Page 51 of His White Moonlight (Dominant CEO Shifter Romance #1)

The phone on my desk rang. Miranda beat me to answering it and put it on speaker.

“You have guests, Wrenly. Mr. and Mrs. Shane and their daughter. Do the Wulfs know you’re socializing during business hours?”

“Check your tone, Paisley,” Miranda said. “And put them in the conference room for the big spenders. Tell them Mr. Wulf will be with them soon.”

“I already put them there. I have eyes and can see they’re in the Wulfs’ circle. They wanted to speak to Wrenly alone, though.”

“Do you want to give them what they want or what Bennett wants?”

“Whatever. I delivered the message.” She hung up on Miranda.

“She’s lucky she doesn’t drive,” Miranda said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’d key her car if she did.”

I shook my head at her and started to stand.

“Wait. Where are you going?” she asked, catching my arm.

“I’m going to tell Bennett that they’re here.”

Miranda shot me a pleading expression.

“But don’t you want to find out what threats they’re going to deliver that they think they can get away with drugging you? Tell Bennett they’re here, but ask to talk to them alone first.”

“No thanks. I like breathing.”

“Alone as in without Bennett. Your personal assistant, Miranda, will be with you.”

“He’ll never say yes,” I said.

“He doesn’t have to.”

If I were honest with myself, I was curious about what tricks Lindi and her parents had that they thought would work after the ultimatum Bennett gave them.

“Can I trust you, Miranda?” I asked, watching her.

“To overspend on Bennett’s credit card every time he hands it over? Yes. To betray you in any way that would cause you physical harm? Never. I like breathing.”

I sighed, and she gave me a sad smile. “You might not want it, but you have my pity, Wrenly. I can’t imagine what kind of life you’ve lived that you have no one you can depend on. If you take me into that conference room with you, I promise to prove you can depend on me.”

“What’s your plan to circumvent Bennett?”

She popped out of her chair and opened his door without knocking…again. He was on the phone.

“I’m taking Wrenly to a conference room. I can’t wait ’til lunch. Be back in five.”

He nodded without pausing in his conversation, and she closed the door.

“Come on.”

“You’re an ace at telling the truth-not-truth,” I said, following her.

“We all are.” She winked and towed me out of the office suite while I wondered what truths-not-truths Bennett might have told me.

I already knew he was going to make it impossible for me to meet the criteria he set to leave without him, just like he knew I would reject him the moment we mated… if we mated. We were stuck where neither of us was willing to give any more ground than we already had—a silent war of wills.

How was he going to try to win an “us”?

When Miranda and I reached the conference room, she opened the door for me.

I walked in confidently, noting that Mr. Shane had taken the seat at the head of the table.

Mrs. Shane and Lindi stood behind him on each side.

Miranda kept up with me as I went to the opposite end of the table and took a seat.

Lindi didn’t look like she was worried about being disowned, which made me wonder what ace they thought they had up their sleeve.

Mr. Shane stared at me.

I stared back.

Lindi should have warned him that I wasn’t the type to play games with. I played to win, no matter the cost. It was easy to do when I had little to lose. So after a full minute of silence had passed, I stood and started for the door.

“Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?” Mr. Shane drawled.

“Not really.” I kept walking.

“One word from me and your pictures will be plastered on every corner of the internet.”

I paused and looked over my shoulder. My slow smile unnerved him. I didn’t need a nose to see that.

“I look forward to the fallout from that, Mr. Shane. Lindi isn’t the only one who took pictures.”

“Liar,” Lindi said softly.

“You’re right. It wasn’t a picture. It was a video. History class. March Seventeenth. You were bent over the desk while the substitute instructor satisfied your itch. You were making noises like a cat in heat. The window caught your o-face reflection perfectly.

“I believe his farewell gift for your years of service was a finger in your ass, wasn't it?”

Lindi paled as Mr. Shane bolted to his feet, his face red. He turned on his daughter.

“Is it possible she has a video?”

She hesitated. He slapped her hard across the cheek. Her mom tried to stop him from delivering another on the backswing. It didn’t work.

The door opened.

Bennett looked from me to the Shanes. “Am I interrupting?”

“I believe the Shanes are close to deciding between their livelihood and Lindi,” I said. “If I’m not needed for anything else, I have work to do.”

Miranda stuck with me as I left the room.

Bennett stayed behind and closed the door.

I briefly wondered what new threat he would deliver, then decided I didn’t care.

The slap Lindi received from her father replayed in my mind all the way back to my desk.

I couldn’t stop grinning. When I would have sat, Miranda caught my arm and dragged me into Bennett’s office.

As soon as the door was closed, she had her hands out pleadingly.

“Please, please tell me the video is real. I want to see it.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “I thought you could smell a lie.”

“Your emotions were all over, and you gave specific details of the events, but didn’t say what the video was.” She made grabby hands. “Let me see what you have.”

I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and handed it over to her.

While she scrolled through my pictures, I went to stand in front of the blinds to watch for Bennett. I wasn’t so sure how he’d feel about using his office to watch Lindi porn. He turned the corner at the same time Miranda started cackling.

“You absolutely need to release this to the public,” she said.

I held out my hand. “Bennett’s coming.”

She snorted. “If that were true, he wouldn’t still be so moody.”

I shot her a look, which she didn’t see. She was too busy flipping through my camera roll. I watched her humor fade and knew what she was seeing—evidence of my past abuse. My trashed room. Wrecked clothes. Bruises. Cuts. Burns.

“If you’re my friend, you’ll hand that phone to me now and leave,” I said.

She looked up, anger flashing in her eyes on my behalf, and handed over the phone just as the door opened.

“We’ll talk more about this at lunch,” she said, stepping around Bennett to leave.

He watched her for a moment, then focused on me.

“What happened?”

“The Shanes threatened to release the photos Lindi already sent you. I’m guessing they wanted to get me to talk you into leaving them alone, but they never finished their threat when I said I looked forward to the fallout of posting the video I have of Lindi having sex at school.”

“Sex?” Bennett said with a frown. “With a female instructor?”

I snorted. “Someone fed you a big lie. The majority of the instructors were female. A few were men, mostly the subs who covered maternity leaves.”

Bennett’s expression grew darker, and I knew I needed to distract him.

“Why did you show up so quickly?” I asked. “Who tipped you off?”

“Paisley said you were socializing during business hours. I was curious who you’d want to talk to. Why did you go alone?”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Miranda with me.”

He glanced out at Miranda, where she was typing away on her laptop, which was two feet from mine.

“Do you mind sharing your desk with her?” he asked.

I tried to read more into why he was asking, but his expression was a carefully neutral mask again.

“It’s a little tight, but no one’s bothered me. That makes the coziness a positive trade-off in my book.”

“You could have more space if you worked in here with me and let her have the desk out there.” His pupils pulsed larger briefly.

“Would you get any work done with me in here?"

“Yes.”

“Want me to call Miranda in here to sniff-test that lie?”

He smiled and tucked his hands into his pockets. Was it really the relaxed pose he was trying to convey, or was it a way to stop himself from reaching for me? My guess was the latter.

“I plan on having lunch with Miranda today. Do you need a hug or something to hold you over?”

“Yes.” The drawn-out word was punctuated by more eye dilation, but he didn’t move to hug me. Instead, he watched me hungrily as I closed the distance between us.

I was playing with fire as I slipped my arms around his waist. The more contact I gave him, the more he seemed to want. Would he let me reach the time limit this time?

My heart gave an odd skipped beat again as I rested my head against his chest and pressed close. He didn’t take his hands from his pockets to hug me back. Instead, a tremor ran through him.

“What did Mr. Shane say after I left?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

“He tried to appeal to my sense of family. He said Lindi is their only child and just as important to them as you were to me. He said he would send her abroad for five years to mature and develop, and we wouldn’t see her again during that time. I told him that wasn’t good enough and left.”

I rubbed my hand over his back in the soothing way Mom did when she hugged me.

“What do you think they’ll do next?” I asked.

“If you have the sex video you said you do, I think they’re going to get more desperate as their investors start withdrawing, but I don't think they’ll abandon her yet. They’ll try to talk to their connections and pull in investments from other resources.”

“Will anyone help them?”

He finally removed his hands from his pocket and wrapped his arms around me as he kissed the top of my head.

“No. With the Steeles and the Wulfs blacklisting them, no one will take that risk. Not even the small players. They might attract some foreign investors, but it will ultimately be a loss for the Shanes. I’ll make sure of it.”