Page 15 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

JULIUS

I didn’t know what else to do except rub Ethan’s back as he puked his guts out.

I wasn’t sure if it was a symptom of his concussion or a reaction to the bomb that had been detonated right before he’d fled.

More than likely, it was a combination of both.

Hell, I felt a little queasy myself knowing that someone had tried to kill us today the way they’d succeeded in killing Ethan’s sister.

It was a lot to take in.

“Fuck.” Ethan stood up straight, and I handed him a paper towel and the bottle of water Dimitri had given him.

I’d already twisted the top off, and he rinsed his mouth out before taking several tentative sips.

There weren’t words that could be said, and I already knew the answer, so I didn’t bother asking if he was okay.

I just pulled him into my arms, hugging him tight until he finally stopped shaking.

“Do you want to go back in there? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can go relax by the pool, and I’ll fill you in later.”

Ethan shook his head, his pale face set in a firm expression.

“No. I want to know what your family has found out about this fucker, and I want to know how we’re going to take them out.”

Nodding, I took his hand, and we rejoined my family.

In the time we’d been gone, it seemed like no one had moved.

The monitors still showed the zoomed-in pictures of the modified Hellcat, and it didn’t feel like they’d discussed anything important since we’d left.

“I’m sorry.” Ethan glanced around the room and was met with sympathetic nods and half-smiles.

“The day and”—he gestured at the monitors—“everything just caught up to me.”

Nero, who was the oldest of everyone currently assembled and therefore our unofficial leader, stepped forward and put one of his large hands on Ethan’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“No apology needed. We’ve got your back.”

Felix spun around in his chair, looking abashed.

“I should have saved this until tomorrow. You and Jules have already been through a lot today. I’m the one who should be apologizing.” He took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I just feel like we’re finally closing in on this asshole.” He let out a little growl of frustration.

“This has been infuriating.”

Ethan shook his head.

“I get it, and I’m good. I want to know what else you’ve found.”

Nero released Ethan’s shoulder and returned to where he’d been standing next to Hadrian.

I nodded at Marcus, who was staring at me.

“Go ahead.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have much more. Someone who has access to the AB Holdings Limited accounts made the payment, but we’ve still been unable to track down any of the principal owners of the accounts. The names we’ve found trace back to aliases that lead to other aliases. And the types of accounts they’ve set up are water-tight, meaning contacting the institutions won’t yield any better results.”

“What about the body shop that did the work? Can we pay them a visit?” Cal cracked his knuckles as he spoke, a slightly maniacal gleam in his eyes.

Nero considered that for a second.

“I don’t think that’s going to give us much more to go on, but at this point, anything is worth a shot.”

“Marcus, get me the address. Jack and I will head out there tomorrow and see what we can find out.” Cal smiled at his mate, who nodded and smiled back, a predatory look in his eyes.

Cal and Jack both had military backgrounds and had spent the last few years as hired special operatives.

They both had significant body counts, and despite the fact that Cal was impulsive on a good day and reckless on a bad day, he was damn good at his job.

“What about security footage?” Dimitri didn’t look up from his sketchbook as he asked the question.

“Nothing. Security at the shop is shit. I get the feeling not everything they’re doing is legal. The only camera in the place is behind the register, but it’s positioned to watch what the employees do rather than to capture the customers. Best I can grab are feet at the edge of the frame.”

“Can I ask a question?” Ethan’s brow was creased like he was trying to fit pieces together that weren’t making sense.

“Of course.” Marcus inclined his head, giving Ethan the floor.

“Julius told me Marcus and Felix discovered that someone using one of the shell companies you’ve been tracking is trying to make it look like I’m embezzling money from Grove Core. Are we operating under the assumption that whoever is trying to frame me is the same person who killed my sister and targeted Julius and me today?”

Murmurs went around the room, but it was Felix who spoke.

“Yeah, I think so. My best guess is they are trying to put you on your heels on multiple fronts, hoping you fold under the pressure. We’re working on finding a connection between the payment made to the body shop and Grove Core, but whoever this is passes money through multiple accounts, and back-tracing every transaction takes a stupid amount of time.”

“Wait a minute.” Ben stood up from the couch and came to stand next to Hadrian, who was still studying the images on the monitors.

“If someone paid for the modifications to the car, would they also have paid off whoever was driving it?”

“Shit. That makes sense. I stopped looking when I found the payment to the body shop, but yes.” Marcus swiveled his chair around, almost displacing Eli, and started typing.

“I’m going to run the same program I used to find the payment to see if any of the offshore accounts saw other large lump-sum payouts.”

Ben beamed, obviously feeling like he’d done something useful.

He was an art history professor, so his role in all this had been limited.

“Maybe we can get an ID on the driver if you can find payoffs.”

Eli frowned thoughtfully.

“That would be the break we need for sure.”

“One more question.” Everyone turned to look at Ethan.

“What Grove Core accounts has this asshole been skimming from?”

Marcus swung back to his computer and pulled up the logs he’d been monitoring.

“I’ve only found a connection to two Grove Core accounts.”

Ethan stepped forward to look over Marcus’s shoulder, and my cousin pointed to the screen.

“Those are both US accounts. What about any of the global accounts?”

Marcus turned to Ethan.

“The global accounts?”

“Yes. When my grandfather established the US headquarters for Grove Core, he segmented the business into global operations and US operations. Technically, they are the same company, but internally, they run as two separate entities. My father is the global CEO based in Beijing, and I’m the US CEO based here in Seattle. Each arm of the business has its own C-suite, board, operations teams, and independent accounts. If you’re in the system I gave Julius access to, you can only see the US accounts. We’re operating under the assumption that whoever is behind all of this is targeting me specifically, so they’d be skimming out of the US accounts, but what if they aren’t isolating their activities to just those accounts? As US CEO, and before when I was the US CFO, I had access to all of the accounts, both the US accounts and the global ones. If someone wanted to make this look like a pervasive and long-term plot, they could have been pulling from both using my credentials.”

“Well, fuck.” Marcus rubbed a hand over his face.

“I feel like an idiot for not seeing that. It didn’t seem like there was enough capital in the accounts we’ve been looking at to support global operations, but I thought that was part of the problem we were investigating. Knowing those funds only support US operations makes a shit ton more sense. Are you willing to give us global access so we can backtrace transactions from those accounts into any of the shell corporations we’ve been monitoring?”

“I don’t think I have a choice. I haven’t wanted to involve my father in any of this, but after today, I don’t think I have a choice in that regard either. Guess I’m going to have to stop dodging his calls.” Ethan closed his eyes like he couldn’t think of anything worse, and I put a hand on his back, offering him my support.

Ethan looked at Felix.

“You’re already in the US network, right?”

Felix nodded.

“Pull up the log-in page if you can, and I’ll give you my credentials.”

Felix scoffed like Ethan’s request had offended him and turned back to his laptop, pulling up the screen Ethan had requested.

Ethan typed in his credentials, then wrote them out on the piece of paper Felix handed him.

“I assume you can take it from there?”

Felix smirked.

“With pleasure.” He cracked his knuckles and started digging into the files Ethan had provided.

“Is there anything else we need to discuss? If not, I think we should let Julius and Ethan get some rest.” Nero rotated Felix away from his computer, and Felix whined, trying to claw his way back.

“And you need to eat something other than Twizzlers.”

“Fine.” Felix pouted up at him.

“I’m dying to dive into this.” He tipped his head toward his laptop.

“And I’m waiting for several scans I’m running to finish, but I don’t have anything else at the moment. Marcus?”

“No. I don’t have anything more. Once you get the accounts isolated, I can start running the transaction data and see if we get any matches to the shell corporations.”

“Okay, then let’s go order takeout.” Nero started for the door, and Quin laughed.

“It’s your night to cook, isn’t it?”

Nero pretended to look shocked.

“Is it? Oh, well, too bad I already promised everyone takeout.”

“It’s safer that way,” Cal teased as people started trickling out of the room.

The room devolved into good-natured bickering, but Ethan’s focus was still fixed on the monitors.

I twined my fingers with his, and he gave them a squeeze.

“Right after the accident, one of the detectives asked if there was anyone who might have wanted Tessa dead. I said no, and they abandoned the theory that the accident had been a murder. I just can’t believe it. If I had given it more thought, maybe we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Don’t do that, E. It’s not your fault.”

He shrugged like he wasn’t sure he believed that.

“Now that you know it wasn’t an accident, can you think of someone who might have wanted her out of the picture?”

“That’s all I’ve been trying to do since we got back in here. There’s no one, Julius. Tessa was a great person, a good boss, and an awesome mom. People loved her.”

“Maybe it wasn’t about her personally. Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted her position?”

“I don’t know. Now that we’ve expanded the circle to look at the global company, it’s a lot more people to consider, and I don’t know where to start.” Ethan rubbed at his forehead.

“My head is throbbing.”

“Let’s go get you another round of painkillers and some rest.”

Ethan yawned, and I heard his jaw crack.

“What about the twins?”

“I’ll take care of them.”

He started to protest, but I held up a hand.

“Let me take care of you first.”

“Okay.”

I led Ethan out of the basement and upstairs to my room.

He took off his baseball hat and stripped out of his T-shirt, then sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

He struggled out of his jeans, and I took them from him, tossing them over the chair in the corner.

He was naked except for a pair of black boxer briefs, and I couldn’t keep my eyes from roaming over every inch of his body, mentally cataloging the worst of his bruises from the accident.

Dark purple marred his shoulder and across his chest from where the seat belt had held him back, and I dropped my mouth to the bruises, pressing my lips to them gently like I could kiss the pain away.

Ethan relaxed under me, and I straightened, passing him two ibuprofen and the glass of water I’d put on the nightstand.

He smiled up at me and swallowed the pills down, passing me the glass and crawling under the covers.

“Thank you.”

I tucked the blankets around him, but he was out before I could reply, so I pressed a kiss to the cut on his forehead and silently slipped from the room.