Page 41

Chapter 41

Dante

The first thing we have to do after Ava and Ethan find the mole is consult with our lawyers again.

I won’t ever forget the looks of joy on their faces as they ran up to tell us. Ava leapt into our arms, practically glowing with excitement. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that happiness stays and she doesn’t ever have to worry about this jackass ever again.

Of course, just one sketchy log in to a new schematic alone isn’t enough for us to successfully slam Marcus with proof that he’s been engaging in corporate espionage. Instead, we use that as the jumping-off point.

Now that we have just one person to investigate, our employee Tracy in R&D, we can comb through everything she’s done the last few months and gather more evidence to confront her.

Being a techie herself, she’s done a good job of covering her tracks. I’m not surprised that Ava couldn’t find anything, even with how hard she was working, although I know Ava doesn’t see it that way.

She compiles everything Tracy’s done, every single email sent, literally everything, including times she logged onto her work account while at home in her apartment, and goes over it all again late into the night.

We’re more than happy to find ways to pull her away from her work and get her to sleep. Fucking her nice and slow and deep until she’s exhausted from orgasms is my favorite way. She drops right to sleep after that and can catch up on her rest.

I tease her that this is how we’re going to have to treat her when she’s got her animal shelter up and running.

“Are we going to have to come into your work and fuck you to get you to leave?” I tease her while we cuddle in bed after some very athletic sex.

Ava laughs. “Honestly? Maybe.” Then she adds, “But only if I can come into the office and do the same to you guys when you’re neck-deep in some new invention and also forget to sleep.”

What a pack we make. We’re a bunch of workaholic peas in a pod. “Deal.”

I love it. I love how we balance each other out and we’re able to take care of each other, how we get work done but also have fun. We make a great team, the five of us.

Life truly is better since Ava came into it, and I intend to keep it that way.

Caleb goes into work and while Tracy’s out, he checks her computer. We pick Caleb because he just looks so innocent. Nobody will question whatever he’s doing.

From Tracy’s history on her computer, it looks like she’s printed out a lot of things, including blueprints and other technical information on our smart watch. There’s no reason for her to print any of this, since all the work for it is done on the computer or with other equipment in one of our main development rooms.

She simply can’t really get any work done on these little print-outs. Even if she were taking this all home to do some overtime, and from what I’ve seen of her reports to the team, she hasn’t done nearly enough work for that to add up. The people who do take our work home have to get permission anyway, and log it in. She hasn’t done that.

No, she’s been printing this stuff up so that she can take it back to her place and give it to Marcus, who can then take it to his team and have them read it all and create an exact replica.

There’s also the number of times she’s logged onto her work account from her home Wi-Fi. There’s no reason for her to have done that, especially since those times she’s logged on also don’t show any changes made or work done on the device.

It’s pretty damn clear she was just logging on so that she could show Marcus, or someone from Marcus’s company, the information on the watch.

We’re all pretty damn sure it was Marcus himself. Ava doesn’t think that he would’ve trusted anyone else with this mission, and besides, if he shows up at his company with all the blueprints for this new device, he gets to look like a genius to his employees and the shareholders, and nobody will be the wiser. There’s no one who can rat him out.

Except for Tracy.

Our lawyers inform us that while this is all good stuff, it’s entirely circumstantial. To get Marcus to cave, we need a confession from Tracy.

So that’s exactly what we do.

I go into the office with Ethan. Garrett wants to come with us, but we’re worried he’ll intimidate Tracy a little too much and she’ll clam up out of fear. Caleb’s a bit too soft. She’ll think she can work him over. But Ethan and I should be able to strike a good balance.

We get to my private office and call Tracy in. The moment she enters, Ethan closes and locks the door behind her. “Tracy, please.” I gesture to the chair in front of me. “Sit.”

She lies at first. Of course she does. She gets indignant and insists that she doesn’t know what we’re talking about. She says that we’re out of our minds and that we’re assholes for even thinking for a moment that she could engage in corporate espionage.

“We have the information from your computer, Tracy,” Ethan points out. “We’re not accusing you for no reason here. We know what you did. We were just hoping that we could talk to you about it instead of slapping you with legal action.”

Tracy goes pale at those words, and I can feel her mentally grabbing onto Ethan’s soft tone. She wavers, and holds steady in her lies for a bit longer, but finally, it all comes spilling out.

I record the conversation—and inform her it’s being recorded, so Marcus can’t throw it out later—as she details what happened. How Marcus ran into her and was so charming and handsome.

Yeah, I suspect he orchestrated that chance meeting. My employees at the company tend to get lunch from one of the restaurants that are on this street and they’re all creatures of habit. It would be easy for Marcus to pick a pretty girl who he knows goes to the same sandwich shop every day for lunch and stage a meet-cute.

Tracy starts to cry as she explains that she didn’t plan to hurt anyone. Marcus was just so charming and persuasive, and she loved him. He promised her that he’d hire her on as the head of Research and Development at his company when his version of the watch was launched, and that he would marry her.

Yeah, I know he’s a big fucking liar for that, and a major asshole, but of course Tracy didn’t see that. I realize, as she cries and confesses everything, that I’m looking at possibly who Ava was years ago in college.

Tracy’s shy and quiet, and she’s probably a bit of a wallflower in her social life. She doesn’t get the attention of charming, handsome men like Marcus. They pass her over for more vibrant and confident women.

It makes my stomach churn and my blood fucking boil. This is what he did to Ava. What he’s done to Tracy. What he’s probably done to countless other women. He sets them up and manipulates them and then gets them to do things they never would’ve done. Then they get into trouble in some way or another, or just get straight-up abused, and he walks away scot-free.

Not anymore.

Ethan and I have her confession, and with her cooperation, we get all the other files that she’s sent to him. She shows Ethan how she covered her tracks for anything technological so that it wouldn’t show up when we went looking, and all the deletions she did, and how she would print things out so there was no digital paper trail.

“People act like technology is safer,” Ethan tells me when all is said and done. “But actually, if you really want things to not be recoverable or traceable, it’s better to do things the old-fashioned way.”

Tracy’s situation is tragic, but we’ll deal with the fallout of that later. I’m not sure if we’re going to prosecute her or not. She’s not nearly as important as getting Marcus to stop.

And getting him to back the fuck off from Ava.

The four of us compile our file of evidence and head over to his office. There’s a security guard and a check-in desk on the ground floor just like there is at our building, but we don’t even break stride as we walk past them.

We step onto the elevator, glaring down anyone who looks twice at us, and take it up to the top floor of the company building.

Once the elevator comes to a stop, we march toward Marcus’s office, where his secretary, another young woman, jumps up. Judging by her wide eyes and frantic expression, she recognizes us and probably knows why we’re here.

“I’m sorry, but do you have an appointment?” she asks quickly.

The dark, petty part of me wants to ask if he’s sleeping with her too. I want to tell her that he’s using her, and that whatever promises he’s made to her are empty lies.

“An appointment or not doesn’t matter,” Garrett growls. “We’re here to see Marcus, and we’re not leaving until we do.”

“I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment.” She tries for a smile but can’t quite manage it. “So if you’ll please wait…”

“We’re not waiting,” Garrett says shortly, and then he picks her up and gently moves her out of the way so that I can storm past her and into Marcus’s office.

Marcus is sitting at his desk, on the phone, and he jolts when I enter. “I’ll call you back,” he says into the phone. “I have to go.”

“Talking to your lawyer?” Ethan says, his tone sharp and falsely sweet. “Bet you called him the second you heard us outside trying to get past your poor secretary.”

“Does she know that you’re fucking Tracy over at our company?” I ask, making sure that my voice carries as Garrett steps in, so the secretary can hear me before the door closes. “Or have you made her a bunch of empty promises, too?”

I think I hear a startled, upset gasp right before Garrett closes the door to the office and locks it.

Marcus looks back and forth between all of us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have a perfectly professional relationship with my secretary, and with all of my employees. I’ve never heard of this Tracy person. I know what’s going on here.”

“Oh? You do?” Caleb asks, his voice full of acid. When even Caleb is furious with you and ready to punch you, you know you’ve fucked up. “By which I mean, you know why we’re here, but you’re going to lie and say that you think we’re here for a different reason.”

Marcus glares at us. “Look, I know that Ava has put you up to this.” His face morphs into a mask of what he probably thinks is sympathy. “She’s had a hard life, poor thing. I’m sure hiding her Omega status for so long has…”

Garrett growls and starts to move toward Marcus, but I manage to hold him back. We can’t have any of us arrested. We have to work together to protect Ava and that means not looking like the bad guys, no matter how fucking annoying it is.

“Ava told us what you’re like, and honestly, that doesn’t even matter. We were content to live and let live so long as you stayed away from her,” Ethan informs him. “But you had to go and fuck with us.”

“We know that you stole everything about the Omega smart watch from us.” I slam the file of evidence onto his desk. “You’re not going to weasel your way out of this one. Either you give up and you back down on launching the watch, or we’ll sue you into oblivion.”

“And get you arrested for corporate espionage,” Caleb adds.

“This is fucking ridiculous.” Marcus stands up. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I developed my own product completely of my own design.”

“Right. So when we investigate your company and we find that none of your employees came up with any work and you just did it all because you’re that much of a genius, that won’t look suspicious at all?” I scoff. “Face it. This is the kind of thing it takes a team working together for a while to accomplish. Nobody is going to buy that you just came up with it and handed out the blue prints.”

“Everyone loves a tech genius,” Marcus points out slyly.

“And everyone loves a liar they can hate even more,” I shoot back.

“You won’t get away with this slander,” Marcus hisses. His confident, Alpha vibe falls away, and he sounds like the slimy snake that he is. “You’re going to suffer for this.”

“You’re really not in a position to be making threats.” I tap the file on his desk. “Go on. Look through it. We can wait. We have everything we need. Any threat you make toward us is empty. We know what you did.”

Marcus drops his gaze down to the file, then back up to me. He goes back and forth for a second, before curiosity wins out. He snatches up the file and flips through the papers inside.

I knew he’d do it. Frankly, an innocent man wouldn’t bother. If someone came into my office accusing me of shit I knew I hadn’t done, I wouldn’t bother to look through whatever shoddy ‘evidence’ he gave me, until it was time to hand it over to my lawyer if need be.

But Marcus is guilty. And he wants to know exactly what we have on him. If it’s real or a bluff.

I bluff when I play poker. Not when I’m dealing with my company or the happiness and safety of my Omega.

Marcus sets the file down. He’s stiff, now, and clearly pissed. I don’t bother to hold in my smirk.

“I see,” he says.

“Yeah, you do,” Ethan snaps at him.

Marcus clears his throat and sits down. “Tracy is a spineless pushover. She was for me. I should’ve known she’d be the same for you.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Caleb growls. Tracy might have hurt us, but we understand she was manipulated. And you just don’t fucking talk about a woman that way. Full stop.

“Why, are you fucking her as well as Ava?”

“We have something called an ability to show basic respect,” Ethan snarls. “Unlike you.”

“Don’t bother,” I warn them, raising my voice. “He’s not fucking worth it.”

I brace my hands on the desk and lean in so that I loom over Marcus. He’s about the same size as I am, physically, but I know I could take him in a fight, and I have my pack mates at my back.

“You’re going to pull the watch from the market,” I tell him, my voice quiet and dangerous. “You can say whatever you want. Make up some bullshit excuse. I don’t care. But you’re either going to pull it, or we’re going to take all of our proof, and Tracy’s confession, and we’re going to sue your ass to kingdom come. You’ll be lucky if you even have a pot to piss in by the time we’re through with you. Understand?”

Marcus stares up at me with fury in his eyes, his jaw clenching and unclenching. But he knows that he’s beat. We know that his product was stolen and we’ll slap him silly with lawsuits before he can even get his product to market for people to try.

“Fine,” he says tersely. “I’ll pull the product.”

“Do it today,” I order. “If that product isn’t gone and your statements retracted by this time tomorrow, my lawyers will be banging your door down.”

Marcus nods. He looks like I just pissed in his corn flakes. Good.

I push myself up from his desk and walk out the door. The others follow, Garrett slamming the door behind him as we leave.

The secretary sits at the desk, on the phone with someone, hunched over. She glances at us fearfully and then goes back to whispering into the phone, covering her mouth so we can’t hear. I think she’s been crying, going by how red and puffy her eyes are.

I feel bad for her. I just hope that she gets a better job and away from that dickbag.

We leave the building and get into the car, and I grin savagely in triumph.

“We fucking did it!” Ethan crows in victory.

“Holy fuck.” Caleb sounds elated and slightly disbelieving.

I grin and gun the engine. I can’t wait to tell Ava.

None of the others object to my breaking several speed limits on the way home. We all want to make sure Ava knows as soon as possible. She’s going to be absolutely elated.

She’s been worrying herself over this even more than we have, because she blames herself for it. As if Marcus wouldn’t have found some other way to be a huge asshole to someone else if he hadn’t run into her.

That’s just the kind of guy Marcus is. And I’m glad we got the chance to stick it to him.

I whip the car into the driveway and kill the engine, hopping out and striding up to the front door. I throw it open and immediately hear Ava’s footsteps as she runs into the foyer from wherever she was.

“I heard the car,” she says breathlessly. “You sounded like you were racing, is everything okay? How did—”

I don’t even bother with words. I sweep her into my arms and crash my lips to hers in a passionate kiss.