Sherryl Woods - The Delacourt Scandal

Bryce Delacourt is the most powerful, sanctimonious man in all of Texas, so, yes, if you can find a way to bring him down, by all means do it, Griffin Carpenter said, his wrinkled face an inscrutable mask. Only the tell-tale blaze of excitement in his black eyes indicated to Maddie Kent the intensity of his passion for this particular story.

No one knew why Carpenter had it in for the power brokers of Texas, but hed made it his lifes work to expose their foibles. In his late fifties now, hed been described alternately as an ambitious crusader or a vengeful, mean-spirited man. Maddie didnt care which he was or what his reasons were. Those were the words she had been waiting most of her life to hear, the chance shed worked her butt off to get.

The Delacourts had ruined her family, and now they were finally going to pay. If there was so much as a hint of a scandal in their past, so much as a whiff of illegalities in their business dealings at Delacourt Oil, she would find it. And she would expose them for the heartless, rotten human beings they were behind their facade of generosity and family loyalty and perfection.

Her own passion for the hunt had been a long time building. She had been ten when her father had come home one day to announce that hed been fired, cast aside because of a simple mistake that anyone could have made. As he told it, it had been nothing more than an accounting error that should have meant nothing to someone with the Delacourt wealth.

But Bryce Delacourt was a hard man, and so Frank Kent found himself out of work without a reference. He would never work as an accountant again, at least not for a company of any size or respectability. Delacourt had seen to that.

The humiliation of it had broken the man Maddie had adored. For five years, his self-esteem in tatters, he had moved from one dead-end job to another, never earning more than minimum wage. His family had suffered far more due to his increasing depression than because of the lack of income. The warm, generous man whod been involved in every aspect of his childrens lives was gone, lost in lonely, self-imposed isolation and bitterness.

When Maddie was fifteen, her father committed suicide. Hed almost botched the attempt and had lain in a coma for two horrendous weeks before finally getting his wish and dying.

That final act of a sad and desperate man had all but destroyed the family, financially and emotionally. Maddies mother had retreated into her own private hell, aided by alcohol. Her brothers had turned into street thugs to get what they wanted. Only Maddie had used that defining moment to strengthen her resolve to succeed. She had vowed at her fathers grave that one day she would be in a position to make the Delacourts feel that same kind of pain.