Page 41 of Love.V2 (Occupational Hazards #2)

Tess

The walk of shame didn’t sting as much before the sun came up, but making my way home, still feeling cold despite cranking up the heat in my car, did.

At my apartment, I texted Dylan, asking him to call me when he got the chance. By nine a.m., I’d showered and made my way to the office, and I still hadn’t heard from him.

My stomach was a ball of snakes, lurching and curling and making me so nauseous I would have thrown up all over the elevator floor if I’d had anything to eat today.

I blew out a breath, staring at my strained expression in the mirrored doors.

I had promised Dylan I would trust him. And I would.

This was surely some sort of post-traumatic reaction to him flying out the door without an explanation, like I’d seen him do so many times before.

Not some gut-twisting premonition that just as we’d been about to settle into our future together, I’d lost him to the siren song of his mistress, Worther.

This wasn’t that at all.

At all .

I was so focused on reassuring myself, I nearly plowed headfirst into Danny as he hurried out of the break room, holding two paper cups full of coffee.

“Ah!”

“Crap!” I squeaked, watching the hot liquid slosh onto his hands. I lunged towards him as if I could do anything to help. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay. Probably my fault. Had a rough night.” The dark smudges under his eyes stood out against his skin. He looked a little gray.

“Yeah…” I trailed off. If something was going on at Worther, Danny would know too, right? “Dylan got a crazy call a few hours ago.”

Danny snorted. “I bet. They had my ass on a plane in the middle of the night. I’m just laying over here to talk some stuff over with Eric before I head to Nashville.

” He nodded for me to follow him as he walked down the hall to Eric’s office.

I just about keeled over when I saw the CEO, himself, walk out of the door.

I assumed he was here yesterday for the emergency “Dylan’s going to be CEO” meeting, but I hadn’t seen Eric in weeks. He’d taken the off-boarding thing pretty seriously.

“Tess.” He nodded in my direction, taking the coffee from Danny. “How are you this morning?”

His voice lacked its usual pep.

“I…” I wasn’t sure how much to say. “I was just talking to Danny about his early flight. Dylan had to get up early, too.”

“Right. That’s right.” Eric’s usual personality broke through for a moment as he winked at me. “I always suspected there was something going on with you two. ”

“He didn’t say anything to you, did he? About Worther?” Danny interjected. Eric glanced between us.

“He just said he had to go, and he was talking to someone on the phone about a lot of work stuff I didn’t catch.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat that had been there for hours. “He asked me to trust him.”

I wasn’t sure why that last bit popped out, but it seemed relevant somehow. Like the men in front of me needed to know I was out on a limb here, too. Deep down, I hoped they’d give me some information to ease the roiling in my gut.

Eric looked pointedly down at his coffee. “Maybe for the best,” he muttered, just as Danny nodded.

“Give us another day, Tess. It’ll all come out in the open soon. Just…not right now.”

Dylan being cagey was one thing, but all three of them? It was like I’d stumbled onto some kind of international conspiracy, which was ridiculous. We were an advertising agency, for Pete’s sake. What could be so secretive?

“Tess!”

Before I could demand answers, Noel burst from the other side of the office, Henry hot on her heels. She looked panicked, and for a wild second I wondered if she knew what was going on here, and was coming to tell me.

“The Botto files are gone.”

I blinked, staring as she practically sprinted closer.

“What?”

She skidded to a stop in front of me. “All the Botto files. Gone. ”

“The presentation for tomorrow, the source files, all our previous iterations. Even the original RFP is corrupted!” Henry was practically panting, worry emanating from him in waves.

“What do you mean, gone?” Corrupted? What? My poor, sleep-deprived brain was being whipped around. From a lonely hotel room to a corporate conspiracy, and now whatever this was?

“It was Victoria. We can see the timestamps. She logged into everything yesterday after she left the office and somehow erased it all or corrupted the files. We can’t get to anything.” Noel bit her lip, fingers twisting together.

My stomach swooped, brain finally clicking in. “Nothing? Not even previously saved versions?”

Their heads shook in unison and I glanced at Danny and Eric, as if they’d have any brilliant insights for me. Eric was rubbing his forehead, looking pained. Danny winced.

“That would have been Dylan’s job to cut off all the access. Maybe he forgot?”

My intestines squeezed tighter. I was sure he had forgotten. And I knew why. Because of the crazy fight we’d had in my office immediately after Victoria had left the building.

My breath hitched, like I was being constricted from the inside out. “Alright. Alright.” What to do? First things first.

“We need to make sure all her access is revoked. Passwords canceled, accounts closed, everything. See if there’s anything else she’s messed with, so there won’t be any more surprises down the line.”

“That, I can do,” Eric jumped in, eager .

“Let’s salvage everything we can. Anything that’s been saved on personal computers, sent over emails…Is there some sort of backup somewhere? IT?” I looked again at Eric, who nodded and pivoted to stride into his office.

“I’m not sure what they can do if she’s messed with the file histories, but I can ask.”

Noel sprinted back to her cubicle, Henry close behind.

“We can…see what we can recover and, if we need to, piece together the presentation again. Most of the work was already done. It won’t be perfect, but we can get it close.” I babbled to myself, wringing my fingers.

“When’s the presentation?” Danny asked.

“Tomorrow morning.”

His entire face fell, and I just knew, on top of every other shitty thing that had happened today, he was about to pile more on. “Damn. I really thought you were going to do it.” He shook his head, eyes pitying.

I groped for the half-wall of the cubicle behind me. I had a feeling I’d need some support for this. “Do what?”

Danny huffed, glancing around. We were alone. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you know now. Nothing we can do about it. Worther is going to close Jinx down.”

Every ounce of oxygen got sucked from my body. “ What? ” I was getting really freaking tired of asking that question today, but it seemed I’d woken up in Wonderland and everything was determined to go belly-up .

“That’s why Dylan was here. Henry wanted to see bigger margins from this branch, otherwise…” Danny trailed off, shaking his head. I got the picture.

“That’s why Dylan has been so focused on the accounts and new pitches? Margins?”

“Henry wants tripled profits within the year. Botto will make a dent, but you’ll need more. Henry wants—er…” Danny trailed off in a strangled cough. “Well, I’m not sure what will happen now.”

“We…Dylan and I fought about it. I thought he was just being a workaholic.”

If Danny looked any more pitying, I was going to die. “He was dead-set on saving this place, Tess. Took a pay cut, even. You know, Henry wanted to announce Dylan as his successor a few months ago.”

“As CEO?” Did I sound shrieky? Because I felt shrieky. I’d known Henry wanted Dylan as CEO eventually, but he’d been offered the job now ? And Dylan had just…given it up?

“Yeah. Then Eric started talking about retiring, and Henry starts thinking about shutting this place down. Honestly, I think it was the push Dylan needed to finally put his foot down and tell Henry he was leaving no matter what. Talked Henry into letting him give it a shot here.” Danny’s voice got soft.

“He told me you’d sacrificed a lot so he could have the career he wanted.

You deserved a shot at your dream job, too. ”

Blood rushed to my head. Why didn’t he tell me? I knew he’d come here for me, but he had come here for me .

And now he was gone.

The Botto presentation was gone .

Jinx was, maybe, going to be gone soon, too.

As I glanced around, I noted people’s faces. Chassie, and their love of all things pop culture. Meery, and her burgeoning social media career. Tobias, who had two kids at home and another on the way. Noel, and that house she wanted to buy.

A crushing weight pinned me to the ground.

It was a twisted sort of irony for me to get a glimpse of what Dylan dealt with daily. I wondered how often he felt like this? This panicked, out-of-control feeling where everything was on my shoulders and all I wanted to do was grab every ball in sight to make sure it didn’t drop.

If he’d felt like this, I wished he’d have told me. Maybe I’d ask him when I saw him again.

But I had things to do first.

“Jinx is not closing.”

“Huh?” Danny’s face screwed up in confusion, so I repeated myself, louder this time.

“Jinx. It’s not closing. Not now, at least.”

Something sparked in Danny’s eyes. Curiosity. Respect, maybe. “What are you going to do?”

“Salvage this Botto presentation, to start. Then bag a few more clients. And then…” I glanced at him. Or maybe glared, given the way he flinched backwards. “Then you’re going to tell me exactly where Dylan is and what is going on, so I can fix that, too.”