DISCLAIMER: DO NOT OWN TWILIGHT

Chapter 3: Misery Business

JPOV

~. ~ 1 Year Ago ~. ~

I slam my hand down on my father's desk.

"What do you mean? We're losing the company? How? I looked at the stats and report that Jessica bought to me and everything was fine. I looked at those yesterday. What could have possibly happened to where we are losing our goddamn company?" I yell at father.

He looked down guiltily at the family picture he has on his desks.

"I made some bad investments and made deals with some bad companies. I tried everything to save the company but it's not working. We're going bankrupt son."

I sigh in frustration as I take of my jacket and plop down on the chair across from my father. This company is the company my father and mother built from the ground up. Not that he cares about the fact that she helped him build that company. The many affairs he has had proved that he doesn't care. When she died he didn't shed not one tear he just did what he did. In fact he went out in public with them now.

As soon as she was gone he forgot about her. As soon as her last breath left her body, he got rid of all her stuff, all the family pictures, everything that was hers was gone before I could even gasp. Though my mother wasn't the best of mothers, she was my mother and I loved her.

My father didn't deserve her. He drove her to the point of insanity. He wouldn't let her leave him through divorce, at some points he didn't even let her leave the perimeter of the estate. She was trapped in her own home and I felt bad for the woman I called my mother. When she couldn't leave him through divorce she tried multiple times to kill herself to escape her unfaithful husband and his demanding and possessive ways.

"What about the backup Swiss bank accounts? What about the other companies we have? Are we going to lose everything?"

"Jasper, son everything is going to be wiped out. Yes we will lose everything. In 3 months times we will be completely broke and the companies gone."

I jump up out of my seat and glare at my father, "How could you have been so stupid? First we lose mom now we're losing the company. Can you do anything right? We have people make the investments and stock shares for a reason! Now for your goddamn stupidity we're going to lose everything. Hundreds of people are going to lose their jobs because of you. Everything you didn't deserve in the first place you're losing now." I yelled at him. After my rant of sorts I grab my jacket. "I'm going to go to Rosalie's and tell her about much of a fool her father is."

After I said my piece I stormed out of the room.

I went to the garage and got on my Harley – Davidson 1200 Custom. I stuck it all the way to Rosalie's and Emmett's house. Their house was my getaway away from our father. The man is unbearable and insufferable, and it is getting harder and harder to be around him.

When I reached Emmett and Rosalie's place the security just let me in. I drove up the long driveway to the front door. I got off my bike and left it there in front of the house. Not even bothering to put it in the garage.

I walk right up to the door and walk right in without knocking.

"Rose" I yell out throughout the vast expansion of her house. "Rose! Come here!" I called out again.

"God Jasper can you give me time to get here?" she yelled out as she came into view.

"Maybe if your house wasn't as big as it is I wouldn't have to yell out and rush you like this." I joke at her.

"Oh please! Dad's house is much bigger than this. His is still bigger even after we added that expansion on the back and the guest rooms."

She stood right in front of me with her hands on her hips. She looked just like mom. She was mom. She had her icy attitude, same hair, same eyes, same fashion sense, same everything. But unlike mom, Rose didn't leave me. Even when she got married to Emmett she still looked out for her little brother, still wanted me to come to dinners on Fridays and Sundays, still wanted to bake cookies, and she still wanted to cause hell.

"No hug Rosie? I'm hurt. I thought I was your favorite baby brother." I say with mock hurt in my voice.

She threw her head back and let out a tinkling laugh. She opened up her arms," Alright come and get some love. Just don't tell Emmett he gets jealous easily."

Then from the direction of the kitchen, the typical place you will find Emmett, we heard Emmett's booming voice say, "Damn right I get jealous. Have you not seen my wife? She's was made especially from God and the angels. He invested extra time in her." He kissed her cheeks and whispered something in her ear that made her giggle like a school girl.

Even though their marriage was arranged, they were in love like a couple who chose to get married on their own. They looked at each other with the most love in their eyes. They looked at each other like they were the only ones in the room. I want a love like that someday. I want to love someone who loves me just as much back. I want to love someone who will love me for me and not for what have been my name and money. My name and money mean nothing now.

"Rose, actually I'm not here for a social visit. I'm here about father and I have bad news." I say as I look grimly into her eyes.

Her eyes started to sparkle, "What? Is he sick? Is he about to die? Is he in the hospital? If it is one of those answers I don't see how it can be bad news."

"Uh no. How about we move to the living room where you can have a seat. If it shocked me it can shock you."

I walked ahead of them to the big and vast living room.

Though Rose is the classy type her living room is not white and silver and boring. She has a very lively and open living room.

I take a seat on the light blue and white couch by the open window.

"What do you have to tell me about father? What could be so bad?" she asked as she looked at me with concern in her eyes. She sat right in front of me within touching distance and Emmett on the other side of her. He was looking just as concerned as she was. His brows were etched together and he had this worried, troubled look in his eye. But it seemed to also have a knowing look in them.

I took a deep breath," I don't know how to say this Rose. It seems almost surreal that this is happening. After everything…" I trailed off.

Rose reached over and grabbed my cold hands into her soft warm ones.

"Jasper, just tell me. It can't be that bad. You're probably just overreacting like you sometimes. Just tell me. Whatever it is I'm sure I can take it."

"Father's", I sigh loudly, "Father's losing the company. It is going bankrupt and there is nothing that we can do about it."

Rosalie covered her mouth with her hand as she released a loud gasp of shock. Her eyes flickered back and forth between mine. I bet trying to decipher if I were telling the truth or lying to her. When she realized I was telling the truth her crystal blue eyes welled up with sudden tears.

There was nothing I could do to make those tears go away.

Rosalie loved that company as much as I did. It wasn't about the money with us. It was about the fact that we could do something that our mother did, our father did, and our grandfather did, something our family did before we were thought of. (1) We grew up with that company. We ran the halls, hid between the desks, snuck into board meetings, played pranks on some of the employees, and we even blew up a few copy machines and printers. But even though we did all of this, the employees still loved us. The employees, even the custodial staff, were family. Now we're losing that family.

"Wh-what do you mean the company is going bankrupt? We hit big in stocks and products have never been better. Hell, I checked the reports, stats, and stocks this morning when Jessica bought them to me. Everything was fine, hell it was better than fine. What could have happened?"

"Father is what happened Rosalie. He made some bad investments, made deals with some wrong companies; I bet he even tried to make some shortcuts to more money. Probably did some embezzling, a Ponzi scheme. Who knows Rose?! All I know is that we're losing our company!"

There was complete silence. The only sound in the room was the wind blowing and our heavy breathing.

"How long before everything that our parents built is down under like the goddamn fucking Titanic? How long before our company is nothing but wreckage?" she whispers lowly.

"Three months."

"Three month? Three fucking months!? How is that possible? It takes at least a year for companies of this magnitude to go under." She exclaims in outrage.

"Rose I don't have the slightest idea. I think this has been going on for a while now. I bet the reports we have been getting have been fakes. Father can be quite great at hiding things he doesn't want people to know. He hid things from us for years and is still hiding things from us."

Rose stands up and starts pacing back and forth. She does this for a about 10 minutes before she stops in front of the mantle that holds some pictures that she has. She looks at the most recent picture of us with our father and stares at it with disgust.

"First you ruin mom's life now you have to drag us down with you, mainly Jasper. What can kind of a business man are you? What kind of a man are you? You're cancer and I wish I could get rid of you." She mutters at our father's smiling face. Rosalie picks up the picture and throws it roughly at the wall across from her.

Emmett instantly stands up, "Hey!" he exclaims, "You need to calm down Rose. Throwing things is not going to help anything. You need to sit and take a breather."

I walk over to her and rub gently up and down her arm, "We can go to the company right now and sort this out. We need to find a way to fix this mess father has made." I say gently to her. I stroke her hair knowing that it calms her down. "Come on what's our last name? Well it would be your maiden name but you get the idea."

"Hale" she mumble lowly.

"I didn't hear you" I said humorously as I stretched my ear to hear her.

"Hale" she said louder this time.

"Come on say it with some pride."

"Hale! My last name is Hale and we can do whatever we damn well please." She said smiling

"That's my big sister. Let's go to this company and look at these stats."

Rosalie turned to Emmett, "I'll be back either later today or tomorrow. We might spend all day at the office trying to figure this out. I'll be back before you know I was even gone." she rushed over and gave him a big kiss on the lips. "I love you. Bye."

I gave Emmett a head nod before Rose rushed me out of the door.

When we reached the company everything seemed to be like any other day. There were people bustling in and out, people would stop and give us a nod hello and let us pass through, nothing to show that we were going to lose everything in just less than 90 days.

We got to the elevator everyone cleared out of the way for us to step on. I pushed the button for the Financial Management and Resources floor.

Financial Management and Resources (A/N: I don't know much about businesses so I'm stuff up. Bear with me) is where we keep a team of people who go over stocks, production sales, company spending, company stats, and all the other financial records. Sure we have hidden bank accounts and some spending that they financial team doesn't know about, but is that enough to cause our company to go bankrupt?

When we reached the 8th floor, which is the Financial Management and Resources floor, we are greeted with a completely normal looking office. No papers flying around, no people yelling and rushing, no papers being shredded, no people going crazy. It seemed like any other busy office.

When everyone saw us they greeted us with a well-respected head nod. I walk right towards where Jessica Stanley's office was and walked right in. It seemed as if she was eating lunch. A rice ball that barely entered her mouth popped out onto her desk. She hurriedly brushed it off her desk and tried to quickly make herself look presentable.

She smiled a small smile, "How may I help you Mr. Hale and Mrs. McCarthy?"

"Jessica I need to pull the financial record dating back a year and a half ago." I tell her in a sharp and detached voice.

She looks shocked at my sudden demand.

"Ex-Excuse me? All the files from a year and a half ago to now? But sir do you know how many files that is?"

"Yes Jessica I know exactly how many files that is. Are you going to get them for me or do I have to get them myself?" I raise an eyebrow at her.

She looks flustered; her cheeks are as red as a tomato and her speech stuttered, "Ye-y-yes sir." She said quickly as she hurried out of the office.

From behind me Rose let out a low, amused chuckle, "Jasper you didn't have to give the girl a heart attack to ask for some files. She might quit for fear of her health." She joked as she skimmed the exterior of the medium sized office.

"Why it doesn't matter, she's going to be out of a job in three months anyway."

Rosalie sighed at me, "Jasper, please don't be bitter about this. I know how much this company means to you, it means a lot to me too. We can't let the employees think that this is the end. We have to go about things like we regularly would and hope for the best outcome on this."

That's Rosalie for you. Rosalie had always been the smart, sensible, collected, pigheaded, and extravagant one out of the two of us.

I nodded my head in understanding and agreement. Just as I was about to open my mouth to speak again, Jessica walked in with a trolley cart full of files. She pushed the trolley cart right in front of me with a heave of great effort.

"Here…are…all…the files…from a…year…and a half…until…now." she gasped out.

I looked at the trolley cart in front of me in disbelieve and shock. The cart seemed to have over a hundred files on it. Some papers were even spilling out of the files.

I just sighed and told Jessica not to report this to my father or have anyone interrupt us.

We left and got on the private elevator that led to the entire executive and their assistances offices. There were a total of about 20 floors that stationed executives. Even though there were 20 floors that stationed executives we only had about 14 executives, minus Rosalie, Dad, Uncle Garrett, Peter, Charlotte and I. this company is real big on family, so a lot of the workers are family. When the company goes down so does the family and anyone with Hale as a last name will lose any and all respect they have in the business world.

When we reached the floor that housed my office we were greeted by my P.A. Claire.

"Hello Mr. Hale… Mrs. McCarthy. How may I help you today? You are not supposed to be in the office today. Would you like me to inform your father that you are here today?"

"No Claire I would appreciate it if you didn't tell my father I was here today. I want to tell anyone who calls that I am unavailable until further notice and allow no one to come within 10 feet of my door. Understood?" I started walking away after firing out my instructions. I didn't even wait for her answer. Right before I closed my door I heard mumble something though I wasn't sure what it was.

When we entered the room Rose spoke up, "Wow. If that is how you treat her I wonder how she survived and stayed as long as she did. I would have quit a long time ago and not stay for the 3 years she has been here."

"I don't normally treat her like this," I sigh, "I'm just tired, frustrated, and stressed. I'll make it up to her."

I looked towards the trolley cart with files upon files on. We were going to be here for hours on hours.

I sigh and look at Rose with an eyebrow raised.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I ask her. I didn't want her to be here if she didn't want to be. I would be fine doing this on my own.

She looked at me with disbelief and anger in her eyes, "Do you think I don't love this company? I'm willing to do this and figure this out… no matter how long it takes."

I looked her deep in her eyes and knew she wasn't going to change her mind.

"Let's get to work then."

Almost three hours later we haven't even made a dent in the stack of files. We got through maybe the three months of files. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

"Rose, get the files for the rest of the year 2011 and I will do 2012. We need to find something."

She gave me a head nod in acknowledgement. With a sigh of frustration I got back to work.

I was in mid – May when I noticed some of the numbers from another month. I seen them a few times but they were in the same month of when I knew that sales were high.

"Rose. Rose. Rose, hand me files February 2012, March 2012, and April 2012. I need them quick!" I said urgently.

She handed me the files with a questioning look in her eyes.

"What is it?"

I looked intently at the files. February and March had the same numbers while April was different. The numbers in February and March were the same just placed differently.

"Rose look at these number in February, March and May of this year. The numbers they are placed differently but are completely the same. Look!" I shoved the files in her face. She scanned them for a minute and understanding flickered in her eyes.

"Jasper, you're right." She kept looking at the files, "Wait I've seen these numbers before." She rummaged through her files and pulled out a very big file. "See here in mid – January and early February of 2011. Sales were at their peaks and we hit big in stocks. We had that big investment come in from McCarthy Inc. and from the Swan construction branch. Exported goods hit an all – time high in this period. These were the numbers I worked when Father gave me the account to handle. He gave it to me because he didn't think it would have the outcome it did."

"So basically a lot the files could be false. When sales went low he would fix the files to make it look like we actually had a hit in sales and stocks."

"Yes I'm seeing a pattern in some files. When did you start seeing duplicate numbers?"

"Files February 2012, March 2012, and April 2012. That's a big gap." I realized.

"2011 was a good year for us Jasper. Although around summer we started to see a decline our construction branch and exporting was put on a hold. Maybe that was when everything started to decline."

We sit in silence as we thought everything through.

After about five minutes of silence and pondering I finally spoke up, "Without the original documents we won't be able to know the extent of the damage. If the numbers are as bad as I think they are there will be no saving this company." I said gravely.

Just like Father said 3 months later we lost everything. I had to sell everything that was not repossessed. Turns out there was more going on that Father wasn't willing to tell us. He stole money from the company, stole money from investors, cheated in stocks, everything that a business owner could do to ruin his company he did. He was arrested, put on trial and sent to prison. Over 750 people lost their jobs and that was just the employees that worked in the main branch.

The Hale name was dragged the dirt and stomped on. I changed my name from Jasper Hale to Jasper Whitlock; my mother's maiden name.

When they took the house I moved in with Rose and Emmett but I couldn't stay there long. It felt like I was imposing and when we found out that Rose was a pregnant I knew then that it was time to take my leave. I left in the middle of the night, leaving them with a note saying I was going to go live with a friend in California. I never looked back.

I lived in homeless shelter after homeless shelter. I was content with the homeless shelters. They were warm unlike the cold New York. The beds were soft unlike the cold concrete grounds.

So how I ended up in front of these expensive, posh, and extravagant condo apartments I will never know, but what I do know, in a way, is that I'm glad that I did.

A/N: I know I deserve to be stoned but I have a valid reason. So I was getting ready to post this chapter after I posted the chapter for my story, Starting Over, but I felt like the chapter was too short so I was going to add to it. The next day when I was getting ready to post it I realized that we didn't have internet connection. I was like "Oooohhhhh shit my readers are going to kill me" and my son was like "Oooohhhhh mommy said bad word". I called the cable company and ripped them a new one stating that we had indeed paid the bill and I have proof and that a cable bill means diddly shit compared to all the other bills I have to pay. I also told them to shove all their goddamn cable boxes and Wi-Fi codes up their ass because all of it was a piece of shit.

So long story short I got a new cable company.

Thank you for reading and sticking with me.

(1) Jasper's family is a family of businesses. Jasper's dad started his own company with his wife by his side.

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With love,

~. ~ CWH01~. ~