Don't Move Your Desk: Chapter Twenty-Three
In which Fernando complicates everything
A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: Chapter Twenty-Three of Don’t Move Your Desk; and the progress report with an update on my week-on-week sales and writing progress.
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I almost didn’t finish this week’s post! I had the chapter ready, of course, but the notes here and progress report down the bottom were placeholders until not very long ago at all. Constant internet issues here since early yesterday morning - none at all yesterday, only spotty coverage today. But we persevere.
I’m probably supposed to say something promotional up here this week, but it’s been a lot of promotion lately, so I wanted to share something cool instead. I applied for something last month and I got in - pretty easily as it happens - and next year, it starts. And I couldn’t be more excited.
From January 2025, I’m going to be studying a Masters degree in Literature and Culture!! I’m so excited about it - the modules all sound so interesting and I can’t wait to immerse myself. I’m sort of already immersed, but this will be a deeper dive that I hope will bring more understanding to my work, the help I provide to my clients, and my social media posts.
One of the modules is about vampires. I am beside myself. I literally can’t wait.
This is an online and part-time course, so I’ll be studying for about two years, but the suggested hours it will take to complete it all actually made me laugh because I could probably complete the whole course in a month if I buckled down. The best part is, I’m doing it with my old alma mater - keeping it in the family, so to speak. I look forward to sharing new findings and knowledge as we go.
As a quick reminder: this chapter will go behind the paywall 60 days after publication. Don’t miss the chance to read the next chapter for free by subscribing for email updates!
Okay, that’s it! On with the chapter!
Keaton
Ace was sitting at the coffee table in Mr. Harvey’s office, sprawled back with one of his legs cocked across the table itself. Mr. Harvey was constantly eyeing his black dress shoe as it dangled out in the air, making sure it wasn’t going anywhere near the actual table. I could tell it irritated him, but he was doing a remarkable job of showing restraint. I had a feeling that Ace knew that, too, and he’d chosen the placement of his limbs very carefully just to irritate Mr. Harvey as much as possible.
I couldn’t work out why. They liked each other, as far as I could tell. Mr. Harvey said that Ace was inner circle. Maybe Ace just had something in him that liked causing a bit of chaos.
“I just give up,” Ace said, hanging his head back over the backrest of the chair. “I give up, Harvey. I can’t find any evidence. Brody covered his tracks too well.”
Mr. Harvey sighed noisily. “This is infuriating.”
That had to be the understatement of the year.
Both of them stared off: Ace looking up at the ceiling in total despair, Mr. Harvey staring at the far wall with his hands steepled in front of his face. They both seemed so dejected.
“We can’t give up yet,” I said. Both sets of eyes swiveled towards me and I tried to fight down my immediate nervous response. “There must be some other way to figure all of this out. What about going to the buildings on either side and asking for their camera footage? You might be able to spot him walking by with his hood down.”
Ace shook his head. “There’s no way. The firms on either side of us are legal practices. They’re not going to give up their footage just because I asked.”
I sighed. I wished Ace would at least try, but I was already overstepping the mark by speaking up. I couldn’t argue with him too much. “There must be some way to prove it was him.”
“I wish we fucking could,” Ace muttered. “I’d like to prove it was all him and then hand him over to the police. I want to see the look on his smug fucking face when he realizes he’s going to prison.”
I tilted my head. I hadn’t even thought of that. “He would really serve time just for faking contracts?”
“No, for the drugs in Ridley’s drink,” Ace said, turning back to look up at the ceiling. “That’s an offense. You can’t just drug someone without their consent.”
Something clicked in my head.
“The drugs,” I half-whispered. “Of course. He had to have been the one to drug Ridley and get the footage at the same time as the fake contracts thing was happening, so he could really take him down.”
“Yeah,” Ace said, shaking his head. His shoulder-length hair danced under his upturned head. “And all of this because he wanted Ridley as a client so badly. Well, it backfired there, at least. I already told Ridley what he’s done. Even if Ridley leaves us, he’s never going to Brody Driver.”
I looked at Ace with a wild hope starting to flare in my chest. I looked at him until he felt my eyes on him and met my gaze. There was a moment in which I knew he understood what I was thinking, and then he was shaking his head, telling me no.
But it was too late. I’d had the thought, and now I couldn’t ignore it.
I’d brought my laptop to work with me in my bag. I was thinking I could take it to a café or something and watch the footage without the distractions at work and at home, maybe on my lunch break or if Mr. Harvey let me go early. But there was no time like the present.
Not if I could give Mr. Harvey the answer he needed and stop him from thinking his career was over.
“Here,” I said, finding the footage and opening it up. There was no need to announce what I was doing. Within a second, the audio from the nightclub started blaring out through my speakers.
Mr. Harvey sat up straighter in his seat. Ace sat up, too, almost tipping his own chair over in his haste. He scrambled over to me like he was going to slam the lid of my laptop shut to save me – but I held it firmly open. There was no going back now. Mr. Harvey had heard what he had heard.
He walked slowly behind me and stopped, bending low over my head to look at the screen. The feeling of him right there behind me made a shiver run minutely down my spine. We were so close that he only needed to breathe deeply and we might touch.
“I knew it!” I hissed, tapping the spacebar to pause the playback and pointing at my screen. “I knew I’d seen him somewhere before!”
Because there, on the screen, in a shot captured through the curtains of the VIP area, was an unmistakable face.
Brody Driver.
Now that I knew who he was, it was obviously him. He was dressed in his usual dark leather jacket and a white shirt with black jeans, totally different from the suit I’d seen him wearing in the lobby that first time. But seeing him punch Ace – and be lifted into the air by Mr. Harvey – was the kind of thing that cemented a face in my memory.
It was him.
“Play the footage,” Mr. Harvey said. There was a dangerous note in his voice, but I couldn’t think about that right now. Not if this was going to solve everything.
I hit the spacebar again and all three of us sat, watching.
There were long periods of time when nothing happened. Well, not nothing – people walked in front of the lens, songs changed over the crackly audio my phone’s microphone had managed to record, and other players walked up to the VIP lounge and walked right in. Some left. Women, in twos and threes, moved in and out of the area as well – all of them young and thin and wearing very tight, small dresses.
Occasionally, someone else would emerge or enter: people who looked less like they had a reason to be there. Secretaries, assistants, managers – they had to be. It was easy to guess which bracket someone fell into based on how expensive their clothes looked.
And then Brody appeared in the shot again, obscuring the view of Ridley – who had just walked by and sat down in a chair visible from the doorway. I remembered my own frustration at not being able to see the man I was actually there to film. Ironic, now.
Brody looked left and right and apparently saw someone he recognized. His mouth thinned out into a straight, tense line. He tapped the bouncer outside the VIP rope on the shoulder and leaned over to shake his hand. I wasn’t an expert in looking for these things, but even I could tell he was trying to subtly slip the man some money.
The bouncer nodded, lifted the rope, and a woman stepped through it. She was wearing a finely tailored coat and silver hair was piled on top of her head.
My breath caught in my throat.
She turned to the side just slightly – just enough to show her profile – and my suspicions were confirmed.
Helen Alcori.
Mr. Harvey’s old secretary. The one who had been so eager to get her job back, she had come over here to intimidate me in person.
She stepped beyond the rope and stood talking to Brody in clear view of the doorway, neither of them moving more than a couple of steps away from Ridley. I watched with wide eyes as he put his drink down on the table beside him for a second and turned to talk to someone in the other direction –
As Brody glanced down at it and then up at Helen –
As she casually took her hand out of her pocket and made a quick gesture in the air above the table –
And then walked away, right back out of the VIP section with her hand poised in the air above the purse on her elbow, carefully placed steps making her sashay across the club and right out of frame.
Brody paused only to watch Ridley pick his drink back up and take a long sip before he turned and left the VIP area as well.
“They did it,” I said, my voice coming out barely above a whisper. It was such a small movement that you wouldn’t know what you were looking at unless you already suspected. I hadn’t noticed it when I was there in person. It looked like a casual gesture as part of a conversation. I hadn’t even been watching them, with my attention fully on Ridley. “They spiked his drink.”
Guilt surged through me. If only I had watched the footage earlier. I had been prioritizing everything else, trying to avoid the unavoidable fact that my motivations for coming here had been far from innocent. The deeper I fell for my boss, the less I wanted to acknowledge the truth. Now, Ridley had paid for it – and Ace and I had paid for it in the hours we’d spent researching this case with no results, and Mr. Harvey had paid for it in the countless hours of worry and extra meetings and rushing around.
If only I had watched the footage as soon as I knew that Ridley was drugged.
“You did it,” Mr. Harvey said. His hand landed on my shoulder. For a second I had a horrible vision of him marching me out of the doors of the company and throwing me into the street, but then his fingers squeezed and I realized he was congratulating me. “You caught them. This is the evidence we need. Get a copy of this sent to both of us over email. We need to start disseminating it to the press.”
The touch of his hand on my shoulder sent a warmth that spread outwards from that spot like it was going to reach down and warm my soul. My heart. Everything. My hand twitched. I wanted to reach up and place it on top of his, stop him from ever moving away.
Instead, I opened my emails and started a new message, doing what I was told. I didn’t even deserve his comfort right now. Sooner or later, he was going to realize that.
“I’ll get this over to my contacts at the major networks right now,” Ace said, already halfway out the door on the way back to his own office. “Keaton, can you clip out just the section with the spiking? We’ll need it for social media. Send that to me as soon as you can.”
“Okay,” I nodded. Mr. Harvey’s hand lifted from my shoulder and I immediately mourned its loss. My skin felt cold now where he was gone. “Do you need me to do anything else with it?”
“Keep watching,” Mr. Harvey said, pointing a finger back at me as he moved over to his laptop. “The person who leaked the footage must have been there. I suspect it was Brody. See if you can catch him standing outside to wait.”
“Are you going to be calling the press as well?” I asked. I finished editing out the clip, attached it to the email, and clicked send. It swooshed off through the internet, something so small that could make such a huge difference. It was going to be all over the world before the end of the day. The thought almost made me shake.
“No,” Mr. Harvey said. “I’m calling Ridley Angus. And Coleman. He needs to know what’s about to land at his door.”
I nodded. I watched as he sat down and pulled his laptop towards him with that same strong hand that had been on my shoulder a second ago. It had felt so reassuring. So comfortable. Like home.
I shook myself and looked back at the screen.
I watched as people continued to move around both inside and outside the VIP lounge. Ridley’s arm movements as he spoke began to change, becoming elongated and then heavy, as if he was getting tired. A lighter expression transformed his face from friendly to almost… silly.
It was like he was drunk. Only, I knew now that it was something different.
I kept my eyes on the screen, watching for any hint of Brody coming back or doing anything else, but he didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. I wished I’d had access to the cameras in the street outside. I would have been able to see if he’d walked away or just stood out there.
This was a police investigation now, I realized with a start. They probably would be able to get that footage. They would be able to catch him. Brody wasn’t going to get away with this unscathed, and neither was Helen.
A figure dressed in dark clothing moved into the frame. I almost didn’t notice him, except for the fact that I was looking for Brody’s leather jacket. He leaned against the wall near the VIP lounge and peered into it. He must have been able to see Ridley from this angle. By this point, his teammates were trying to convince him to leave while he shook his head and told them he hadn’t even had that much to drink. I knew from memory that it wasn’t long before they would drag him out.
The person in the black clothing looked around the club casually, and their gaze landed right on the camera.
Right on me.
And his eyes opened wide, he stepped back out of frame, and I had to pause the footage and rewind and watch it again.
There was a look of recognition and then panic in his eyes that I could identify even in the low lighting of the club, from this distance away, and even though he had deliberately stayed within the shadows at the edges of the room. He looked at me, realized who I was, and he was scared.
And while there were a good number of reasons I could think of why he might be scared to be caught by me at a nightclub, none of them were good at all.
Either he knew what was going on and he didn’t want me to witness him there…
Or Fernando was at a club when he should have been with my sister, and he had a lot of explaining to do.
Either way, I had a big decision to make.
I opened my mouth and then closed it. Mr. Harvey was talking to someone on the phone; he didn’t even notice me glancing in his direction.
I could tell him. Let him judge for himself.
But Fernando was my sister’s boyfriend.
If I told Mr. Harvey about my suspicions, then maybe he would get into trouble. And if all he’d done was tell my sister he was busy and then go out for a drink with a colleague, then it was nothing. I would be getting him into trouble for nothing, and Clara would be mad at me.
I bit my lip and closed the video file. There was no need to bring it up. Not until I’d had the chance to talk to Fernando.
Mr. Harvey put down the phone from his last call. His face was grim; I gathered he’d just delivered the warning to Coleman. It couldn’t have been easy – telling his oldest friend, and his closest friend from what I understood, that his firm was about to come under fire. Not only that, but he couldn’t even be seen to support him because of their fake media rivalry.
He picked up the phone again. There was a pause while the line connected. “Quijada,” he said when it did. “Come to my office. I need to talk to you.”
And my heart beat wildly in my chest, wondering if Fernando had shown up earlier in the footage when I was looking at Brody and Helen after all – and if I was about to get in trouble for shielding my sister’s boyfriend.
Here ends this week’s chapter! What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. I really appreciate your comments - what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d like to see next.
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Progress Report
Note: Changes are in bold. Also important to note this week - KDP is still having some issues with reporting ebook sales, so I can’t be 100% sure this is accurate… but only in the sense that there may be more sales, not less, so I think it’s fine to continue for now.
TOTAL SALES:
Don’t Move Out: ebook - 740, paperback - 8, KU pages read - 350,171 (238 pages = 1,471 equivalent full-book reads), free downloads - 6,304
Don’t Go Outside: ebook - 112, paperback - 6, KU pages read - 135,781 (222 pages = 611 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Fly Home: ebook - 62, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 84,466 (224 pages = 377 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Leave Town: ebook - 63, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 59,897 (299 pages = 200 equivalent full-book reads) - Hit 200 EFBR for the first time!
Don’t Check Out: ebook - 55, paperback - 2, KU pages read - 33,034 (192 pages = 172 equivalent full-book reads)
CC 1-5 Boxset: KU pages read - 15,148 (1,068 pages = 14 equivalent full-set reads)
Don’t Move Your Desk: ebook - 8 (no other formats available as yet)
Serial Investigations full series (Pre-Substack releases: books 1-12, 2 bonus novellas, 2 boxsets): ebook - 483, paperback/hardback - 68, KU pages read - 367,591, free downloads - 546
WRITING:
Don’t Move Your Desk - written and edited fully, serialisation underway, all chapters queued up ready (7 ‘spare’ chapters with no set date), ebook on sale
Kiss The Cook cover revealed, ebook ready, planning to launch preorder very soon
Cook Up A Storm: full plot done, 45k words written - ugh I stg I will get this finished someday… I feel like it’s taken so much longer than any other book has for a long time
(Books 8+): 8 covers, themes, and titles done, Crowhill Kitchen release schedule and titles announced, all Kitchen characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up, all Club characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up
SUBSTACK:
Subscribers: free - 59, paid - 2 plus 1 temp comp - hi new friend!
Followers: 231
By the way, please like this post if you enjoyed it and would like to see more! This helps me decide what to do for future content.
XO Rhiannon