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Trust in Advertising Page 128
Author: Victoria Michaels

The signs were all there, but I didn’t listen to my head.

“I thought I was in love, whatever that meant at the time, and refused to believe anything bad about her. I felt like such a fool when she walked out on me. I’ll never forget the sight, her laughing as she ran down the laundry list of clients that were going to follow her to her new agency. She even implied she was sleeping with a few of them to ensure their business. To this day, I don’t know if it was true or just to turn the knife a little deeper in my heart. Either way, she enjoyed telling me all about it, in graphic detail.”

Lexi’s tears finally stopped falling as she quietly listened to his depressing autobiography.

“I should have known better with Jade.” Lexi’s hands balled into fists in her lap at the mention of Jade’s name. “In the beginning, she was kind and sweet. No. That’s not true—she stroked my ego, and I liked it. She told me how brilliant I was and … God, she was working me from day one.” His shoulders slumped forward as his hands scrubbed over his face. “She was always interested in the business. Asked a ton of questions, who our clients were. She wanted to see all the campaigns I was working on, and she would sit there and tell me how great they were. She constantly visited the office and snuck into client meetings. I’m such a fool.”

His entire relationship with Jade played back in his head in vivid color. Warning flags waved everywhere, but he had been so busy working and enjoying the emotional distance that he never noticed what was going on around him. He had completely underestimated her intelligence, allowing her to play the role of stereotypical airheaded model to his dashing young businessman. Every warning his family and Sean had given him, every lie she had told, every coincidence screamed at him until he thought he was going to be sick.

Half to himself, he continued. “She kept getting jobs on accounts we lost. That’s been going on for months now. In the back of my head, I thought it was odd, but she’s a well known model, and she fit the campaigns. I chalked it up as my loss being her gain. I think we even joked about it once.

She’s probably been laughing at me this entire time.” He took long, deep breaths, trying to calm his now raging temper. He was glad he’d already ended things with Jade because if he ever saw her again, it would be difficult to not rip her to shreds.

“I’m glad you see what an evil bitch she is. Of course, you still believed her.”

“Lexi, I’m sorry. God, you must be so sick of hearing me say that by now. I wish I could say something that would erase my abhorrent behavior, but i can’t.” The wind blew through the trees, the leaves rustling together as Vincent tipped his head back and stared up at the sky. “I can only tell you honestly what was going through my head and pray that when I’m done you’ll consider what I’ve said.”

She settled back on the bench and sighed, which Vincent took as an encouraging sign, so he cautiously continued. “Jade was the one who originally told me about the mole. Looking back, I think she did it because she sensed I was getting ready to end things with her. My feelings had changed, and my attention was directed … other places. She picked up on that and wanted a way to keep me in her good graces. She knew helping me with a crisis at Hunter was the way to do that.”

Lexi sat like a statue and listened. She showed no reaction to Vincent’s words. It seemed she was more interested in tracing the monogrammed letters on the handkerchief, which she had neatly folded into a square. But he kept talking. “She told me someone from Hunter was selling ideas and that she had found out some information from her friends during tone of their trips. A friend of hers was dating someone at Reid, and Jade was supposedly working her for details. At least that was the line of bull she fed me.” He raked his hands down his face.

“She’s sleeping with Reid.” Lexi’s voice sounded stronger, more annoyed than sad now.

“I know that now. Frankly, they deserve each other. They’re both vile parasites who thrive by sucking the life out of others. I hope they’re absolutely miserable together for many years to come.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lexi nod her head in agreement. That, in his opinion, was progress. As a strong breeze flew in off the bay, he snuck a glance in her direction and saw that her arms were covered in goose bumps and she was shivering. He slipped out of his suit jacket.

“You’re cold.”

Lexi gave no response. Her eyes stayed fixed forward, even as he laid the jacket over her bare shoulders. Her hands held onto the lapels of the coat, pulling the ends closer together to keep it in place. Vincent left his arm draped across the back of the bench, his hand lightly brushing against the fabric of his jacket. There was no way she could feel it through the thick material, but for him, it felt like he was doing some small thing to comfort her. He saw her turn her head to the side, her cheek nuzzling against the warmth of the jacket, and he smiled.

“I decided to try and flush out the mole by calling in key people on our design team and assigning them each a unique project to oversee. Some were real accounts, others were dummy accounts I made up with the contact phone numbers going places like Sean’s cell phone or Erik’s. If anyone from Reid or Parketti called to set up an appointment, then the person in charge of that specific account would most likely be the mole.”

“All the meetings you had,” Lexi mumbled as Vincent nodded his head.

“Yeah, the parade of people. I was assigning them something to watch over, with the assumption the mole would pass the juicy tidbit I gave them on to their contact at Reid or Parketti. That was my big plan to catch the mole.”

Lexi turned and glared at him. “You set me up with Excalibur.”

There was a pause and then his head began to bob up and down. “I did. I didn’t want to, and I went back and forth about it.” Lexi made a small sound of disbelief. “It’s true. That’s why I talked to you days after everyone else. You were the last person I assigned something to, but I had to do it, just to be sure.”

Lexi turned away from him, but Vincent could see her thinking things over in her head, remembering the timeline of events and making sure he was telling the truth. He knew if he lied, or if she remotely thought he was lying, she would be gone, so he made sure every word was accurate.

“Martin Johnson is an old family friend and business associate. He’s the one who sent the text about the mole. I’d asked him to be on the lookout for campaigns similar to the one I’d shown him for Excalibur. We are going to be working with him in the near future; that part’s true. But the campaign itself—that was all a lie. The materials I gave you were from a presentation I worked on in college, one Adria never saw. It was an early version of my final senior project. I needed something fast, and I had saved copies of it, so I updated it at the last minute when I decided I should give you a project too.”

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