The Callahan's froze.
"Hacking is a crime." Tiffany's eyes no longer carried any false concern but rather carried an icy cold calculation.
"I would never engage in illegal activities, Mrs. Callahan. And besides, the recordings were wiped quite cleverly. No doubt the work of a professional."
Silence stretched within the office.
"What do you want?" Roger Callahan finally asked. Saul wasn't surprised to hear him ask the question. Nor was he surprised by the look his wife gave him. Tiffany was always the stronger of the two. She had married the most powerful man who would have her and helped his company to grow more powerful. It was Tiffany who made sure all the skeletons in Roger's closet stayed buried. Saul was surprised that an illegitimate child managed to slip through Tiffany's net. He made a mental note to look into Charlie's situation. Tiffany should have forced the woman to get an abortion rather than let her give birth to Charlotte.
"Loyalty, true loyalty, is rare and incredibly difficult to cultivate," Saul began. The speech made him uncomfortable because a lot of it was true. It made him sometimes question his own motives but he dealt with too many people like Tiffany, brilliant sociopaths, to attempt anything that was not completely logical. "The best way to earn complete loyalty, and I mean the type that can't be bought, or threatened away, is to save someone in the midst their darkest moment. Take someone at their lowest and save them. Then you keep supporting them. You become the quiet benevolent hero. Their faith, whatever it was before, is supplanted by yourself. You become their source of faith, their reason for being, their "god" so to speak."
Saul paused and took a sip but didn't stretch the silence too long. "Religion has greater impact on individuals than almost anything else. You can take a completely rational individual and turn them into a complete puppet using religion. That bastard of yours, she is quite intelligent. She could make an excellent pawn and, due to the current situation, I am well poised to become her rescuer." Saul had to brace himself mentally for this next part. "Of course I could go to the authorities with the evidence that I have and we could let them work out the details in court but that would be expensive, time consuming, and the child could easily become disaffected. It would be a less than ideal situation. Additionally, the publicity could impact both of our companies and that would be irresponsible to our stock holders. So,I would like to buy her off you, name your price." He quietly pulled out a checkbook and looked at Tiffany expectantly praying that she would take the bait.
"You think we would sell our daughter?" Tiffany raised her eyebrows.
"Don't think of it like that. Think of it as a paid internship where the money goes to you up front." Saul had wracked his brain to come up with the right approach for Tiffany. She was far too smart to fall for most tricks. He had to convince her that they were similar. He had considered briefly trying to relate to her husband instead but even the thought of that made him want to vomit. Tiffany would never have believed it anyway.
Tiffany considered his proposal. She deliberately drew out the silence. There were a few moments where it looked like Roger was going to say something but she managed to silence him. Saul knew the trick well, humans are uncomfortable with silence as a rule. People tended to babble or over share when met with sustained silence. Saul was not one of those people, neither was Tiffany. Roger, on the other hand, was a moron who thought with his dick.
"We could never take money in exchange for our child." Tiffany finally said, "Even if she wanted to leave us for whatever reason we could never even think of such a thing." Roger looked surprised at this but was too well trained by his wife to speak up.
"Well, that's disappointing," Saul closed his checkbook. "It seems I should..."
"We have..." Tiffany interrupted, "just lost a major investor for a rather lucrative project. Silver Wings Holdings has found that they are unable to provide sufficient funds under the given terms. Perhaps the Monroe Group would like to make an offer."
Saul frowned and tapped his fingers while he celebrated in his heart. "No offense to CalCorps but the Monroe Group doesn't have a history of interacting with such small companies. At least, not unless we are planning on acquiring them."
"Are you planning to acquire CalCorps?" Tiffany asked.
Saul waved a hand as if physically brushing off the comment. "There would be no point, the government wouldn't want us to acquire another company that is in direct competition with one of our subsidiaries. They frown on such things as monopolies."
"Then there is little to worry about." Tiffany grinned. "We don't need to concern ourselves with the Monroe Group overreaching and you can still acquire some stakes in a very profitable development. It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement."
It took another two hours to work out the particulars of the arrangement including stock percentages and other contract details. Both sides sent the paperwork to their company attorneys for review before signing which was preliminarily scheduled for the following afternoon assuming there were no major revisions to the contracts.
******
Time seemed to crawl as Charlie waited for some sort of sign as to what was going on. She had asked to go to her room but Don had refused. He had been glaring at her since she arrived in the room. He had never been friendly to her but it seems that the timing of her escape being on his watch had created a grudge between the two of them. That didn't really bother Charlie, she had already had countless grudges on her side, what is the difference if he had one now? Eventually she was able to convince them that she did indeed need to use the restroom.
They escorted her to the windowless powder room like they would escort a dangerous felon. Before letting her in the room, one of the men did a quick search of the room and removed anything that might be possibly considered weapon including some of the cleaning supplies.
Though they didn't insist on being present while she was in there, she still felt a sense of humiliation. She had thought that her previous determination had created a bulwark against any such mundane emotions. Perhaps she wasn't quite as determined as she thought. She considered her options as she washed her hands. There was a change going on within her. It was slow but burning. Yes, she wouldn't let herself become what they wanted her to, but why should her first option be to hurt herself. She considered something she had never thought she would consider. Charlie wasn't a violent person. She had a tendency to avoid confrontation when possible. She had never confronted her father nor her stepmother about anything. She had always been passive. Even when she ran away, it was less of an active resistance. She didn't scream or make a scene she simply ran. Maybe that was what was wrong. Maybe she needed to stop avoiding conflict and start running straight into the next one.
Yes, if in came down to it she would take her own life but before that she would defend herself. She never thought that she would consider the idea of murder. If it was a man like Silva though, a man who liked to rape underage girls, she knew she wouldn't regret it. She wouldn't really mind going to prison either. She figured it wouldn't be that different than living in the Callahan Villa.
Eventually Charlie left the room with this new determination. She really wouldn't mind going to prison if it saved her from a future that she could not endure.
The babysitters and Don escorted her back to the same sofa she had been on before and waited for news to come from her father's study.