by Jagger Cole
“Is everything—”
“Not at all,” he growls. He’s seething when he looks up at me. “We just lost half of our clients to your fucking brother. And we had a hacking breach of our servers last night.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe. I jump out of bed, my heart racing.
Barrett calls his driver. Then he hangs up and finishes pulling his clothes on. “Want a ride?”
I arch a brow. “Is that…okay?”
He still looks furious, but he flashes just a bit of a smile anyways. “Yeah, it is. Get dressed. We need to get to the office.”
“Half.”
Barrett’s voice cuts through the silent tension of the conference room like an ax. I glance around. Things do not look good. They look pretty freaking grim, actually. This morning, without any prior notice, fully half of King Equities’ investors jumped ship. Worse, they all went to Roland’s company.
And just to put a rotten cherry on the whole shitty thing, King Equities’ iron-clad internal servers were hacked last night. Needless to say, everyone present looks like they’re at a funeral. With the furious look on Barrett’s face, it just might be one.
“I know this seems bleak, Barrett, but we can come back from this.”
Helen’s trying to be optimistic. It’s not having much of an effect on anyone. Least of all Barrett. He paces the head of the table, snarling and looking almost like a caged animal. I know this is a grim moment. I know I should feel as gutted as everyone else in the room.
But goddamn, there’s something about the look on his face and the fury in his body that is so freaking hot right now.
Helen frowns. “Barrett, why don’t you sit.”
He glares at her. But then he nods. I expect him to sit at the head. But he prowls around the table until he gets to the empty chair next to me. I tremble when he sits down heavily beside me. It takes a lot to stop myself from grinning right now.
“Ideas,” he snaps. “Anyone, go.”
“We go on the offense,” Ravi, Barrett’s chief quantitative analyst, pipes up. “Sir, we’ve got the resources. The team and I can start playing dirty literally any time you give the word. Let us throw everything we have at Simmons.”
Helen shakes her head. “No, Roland would expect that. They’ll be ready.”
I suddenly jump. Under the table, Barrett’s hand lands on my thigh. He squeezes it possessively, sending a tremble of heat through my core. I glare at him. His face is still livid and cold. But feeling his desire for me even with everything going on has me clenching my thighs tightly and blushing.
“So we go after the investors that left,” Ravi frowns. “Parsons? Nuemanoff? They’re dinosaurs, Mr. King. They’re not nearly diversified enough or ready for a full-on assault. Hell, Parson’s is way over-leveraged in pharma. We could rip into LumenTech. Bill would be crawling back here by this afternoon begging for—”
“And we’d lose the other half of our investors in the meantime who are also heavily invested in LumenTech,” Helen snaps. She glares at Ravi.
Under the table, Barrett’s hand slides higher up my inner thigh. He’s deliberate. He’s after what he wants. And my only response is to slightly open my legs.
“James,” Barrett suddenly barks. He turns his head to glance at a group of people furiously typing away on laptops at the far end of the conference table. He focuses on his senior cybersecurity tech. “Where are we with the hack?”
“Tracing it now, sir,” James mutters. He’s glaring at his screen and pounding on the keyboard.
Barrett’s hand moves even higher. It keeps going. When he suddenly pushes it all the way up between my thighs, I gasp. He cups my bare pussy and growls quietly. He leans into me, making it look like he’s reaching for the crystal pitcher of water in the middle of the conference table.
“We’re in full-blown crisis mode, and you still didn’t wear any panties to the office today,” he growls into my ear.
“Rules are rules,” I whisper breathlessly.
He clicks his teeth. “Bad, bad girl…”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Barrett and I both startle when James chokes out the words. Everyone turns to look at him. Barrett’s hand slips from between my legs but stays on my thigh. “What?” He grunts.
“The server breech…” James frowns at his screen. “Fuck me, it wasn’t a brute force hack. It seems the subroutines were compromised from implanted binary AI malware—”
“In English, James,” Barrett growls.
The tech looks up. “It wasn’t an outside hack. Someone uploaded malicious software that gave them a back door to our servers.”
Barrett stiffens. “Uploaded from where.”
James’s mouth thins. He looks up from his screen. “Internally, sir. From the office.”
Everyone in the room gasps and starts talking at once. Helen is shouting, Ravi starts up too about locking down the whole office. But suddenly, Barrett’s voice booms over it all.
“Who.”
It’s like a hammer coming down. The whole room quiets instantly. Barrett’s hand closes to a fist on the table in front of him. The one on my thigh tightens almost painfully. His nostrils flare, and he turns to James again. “Who was it.”
“Tracing it now,” James mumbles. He keeps typing furiously on his laptop. But then suddenly, he stops. His face grows pale. He looks up at Barrett, then at me. Then Barrett again. But then his gaze switches to me once more before Barrett again.
“Sir, could we have a word in private?”
Barrett scowls. “No, speak.”
James glances at me again. I furrow my brow in confusion. Why the heck does he keep looking at me?
“Sir, I really think it would be best if we spoke in private—”
“It would be best,” Barrett snarls. “If you would start talking, James.”
The tech swallows and clears his throat. He looks down at his keyboard. “Sir, the malware was uploaded from Ms. Laurent’s office.”
My stomach drops through the floor. It feels like there’s ice in my veins, and I can’t breathe. The whole room is silent. Everyone turns to look at me in horror and disgust.
“I’m sorry, what?” I choke.
Barrett’s hand drops from my knee. The loss of contact hits me like cold water. He stands and backs away from the table. I whirl to look at him wildly. But all I see is coldness in his eyes.
“How sure are you, James?” He hisses. His eyes never leave mine.
James shifts nervously.
“James!” Barrett barks.
“Completely, sir,” he whispers. “There’s an internal log of all terminal activity. The upload was from Ms. Laurent’s office.”
I stand abruptly. It feels like I might fall over, but I grip the table. “That’s…that’s not possible!” I whirl towards Barrett. “It’s not!”
His jaw tightens. He glances at Helen. “Call security.”
My heart drops. My jaw hits the floor in horror. “BARRETT!”
“IT IS MR. FUCKING KING!” He roars.
I stumble back against the table, shaking. “It…I…” this isn’t happening. This can’t be real. But I look around, and the anger and betrayal I see on everyone’s faces is pretty real. But suddenly, I frown. I turn back to James.
“The attack was last night?”
James nods. I whirl back to Barrett, glaring at him. “Last night,” I hiss. “The attack was last night.”
I don’t say it out loud, but the meaning is clear. Last night, he was with me. Last night, he was fucking me, actually. Barrett’s jaw grinds. Slowly, he nods, like he’s agreeing with me. I feel the beginnings of a wave of relief.
Barrett turns to James. “Ms. Laurent was working on something for me last night, at her home. I can vouch, I was on the phone with her hearing her report. She wasn’t at the office.”
James shrinks. “Sir, the attack was last night. The login that uploaded the malware was two nights ago.”
Barrett’s face turns to ston
e again. His eyes slide back to me. They harden and narrow. He gives me a withering look.
“Barrett…” I whisper hoarsely.
The door opens and two security guys walks in. “Sir?” One of them grunts.
Barrett’s eyes never leave mine. He looks so hurt and angry. His jaw grinds, and I can see the wheels moving behind his eyes. But suddenly, his look hardens.
“Escort Ms. Laurent off the premises,” he growls quietly.
My heart rips in two. “Barrett!” I yell as the two guards approach me. “It wasn’t me!!”
One sliver of doubt flickers on his face. He holds a hand up to the two security guys and glances at James. “Could anyone else have used her computer?”
James squirms in his chair. “I mean, you, sir.” He laughs a nervous little laugh but then shuts up pretty quick. He shakes his head. “But no. No one like a secretary or any other employee aside from Ms. Laurent. Only a C-level access, like yours, could have overridden it.
“Well,” he snarls thickly. He turns back to me with fury in his eyes. “I think we can agree it wasn’t me,” he hisses. I feel numb and cold. He turns to the two security guys and nods stiffly.
“Get her the fuck out of here.”
“Barrett!” I scream when they grab my arms. “Barrett, wait!!”
“My name,” he snarls. He storms right over to me, looming over me full of wrath. “Is Mister King,” he snaps furiously.
I’m shaking. I’m hurt, but I’m so fucking angry too. I’m angry at what’s happening. I’m heartbroken that he actually believes I could have done this.
“Is that fucking clear, Ms. Laurent?” He hisses.
I grit my teeth. I glare right back at him. “Are you still my boss?”
“No,” he growls quietly. “I’m not.”
“Then fuck you.”
His mouth tightens. His eyes glare at me.
“Get her out of here.”
16
Barrett
Around me, Rome is burning. My people are fighting like crazy to put out fires. Helen is having emergency meetings with investors; James and his team are redoing security for the company from top to bottom. Ravi and his math guys are digging deep to see what our options are.
Even the one silver lining news I’ve received today is turning to shit. Apparently, the police have caught Lisa, my stalker. That would appear to be good news. Until the second shoe drops: she’s suing me for hurting herself in my shower. Which she broke into. The shit-storm does not end.
Things are grim. Very, very grim. And the fire isn’t out yet. This morning, half of our investors jumped ship. But it hasn’t stopped. Ever since then, there’s been a slow trickle of calls and emails. All of them “regrettably” informing us of their decision to pull out of King Equities. I’ve had my own investigators digging and following all them: they’re all going to Simmons Financial.
James has told me it’s probably what the hack was about. They got client and investor data, and they’re using it to hard pitch them. Which means that Roland is probably behind all of this. Christ, that alone makes me want to walk down the street to his place with a fucking baseball bat and start swinging.
But at the end of the day, I know I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I fell for the trap, and I fell hard.
Ten years ago, I never looked at her like that. Of course I didn’t. Delphine was Roland’s kid sister. Then, she grew up. She grew up, and Roland used her to get through my defenses. Somehow, Delphine Laurent is my kryptonite. She’s my weakness, apparently.
She’s been my undoing.
I know it’s too early to drink. But once I’m alone back in my office, I storm over to the bar cart. I pour myself a glass of whiskey and slump into a chair by the window. I look out over New York—my empire.
But now this empire is crashing down.
I came from nothing. Dad did the best he did, but we barely ever had two bucks to rub together. But then one day, I go to pick him up at work, and I meet Roland. The guy has everything I don’t: money, cool clothes, nice toys, and a future. But for whatever reason, we hit it off.
Roland and his dad had helped me get my shit together and apply to colleges I had no right to apply to. Yeah, I was smart, and I had the grades. But Roland came from private school, me from public. Roland’s family had all the money in the world to send him anywhere he wanted. I wasn’t going to be able to even afford trade school.
But the work paid off. I scored a scholarship free ride to Harvard. Fucking Harvard. How does that even happen for a trailer park kid like me? I stuck out there, but I put my head down and worked. The future was going to be mine and Roland’s.
And then he screwed me over, hard.
I drink slowly. I remember prison. Eighteen months isn’t a long stretch. But it was enough to derail my life. Bye-bye scholarship. Bye-bye Harvard. I close my eyes. And bye-bye to my dad. Dad’s pancreatic cancer moved fast. He’d come to see me early on in my sentence. Then when it got bad, he was stuck in a hospital bed. My state-appointed lawyer put in a plea for me to be able to go see him. But by the time that got approved, it was too late. He was gone.
I think that’s what I hate Roland Simmons for the most. He took that from me. He took away me being able to say goodbye to my own father.
And now, he’s come back to stick the knife in again. This time, the blade hit my heart.
I slam back the rest of the whiskey and glare out the window. This time, Delphine was the weapon. And she was an effective one, too. I walked right into that. I saw her, and I wanted her. I wanted her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. It made me blind. It lowers my defenses.
She broke down my walls.
The worst part is, I want to hate her, but I can’t. I want to scream and curse her name. But my goddamn heart won’t let me. Because deep down, I know the truth.
I was in love with Delphine. Shit, I might still be.
I shake my head. I stand and pour another drink. I prowl to the window and lean my head against it. I look down into thin air, at the streets below.
I fell for her, and I fell hard. I cut love out of my life the day my dad died while I was in prison for a crime I didn’t do. I hardened my heart. I put on armor that I never intended to take off. That cold ruthlessness got me to where I am at the very top.
Yet, I was missing something. And I didn’t even know what it was until Delphine walked into my world.
And now, it’s gone again.
It would be poetic to say there’s a war inside of me between loving her and hating her. But that isn’t true. There’s no war inside. There’s no pendulum. The most fucked thing about this entire day is that at the end of it, I’m still in love with her.
I want to hate her, but I can’t. Because I love her.
17
Delphine
I wander aimlessly, in a trance. It feels like I’m sleepwalking. Or like I’m walking through mud. Everything seems slow and sluggish. The entire city around me feels like it’s muffled by gauze wrapped around me.
But mostly, I just feel cold and empty. And so hurt it feels like I might fall over.
I stumble down one street and then another. I have no plan. I’m not heading anywhere in particular. All I know is, behind me is the pain of what just happened. The only hope is that one foot in front of the other will take me away from it.
But I’m not sure that’s true. The hurt is too deep, because I let him inside. I don’t even know what just happened. But I know I let down my guard. I was blinded by my stupid schoolgirl crush on Barrett. Maybe there were office politics at play I ignored. Because all I could see was him.
I want to hate him for what just happened. After what we’ve shared? After the bliss I know we both felt together? How could he look at me like that? How could he believe that I’d stab him in the back like that?
“Watch it!”
I gasp as a woman knocks into me on the street. It’s totally my fault, I’m walking blindly down a New York City sidewa
lk in the middle of the day. I mumble an apology to her back. But my thoughts are scattered.
I blink and look up. I’m standing outside of a really ritzy, expensive cocktail bar and restaurant named “Celine”. I frown, because I know I’ve heard the name before. Maybe it was some place that Ella wanted us to go out to?
I shake my head. But then I shrug. Why not? I never really did go out and celebrate my fancy new job. Might as well celebrate the demise of it.
I take a breath and shuffle inside. Yikes, this place is very, very fancy. A maître d smiles cordially and offers to seat me at a table. But I shake my head.
“Just the bar.”
“Of course, miss.”
I shuffle through to the elegant cocktail bar area. This isn’t that far from Wall Street, so there’s the usual lunch crowd of stock traders and finance types. I sit away from anyone else at the bar. I saw screw it and order a martini. Because seriously, screw it.
I sulk into my drink when it comes. I want to hate him. I really do. But I can’t, and I know why. It’s because I’ve fallen too far with him. The crush from when I was younger burned into something much hotter. And much deeper. That’s actually the most heart-wrenching thing about this whole mess.
It’s not that I just got fired. Or even that I just got fired by Barrett, for something I didn’t do. It’s that I think I just lost the man I’ve fallen completely in love with.
I sip my drink and let my eyes scan the room. I’m not focusing on anything, just zoning out. But suddenly, I blink in surprise. A girl's just walked into the bar area. She looks as hurt and angry as I am. But she also looks scared and nervous. Her hair is kind of a mess, over her face, and she’s clutching her purse tightly.
She starts to walk towards the back of the bar. Then she stops and heads back for the front door. And then again, she turns towards the back. This time, she pushes her hair back, and I almost choke on my martini.
I know her. The nervous girl is Amanda Taylor. She’s the girl my fucking brother assaulted when we were sixteen.