If I took on more clients, it might cut into some of the time I spent with Sally, but we had spent so much time together lately I doubted she’d mind. Besides, she seemed to have a new appreciation for my work time.
She’d been taking a special interest in my business, asking about my responsibilities with the clients, how I made my decisions, and the like. I really appreciated how much of a turnaround she had made since our divorce.
***
“I can’t do this anymore, Victor!” I hissed into my satellite phone.
I had been snooping around, asking Adrian pointless business questions I didn’t understand in an attempt to gather information for Victor. Not only was I terrible at it, I felt so guilty I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You will do what I tell you to do, or I will tell Adrian everything,” Victor snapped back.
I didn’t want Victor to tell Adrian about my part in his plan to kidnap Danisha, but I also didn’t want to undercut Adrian’s business any more than I already had. He was beginning to work more and more these days, trying to build his business back up. What if destroying his business had only given him the incentive to build a new one?
I tried a different tactic. “I’m no good at this. I can barely remember what he tells me because I don’t understand any of it. His computers are all password-protected and they’re designed to erase all data if you try to hack it. I can’t even ask to borrow it because it’s a special one for work,” I said.
Maybe I could convince Victor to drop this whole thing if I could make him believe it was too big of a risk.
“My dear Sally, I truly do not give a shit if you’re too stupid to even understand your own husband, but you had better understand this: if you don’t find me something that gives me one over on Adrian, I will call my special friends at the FBI and have you in a federal prison by tonight. Now, tell me you understand,” Victor said.
I stared at the phone with a fierce, ugly hatred.
“Adrian isn’t my husband anymore.” It was all I could think to say.
“Fine, ex-husband. Whatever. Just tell me you’re going to do what I tell you to do.”
“I’ll find something.”
The next day, after Adrian left to meet a client, I went into the attic. When we were married, Adrian had stored dozens of boxes of files up here. If I sent it all to Victor, maybe I could bog him down with paperwork. He couldn’t blame me for not giving him information if he was up to his neck in data.
I wrapped a handkerchief around my nose and mouth and put on a pair of gardening gloves. I might not be planting flowers, but I was digging for something.
After two hours, I managed to separate the boxes into two piles. One side was Adrian’s business files, and the rest were something else.
They weren’t files concerning companies or clients. It looked like a lot of tech data. Most of the documents were test reports for some kind of device. There were lots of charts and graphs. I found one box that was entirely blueprints, but I couldn’t make out what they were blueprints of.
At first, I thought Adrian was helping someone patent their invention, but none of the files I looked through had his name anywhere on them. Instead, all of the files were initialed “D.C.”. I shrugged and set another box marked “D.C.” to the side. A post-it note that had been stuck to the side fell off and fluttered to the floor.
I noticed an address had been scribbled onto the post-it. It said “Danisha Carter, Room 214, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139.” These were Danisha’s files. She must have brought them here to work on when she moved in with Adrian over the summer.
Hang on, Adrian had briefly mentioned Danisha’s invention at one point.
I had made somewhat of a rude comment about Danisha. I said that girls like Danisha were high-maintenance. They looked for rich men so that they could be taken care of. Danisha was a beautiful and broke college student. If she went to MIT, she was obviously intelligent enough to know how to use her beauty to her advantage.
Adrian had gotten angry and told me that Danisha used her intelligence to her advantage, not her beauty. Apparently Danisha had invented a smartphone that would catapult us into the next century.
“What cellphones did to landlines, Danisha’s EyeRead will do to smartphones,” Adrian said.
My hands started trembling. I began to hurriedly sort through Danisha’s boxes. I didn’t want to mix up the files any more than I already had. She had been gone for months; if she hadn’t sent for the boxes by now, then she must have her own copy of the files at school.
That meant I had some time. There were at least seven boxes here, all filled to the brim with information about the EyeRead. I needed to get every last page faxed to Victor before Danisha decided she wanted it back.
That night, I scanned and emailed Victor the first page in Danisha’s files. It had a partial description of projected growth for potential investors. Victor called me within twenty minutes.
“Did you get my present?” I purred once I was sure Adrian was locked away in his office.
“It’s almost too good to be true… Where did you get it?” Victor asked, suspicious.
"When you were spending time with Danisha on the island, did she ever mention a pet project of hers?”
“The EyeRead! Of course! She asked me to be a potential investor and gave me some return rates… I thought she was a silly little girl playing pretend with the numbers she quoted me. This is hers? It’s real?”
“The files are certainly real.” I told him about the rest of the boxes.
“Send me everything,” he demanded.
“I’m already working on it.”
“Good.”
“After this, Victor, we’re done.” I said. “I’m not helping you anymore.”
“Of course, my dear. Whatever you want, just send me the files.”
With that, Victor hung up the phone, leaving me with the sinking feeling that it was not the last I would hear from Victor Vaskov.
The Billionaire’s Dark Escape Book 5
Bella Rayne
Chapter One
Exhausted, I leaned back in my chair and pushed my work away from me. I rubbed my eyes. They burned from reading for so long. I checked the time. It was just after midnight. I’d been working on coding for the EyeRead for over seven hours.
Earlier today, Julia Brunner, the Dean, sent me an email telling me that based on my current grades, I would not be welcome back next semester. I guessed it was because I had barely been to class since the school year started. All of my time was spent working on the EyeRead.
I had become so wrapped up in my personal project that I let it get in the way of my homework and attendance.
Frantic, I emailed the Dean back, begging her for the opportunity to plead my case. I was in this mess because I spent too much time working on the EyeRead, but perhaps if I showed her the technological significance of my invention, I could get an extension on some of my classwork.
The idea for the EyeRead first come to me my senior year of high school. Even then, I knew that it would be revolutionary. It was going to completely change the personal computing market.
The EyeRead used interlocking, wafer-thin OLED screens like those used for laptops or smartphones. At its smallest size, the EyeRead was roughly the size of a deck of playing cards. Unfold it once and the OLED screens interlocked to be used as a cellphone. Unfold it again and it could be used as a tablet for reading or watching a movie. Unfold it a third time to its largest size, a fifteen-inch screen, and it could be used as a laptop with a projecting holographic keyboard.
Its genius was rooted in the concept of minimalism—a growing trend in the 21st century. A half-dozen different products that increasingly had the same capabilities were marketed to us in every area of our lives. You can make a phone call on your laptop, watch a movie on your phone, write a paper on your tablet, and all vice-versa. The only difference was their size. The EyeRead was everything in one.
I had contemplated the idea
of hunting for an investor right after graduation. If I had done that, I probably could have at least a lesser version of the EyeRead on the market by now and be living in an apartment on Fifth Avenue, but then I received my acceptance letter from MIT, and I knew that I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to receive such an amazing education.
Now I was about to lose that education. It was my senior year of college. I was so close to graduating. I had to convince the Dean to give me another chance.
About an hour after I had emailed the Dean, she responded, telling me to come to her office tomorrow with a summary of my work. I allowed myself to breathe a tiny sigh of relief, and then immediately thrown myself into my work. I wanted to make sure my presentation to the Dean tomorrow was perfect.
Even though I knew I had done all I could for now, I was still too wired to go to sleep. I grabbed my phone off the desk and called Raphe.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said when he answered.
“Hey, Raphe. Is it too late for me to come over? I could use a distraction.”
“You know it never is.”
“Ten minutes and I’ll be on my way.”
“I can’t wait. And Danisha?” He asked.
“Yes, Raphe?”
“How do you feel about bubble baths?”
Two deliciously sensual hours later, I lay on the sheets naked while Raphe rubbed lotion into my back. I sighed happily. Almost every night for the past week, I would call Raphe after I finished working on the EyeRead, and one of us would head over to the other’s place. Usually I went to Raphe’s apartment. His roommate was a medical student so he was never home.
The bubble bath and massage were unusual and incredibly welcome surprises. I wondered if Raphe could somehow sense that I needed some extra attention tonight.
Speaking of extra attention, I felt Raphe along my backside, indicating he was also ready for extra attention. I grinned and turned to lie on my back. Reaching my arms to encircle his neck, I arched into him, releasing all the tension in my body.
“Solman Kane is having a party. Do you want to go?” Raphe asked as we lay together afterwards.
“You know I have to work,” I told him.
“Danisha, I didn’t even tell you which night it was.”
“I work every night.”
“That’s the problem…” Raphe grumbled under his breath.
“Do you want to repeat that a little louder?” I asked him.
“That’s the problem!” Raphe yelled.
“What’s the problem?” I did not understand why he was so mad.
Raphe sat up in the bed and crossed his arms. “You work every night, Danisha. You work until midnight and then you just call me to fuck so you can fall asleep. You never have time for anything else except sleep, sex, and your stupid pet project. I’m supposed to be your boyfriend, not your distraction.”
I was furious.
“My pet project?” I hissed. “This isn’t my pet project, Raphe, it’s my life. My work is my life. I thought you understood that.”
“It’s alright if work is the most important thing in your life, but it shouldn’t be the only thing in your life,” he said.
“You know what, Raphe? If you have more important things you could be doing, go ahead and do them. God knows, I do.” I got up and put on my clothes, slamming the door on my way out.
Chapter Two
I spent the rest of the night hunched over my desk working on the EyeRead. I woke up the next morning with a serious cramp in my neck. I had fallen asleep at my desk. Thankfully, I hadn’t drooled on anything. I had just enough time to shower and eat before I needed to make my way to the admissions building for my meeting with the Dean.
An hour-and-a-half later, I was sitting outside her office with a two-inch thick binder full of papers in my lap, waiting for her secretary to let me in.
“Ms. Carter, hello,” she said when I finally went inside. She got up from her desk and came around to give me a firm handshake.
“Hello, Ms. Brunner.” I replied.
“Please, sit down.” She gestured to the barrel armchair in front of her desk.
I sat, placing the binder in the armchair next to me.
“Is that all of your work?” She asked me.
“Uh, not all of it, but the important parts.” I told her.
She raised her eyebrow at me. “If nothing else, I can at least see where your time went. That’s quite a lot of research there, and you tell me there’s even more.”
“Ms. Brunner, I’m sorry about my grades, but the EyeRead is very important to me and I know it could one day be very important to the world. If you could please…”
I had been about to launch into a well-practiced speech I was certain would convince the Dean to allow me back, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.
“I’m sure your explanation of why you have allowed this to interfere with your schoolwork is a good one, but I’m afraid all that matters is if what I see in that binder is something that MIT can endorse. Many of our students have wonderful inventions, but they know they have to put their grades first,” she said evenly.
I handed over the binder silently. There was clearly nothing more that I could say to persuade her. I would have to let my work speak for itself.
Unfortunately, all I had were tests and theories so far. It was a still going to be a while before I could create a prototype. Technology like that was expensive, and I simply didn’t have the money for it.
That’s why I wanted to graduate from MIT. It would give me the credentials for an investor to feel comfortable backing me. If that didn’t work out, I could get a job and pay for the EyeRead myself.
I carefully studied Ms. Brunner’s face as she looked at my research. After only a few minutes of reading, she looked up at me in shock. She immediately looked back at my work and began to read even faster.
After about fifteen minutes of watching her read in silence, I quietly cleared my throat. Ms. Brunner didn’t seem to notice, so I cleared my throat again, louder this time. She looked up at me like she had forgotten I was there.
She reached over to her intercom. “Please get me Professor Besberte,” She told her secretary.
Professor Besberte was my optics professor. I hadn’t been to her class in over two weeks.
I rubbed my hands together nervously. I still didn’t understand what exactly was going on. It didn’t seem like I was going to get kicked out anymore, so that was good, but what did the Dean want with one of my teachers?
A few minutes later, the Dean’s secretary let Professor Besberte into the room and she sat next to me across from Julia.
“Julia, if you called me in here to talk about Danisha’s status, I already told you everything in my email,” Professor Besberte said to her.
“I know, Bess, but I need you to take a look at this.” Julia handed my binder over to Professor Besberte.
She began to flip through it, reading carefully. After a few minutes, it was clear she had become as absorbed in it as Julia had been.
“Did you know about this when you sent me that email?” Julia asked Bess.
“If I had, I wouldn’t have sent it. Danisha, this is amazing,” she said, turning to me.
I had been sitting here in silence for over half-an-hour as they had looked over my research.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“She tells me she has even more work done on this.” Julia added.
“Danisha, why didn’t you bring this to me? This work is incredible,” Bess said.
“I wanted to make sure it was perfect before I showed anyone,” I told them.
“Well I’m glad you brought this to our attention. If you hadn’t, who knows how long something like this could have been delayed. Have you spoken to anyone at all about it?” Julia asked me.
“Not really. Some friends and family, but I haven’t asked anyone to invest in it for me, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t even got a patent on it yet,” I adm
itted sheepishly.
Bess and Julia went still. I looked back and forth between them. Clearly I had made a mistake somewhere. Bess reached over to me and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Danisha, you need to get a patent on this immediately. If there are other people out there who know about this, they may try and take it from you, and without a patent you will have no way to get it back,” Bess said.
“No one I know would do something like that,” I brushed her off.
“Money makes enemies of the best of friends. Get the patent and then it will never be an issue,” Julia told me.
“I will even help you file for it if you would like. I’ve done it several times myself. They’ll be closed by now on a Friday, but when they open on Monday we’ll be first in line.” Bess offered.
I agreed. I still thought it was unnecessary, but they were right. If I had learned anything from Adrian’s “negotiations” with Victor, it was best to be cautious.
Chapter Three
I silently crept towards Adrian’s office door and pressed my ear against it. I could hear his low voice, muffled through the door. He was on the phone, probably trying to sign a new client.
Normally I would resent the amount of time that he had been working lately, but right now the last thing I needed was Adrian’s attention. I needed to get into the attic and pull down seven boxes full of files, and fax every single page inside to Victor.
Stepping away from Adrian’s office door, I headed down the hallway to the spare bedroom where our attic access was located. I pulled down the retractable folding stairs, appreciating that they came down smoothly and quietly.
I quickly climbed the stairs, hoping that my footsteps wouldn’t echo through the ceiling as I moved Danisha’s files closer to the attic entrance. The boxes must have weighed at least twenty pounds each, and moving them down the steps was no easy task. By the time I had neatly stacked the last box in the closet of guest bedroom, I was sweating heavily.
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