I was glad Danisha had left her files here, since they had provided a valuable distraction to Victor, but I hated the thought of that…child moving her things into my home as though she had any right to live here.
Whatever Victor was planning to do with her things, it served her right. She had left the files here, hadn’t she? If her invention was so precious, she would have taken all of her work with her. She abandoned these boxes, and now they were mine to do what I liked with them.
I shut the closet door and was beginning to fold up the retractable stairs when I heard Adrian calling my name.
“Sally? Where are you?”
“In here!” I replied, shoving the stairs up just in time for the attic door to swing shut as Adrian entered the guest bedroom. I turned to smile at him.
“Were you just in the attic?” He asked me, looking at the ceiling.
I looked up. The cord to pull down the retractable stairs was swinging wildly, back and forth. I looked back at Adrian who stared questioningly back at me.
“Uh, yes. I was. I was just checking to see if I had left anything here from…before.” I said, indicating when we had been married.
“Oh. Did you find anything?”
“Nope, just a bunch of dusty old file boxes of yours,” I told him. My heart was pounding.
He stepped closer, putting his hands on my shoulders.
“Are you alright, Sally? You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine. The attic was really warm,” I lied again, pulling out of his reach.
Adrian still looked concerned, so I quickly changed the subject.
“Was there something you needed?” I asked, walking out of the bedroom, hoping Adrian would follow me. A hot rock sat in my stomach, burning away with guilt.
“I thought we could eat lunch together. I’m due for a break,” he said as he walked behind me.
“Uh, sure. That sounds great,” I said, thinking of how Danisha’s files were waiting back in the closet. Victor’s countdown weighted heavily on my mind. If I didn’t get those files to him soon, he would expose me.
And then I would lose Adrian forever.
***
I could tell Sally was unhappy. She barely looked at me through lunch. I knew it was because I had spent the entire morning working. She still had issues with the amount of time I spent working, apparently.
It was true that my relationship with Sally improved greatly when I wasn’t working, but that didn’t change my drive and ambition. I was the kind of man who felt the urge to act and create. I couldn’t let a day pass without pushing something forward.
I had the rest of the evening booked with video conference calls to potential clients, but tomorrow I would make sure to spend time with Sally.
I went to bed late that night, well after Sally was normally asleep, but when I reached for her in the darkness, she wasn’t there. I guessed that she needed her space, and after several anxious minutes, I finally fell asleep.
The next morning when I woke up, I immediately looked to see if Sally was there. She wasn’t, and her side of the bed was still perfectly made. She hadn’t come to bed at all last night.
I got up and put on my bathrobe. If nothing else, I needed to make sure she was still in the house and hadn’t left me altogether. I immediately found her in the kitchen, sipping a fresh cup of coffee.
“Good morning, my love,” she said cheerily as she poured a mug for me.
“Good morning,” I replied warily, taking the coffee she handed to me. Sally seemed completely normal. A little tired, perhaps, but otherwise her mood had entirely reversed from yesterday.
I felt guilty about having worked all day yesterday, but if Sally was over it, then I didn’t see any reason to bring it up again. I still thought today was a good day for us to spend time together.
“How would you feel about taking the day off together?” I asked her.
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“I can play hooky for a day,” I told her.
Sally turned away from me and set her mug of coffee on the counter.
“I’m actually supposed to finish up sending some files to my lawyer for the house. It finally sold. I’ll be all yours by lunch.”
I hesitated, but if Sally was giving me a free pass to work on the weekend, then I was going to take it.
“Sounds great. See you at noon.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and went up to my office to work.
Chapter Four
I checked my watch. My driver informed me half an hour ago that he had just picked up my lawyer, Iraja Puri, from the international airport in Moscow. They were to arrive any second.
Iraja Puri was my personal lawyer for any…indiscretions I might have a part in. She was completely merciless in the courtroom and she was honest to the point of rudeness in real life. The former trait of hers was mostly why I hired her for, but the latter made me consider her the closest thing I had to a friend.
Iraja stepped smoothly inside when I opened the door for her. She seemed completely unaffected by the blustering winter winds that rippled through her straight brown hair.
“Welcome, Iraja. I hope your flight was pleasant,” I said.
“Of course it was, Victor; it was your plane, after all,” she replied.
“Would you care for a coffee? I know the jetlag from Sri Lanka must be hell.”
“Yes, and perhaps you can tell me why I needed to drop everything and come to you. You had better not be in trouble again. I don’t know how many more legal miracles I can perform to save your ass.”
I laughed. Normally, I couldn’t stand most people. Even before Adrian had proved to me how those you trust most can hurt you the worst, I had chosen to spend my time alone.
Iraja was one of the only people whose company I truly enjoyed. I admired her blunt ruthlessness, though I preferred to use a more subtle approach when dealing with people.
I motioned for her to follow me as I walked down the hallway and into my study. Far different than my mansion on the island, my home in Russia was much darker, with thick rugs overlapping each other on the dark mahogany floors.
I had a fire roaring and espresso set out for us to enjoy. Behind me, my fax machine was printing documents that spilled over onto the floor in a pool of white paper. Iraja looked at the rampaging printer and then back at me.
She shrugged her shoulders, sat down on a suede wing-backed chair and poured herself an espresso. I laughed again. She knew I would get around to it.
“Very well, Iraja. Here.” I pulled a single slip of paper off of my desk and handed it to Iraja. It was the first page of Danisha’s files that Sally had sent me.
I watched as Iraja read it several times over, letting the numbers sink in, absorbing their potential growth. She was hooked, I could tell. She’d help me just to get a percentage of this for herself. I didn’t even have to hire her.
“Is this your idea?” she asked, finally.
“Do you care?” I asked, answering her question with one of my own.
“If there’s no claim on it, then it’s no one’s,” she replied.
“Which means it’s mine if we work fast.”
“Which means it’s ours if I work fast,” Iraja corrected me.
I came from around my desk and we moved to sit on the couch, closer to the fire.
“So what do you do? I know for certain that there’s nothing currently like the EyeRead on file, but I don’t know how long it will stay like that. The…benefactor of these files might soon send in for a patent,” I told her.
Iraja sipped her espresso. “I’m assuming that by “benefactor” you mean the person you stole these files from. You haven’t been stupid, have you, Victor?”
My laugh was slightly forced this time. I didn’t like when someone made the mistake of thinking I was stupid. Not even Iraja.
“Iraja, please. You ought to give me more credit than that. I didn’t obtain these directly, and I made sure to have them sent to you on the behalf of an “anonym
ous investor,” who is, of course, myself.”
Iraja gestured for me to continue as she helped herself to a biscuit off of the coffee tray.
“Once the original inventor of the EyeRead finds out that it has been stolen from her, she will do some investigating, only to find out that these files were sent to you from her former lover’s home. She’ll be too distraught to look into the matter any further,” I told her.
“What if she does? What if her lover finds out he’s being framed?” Iraja asked.
“Even if he suspects me, there’s no evidence to convict me of anything. The true culprit will never come clean. I’ve made sure of that,” I said, thinking of my absolute hold over Sally.
Iraja pulled her laptop out of her bag and began typing furiously.
“What are you doing now?” I asked her.
“I’m filing a PPA—a Provisional Patent Application. It’s the first step in claiming an invention as your own. I’m setting precedence for us. I have a friend that will push it through. I’m sending this to him now.”
“Good.”
“Before I do, is there anything you want to change?” Iraja asked me.
“Like what, for example?” I said, confused.
“The name, perhaps? It could delay them finding out what happened.” She said, shrugging.
I stopped to consider her idea briefly. I sipped my espresso and looked into the fire.
“No. I want it all.”
***
“The patent clerk will be right with you,” The secretary told me. Professor Besberte and I stepped away from her desk and sat to wait for our appointment.
Bess did what she promised and squeezed me in for a meeting to push a patent through for my invention. She said her friend at the patent office, Calvin Horowitz, had a special interest in optical engineering and would be extremely interested in a presentation about my invention.
I fidgeted in my chair. I was exhausted, having spent another sleepless night preparing for this, but my dream was finally becoming a reality. I was ecstatic.
A few minutes later, Calvin poked his head out of his office and gestured for us to come inside.
“Ms. Carter, so nice to meet you. Bess has been going on and on about you and somehow I still don’t know a thing about your invention.”
I winced slightly as Calvin shook my hand enthusiastically. “Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. I’m grateful for the opportunity,” I replied politely.
“Nonsense, Calvin, or Cal, if you please. We’re all friends here, right?” he said cheerily.
Bess and I sat down together on a couch in Cal’s office. He sat across from us and shuffled through some paperwork.
“Alright, Ms. Carter, whenever you’re ready,” he said when he settled a few minutes later.
I took a deep breath. I wanted everything to go perfectly. I knew this wasn’t a pitch to an investor or a business, but it was still important. I wanted to live up to Professor Besberte’s praise.
“The EyeRead is an innovative twist on current technology that we…” I trailed off as soon as I had started. I didn’t know how, but Cal appeared to already be lost.
He was staring at me in a very peculiar way.
“Mr. Horowitz… I mean, Cal?” I said, questioningly.
“I’m sorry, what are you here to patent?” he asked.
Bess and I exchanged confused glances.
“The EyeRead.” I said slowly.
Cal looked at Bess. “What is this?” He asked her, gesturing to me.
Bess quickly glanced at me, then back to Cal. She pulled out my binder and handed it to Cal.
“If you’re confused about something, just take a look in here. It’ll answer all your questions,” she said, placing a calming hand on my shoulder.
Cal flipped through the binder haphazardly. “Yes, I have seen all of this already, but it doesn’t answer my question of why you have it,” he said, shutting the binder and dropping it on the table with a harsh thump between us.
“Excuse me?” I blurted out. My stomach and heart felt like they were fighting each other to leave my body first.
Cal’s eyes went back and forth between Bess and me like he didn’t understand what he was hearing.
“Schematics for the EyeRead were submitted almost two days ago. It’s sent the technological world into a frenzy. Where have you two been?”
Chapter Five
I felt as though my entire body was shutting down.
I listened to Cal explain to Bess that something called a PPA had been filed on the EyeRead when suddenly my ears began to ring, and their voices became muted.
I saw him pull out another binder full of blueprints that looked exactly like my own when I got tunnel vision and my peripheral began to turn black.
I felt Bess grip my shoulder and then my whole body went numb.
My heart slowed and I couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly everything snapped back and the world was loud and bright and all too fast.
“It’s okay, Danisha. We can fix this, Cal will help,” Bess said.
“Wait a moment, Bess, how sure are you this girl is the true designer of this product?” Cal protested.
“Cal! Of course she is!” Bess said. They began to bicker about the validity of my claim to the EyeRead.
I couldn’t take it anymore. First someone had stolen my work, and now people suggesting that I was a thief.
I stood up and walked out of Cal’s office, ignoring both of their objections. If I stayed one more minute, I would either burst into tears or break everything in sight.
I walked out of the patent office and down the sidewalk, ignoring everything and everyone around me.
How could this have happened? How did someone get my files? It was my design. It wasn’t like my design, it was my design. The blueprints, the data, even the name! It was all my idea.
I wasn’t careless or stupid. I didn’t hand out this kind of information to everyone I met, so how did someone else manage to get their hands on these documents?
As I walked, I mentally ran down a list of everyone I knew who had access to those kinds of files. I kept them all on my computer, which required both a password and a thumbprint to get into.
Then I remembered I had left files in storage at Adrian’s house. I knew he wouldn’t have stolen my work from me, but perhaps he accidentally threw them out and someone else discovered them.
What I needed was more information. I knew Cal Horowitz wouldn’t be able to help me. I had already seen that the EyeRead’s PPA had been filed by a lawyer in Sri Lanka, but what I needed to know was how she got those files.
I doubted she would tell me if I called her up and asked, so I needed to hack into her system and find the IP address that sent her the files. It wasn’t exactly legal, but I didn’t care. I hurried back home, determined to get to the bottom of this.
I slammed the front door of my apartment shut behind me, startling Marisol on the couch. I barely saw her as I strode into my room.
“Raphe stopped by!” she called after me.
“I’ll call him later!” I called back as I shut my bedroom door.
I threw myself into my desk chair. I needed to get into this woman’s computer. If I had the time to wait around, I would have sent an email with a Trojan virus embedded in it and just waited for her to open it. I didn’t have the time, however, so instead I did something a lot riskier.
I hacked into her Wi-Fi network system and remotely accessed her computer. If I wanted to, I could have turned on her camera to record her every movement.
I quickly scanned her recently downloaded files and found the sender’s IP address. I copied it down and after only a few moments of hesitation, severed the link between the two computers. I cared more about who had stolen my files than who patented them.
I entered the IP into my tracking system and waited for the computer to triangulate the position. I watched as it slowly began to center in on the United States and then on Colorado.
The
map closed in on Aspen, then on Adrian’s street, and then stopped with a bright, blinking outline around Adrian’s home.
Adrian sent the files.
He had found my files in his attic and sent them to a lawyer to patent the EyeRead for him.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Victor had taken a significant portion of Adrian’s business away by stealing the solar panel deal. I guessed that Adrian wanted to rebuild his business by taking a leaf out of Victor’s book and stealing something from me.
I burst into hot, ugly sobs. I had never blamed Adrian for choosing Sally over me. I knew he cared for me, which is why I still loved him and felt as though I would always love him.
I never thought he would ever be capable of doing something like this to me. He had always seemed so honorable, but I guessed his latest interaction with Victor turned him bitter.
Marisol must have heard me crying, because she knocked on my bedroom door and then entered.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked as she gave me a comforting hug.
I quickly gave her a brief rundown of everything that had happened today.
“Have you tried calling Adrian to see what he has to say about all of this?” Marisol asked me.
“Aren’t you listening, Marisol? He’s the one who stole the EyeRead! Why would I call him?”
“This doesn’t seem right. You said Adrian has never done anything like this to you or anyone else. Why would he randomly start now?” Marisol mused aloud.
“I told you: he got his business stolen from him,” I said, sniffling into a tissue.
“But he’s not the kind of guy who lets other people’s bad behavior influence his own. I think you should call him. Hey, if he really did steal it, maybe you can get him to admit it and use it as evidence or something.”
I paused. Marisol had a point. I could set a trap for Adrian. If I recorded him admitting that he stole the EyeRead files from me, I could sue him for the rights.
Someone knocked on our apartment door. It was Raphe coming by to check on me. I hadn’t replied to any of his texts the last couple of days. I had been too busy getting ready for my patent presentation to be worried about his feelings being hurt.
Hang Em' Up: A Bad Boy Sports Pregnancy Romance Page 75