freddy looked at their boss and waited for his orders.

“Break down the door!” Sergio ordered. “I want to get into this damned apartment.”

Then the door opened. A dark-haired man with glasses looked at them, displeased. Sergio recognized his face from the countless photos that his people had taken of him and Alex. He even knew what he looked like during sex. He used all his might to repress his fury, pushing past him into the loft before Oliver could say a word. Although it was fairly large, it was could fit into a single salon of Sergio’s Park Avenue apartment.

“Hey!” The journalist ran after him. “What the hell is going on here? Why are you invading my apartment? Who are you?”

“Where is she?” Sergio looked everywhere, even the bathroom. He shoved Oliver, who looked terrified. He encountered Mark in the living room and ignored him. Then Sergio tore open the bedroom door expecting to find Alex in bed with wide-open, frightened eyes. The blood rushed in his ears. He’d beaten her down to the point that she couldn’t let herself be seen in public for three weeks. But the bed was empty. Sergio charged into the room, pulled open the closet doors, and even got down on his knees to look under the bed. There was no trace of her. Did he get it all wrong?

“Where are you, you little whore?” He angrily ground his teeth and walked back to the living room. There, his men watched in silence as Sergio grabbed Oliver by his hair.

“Where the hell is she?”

“Who are you looking for anyway?” Oliver wheezed.

“Alex Sontheim.” The urge to kill shone in Sergio’s eyes.

“Why would she be here?”

“Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?” His anger exploded inside of him, and he rammed his fist into Oliver’s face; he felt a cruel sense of satisfaction when Oliver’s glasses cracked and the blood splattered from his nose.

“Alex hasn’t been here in months,” Oliver mumbled. “I don’t know where she is.”

Sergio stared at him for a few seconds. “If you are lying to me,” he hissed, “you’re dead!”

Just minutes later, the nightmare was over and Oliver and Mark found themselves locked in the windowless bathroom. Oliver sat down on the edge of the bathtub, breathing heavily, and Mark let himself slide onto the floor. His whole body shook in fear. He had always been horrified by any kind of physical violence.

“What kind of an animal is this guy,” he muttered. Oliver’s cell phone rang again. He rummaged through his jacket pocket until he found it.

“I checked the commercial registry,” Justin shouted. “You remember that a company was the owner of MPM, this SeaStar thing, right?”

“Yeah, sure.” Oliver nodded and grimaced because his nose hurt like hell. “We printed out the certificates.”

“But now MPM is listed as owned by Alex and Zachary St. John.”

“Holy shit.” Oliver rubbed his sore wrists, trying to take in what this meant.

Alex really was in grave danger—and she had no idea.

Alex’s heart pounded furiously against her ribs as she darted toward Sixth Avenue under the protection of the building walls. A police siren was howling somewhere, but the street was deserted. She managed to finally hail a cab at West Houston Street.

“Battery Park City,” she said to the taxi driver, leaning back in relief when the young Puerto Rican hit the pedal. She hoped that Sergio wouldn’t harm Oliver and Mark. Her thoughts were racing as the cab drove south through nighttime Manhattan. She still couldn’t believe that Zack had been so foolish as to buy so many shares. Even if the deal had gone through, it would have triggered the SEC’s curiosity. But then it occurred to her that Sergio also had SEC officials and NYSE board members on his bribery payroll. It was likely nothing would have happened.

Fifteen minutes later, Alex reached Zack’s building. She asked the cab driver to wait and walked in, but the doorman said Zach was away. She climbed back into the taxi and told the driver to take her to the financial district. Maybe Zack was still in his office. Alex frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what to tell him, but she no matter what it couldn’t wait. Tomorrow morning, they’d throw her and Zack to the wolves. Maybe she could convince Zack that it was time to take action together against Levy and Sergio. It was clear in her mind that neither of them would shy away from sacrificing her.

She got out of the cab at Broadway and Wall Street then walked the rest of the way to the LMI Building. The main entrance was closed at this time of night, and she hesitated to use her badge to get in. She knew that every swipe of the card was registered in the central computer. She glanced quickly at her watch. It was just after two thirty in the morning, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the door to the delivery entrance with her badge, and then stopped when she spotted the night porter strolling toward the restrooms. Alex snuck into the lobby and reached the open door to the stairwell. She couldn’t take the elevator because it would have instantly alarmed the security guards. She prided herself on being in good shape, but she still needed to stop and catch her breath on the tenth and fourteenth floors.

Alex trembled with anxiety as she opened the fire door leading to the executive offices. Zack’s office was the fourth on the left. A narrow strip of light escaped through a crack in the door. He was actually still here. Alex took a deep breath and then knocked at the door. When she entered the office, what she saw in the dim light of the desk lamp made her blood freeze. She wanted to run away, screaming her head off, but she stood there petrified. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

“Damn it,” Oliver cursed, “she’s not answering!”

It was the tenth time he reached Alex’s voice mail.

“We’ve got to do something,” he said as he rubbed his sore arm. Where could he find Alex to inform her about the outrageous information Justin had just delivered? MPM would be bankrupt tomorrow. The press would jump on it as soon as they learned that LMI’s managing director and head of M&A were jointly running a company making millions through insider trading. Alex was done for, even if it could eventually be proven in court that she had nothing to do with MPM. Her reputation on Wall Street would be ruined once and for all. Oliver’s first—and hopefully last—personal encounter with Sergio Vitali confirmed everything that he had unearthed about him over the years. He shuddered again at the memory of the ice-cold look in his blue eyes.