Page 21 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
JULIUS
On Friday, Ethan set up shop at the bar in the basement, answering emails and taking phone calls like he would have if he’d been in his office.
I had holed up on the couch in my former lair, helping Marcus and Felix attempt to trace the email Ethan had received and trying like hell to make all the pieces of information we had fit together.
I was cross-referencing another set of transactions with Ethan’s schedule in case he was backed into a corner and had to prove he didn’t initiate the transfers into the offshore accounts, when I heard his raised voice speaking in rapid Mandarin.
He sounded pissed, and I set my laptop aside to see what was wrong.
Ethan was pacing the bar area, running his free hand through his hair as he spoke to whoever was on the other line.
His back was to me, and when he turned around to start his next circuit of the room, he jumped a little, clearly surprised to see me.
“Everything okay?” I mouthed, not wanting to interrupt.
He shook his head and pulled the phone away from his ear, covering the bottom with his hand.
“My uncle. He’s giving me an earful about the financial lockdown.”
Something about that didn’t feel right.
Ethan had spoken to his father about the lockdown, and his dad wasn’t happy about it per se, but he was supportive of Ethan’s decision.
His uncle was only the chief manufacturing officer for the global arm of Grove Core.
He didn’t have the authority to give Ethan shit about anything.
“Do you need anything?”
Another shake of his head.
“No. It’s fine. I’ll come find you when I’m done.”
“Okay.” I watched Ethan pace for another minute, then returned to my spot on the couch, the work I was helping Marcus with forgotten as I looked up anything I could find on Ethan’s uncle, Chen Lin.
There wasn’t much. His company profile was minimal, his profile picture the Grove Core logo.
He had no social media presence I could find, and when I dug a little deeper, I found only a couple personal accounts with healthy balances indicative of his role within Grove Core, and several investment accounts that were decently funded, but there was nothing there that raised a red flag.
“Jules! What are you doing?” Felix’s impatient tone made it clear he’d been trying to get my attention for a minute.
I shrugged and closed my laptop.
“Ethan is on the phone with his uncle, and I wanted to look into him a little bit.”
“And?” Felix bent down to retrieve an energy drink from the minifridge, popping the top, downing a long sip, then looking at me expectantly over the top of the can.
“And nothing. He’s boring as fuck. His investments aren’t even that high risk.”
“Yeah. I remember him from when we ran backgrounds on the Grove Core leadership team. He was pretty unremarkable.” Marcus had rolled his chair around Felix so he could see me.
“What made you want to look into him again?”
“Just a feeling. Ethan said he’s giving him shit about the financial lockdown, and I thought that was weird.” I ran a hand over my face.
“After yesterday, I think I’m just jumping at shadows.”
Felix took another drink from his can.
“Maybe. Maybe not. That email yesterday was fucked up. It makes sense that we’re all on edge.” A haunted look flashed in his eyes before he blinked it away, and I felt bad for triggering the trauma he had left over from his kidnapping.
That had all started with a threatening email too.
“I can’t believe after all of this, we don’t have a single lead.”
Marcus sighed.
“We have a ton of leads. They just go in circles. I’m almost at the point of saying we should wait until the deadline in the email and see what happens next.”
“No. We have to do something before then. Waiting this asshole out and trying to call his bluff puts Ethan in a way too vulnerable position. Even if we can prove he didn’t authorize the transactions and hasn’t been embezzling from Grove Core, the media will run with it and he’ll be tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion. I’m not willing to risk that.”
“Neither am I.” Ethan walked into the room, and for a moment, I saw the man I recognized from the magazine covers and charity galas.
“Grove Core is my family’s legacy. I won’t let this damage my reputation or the company’s.”
Marcus inclined his head.
“So, what do you want to do?”
“What if I give them what they want?”
Felix was shaking his head before Ethan even finished the question.
“I think that’s a bad idea. We’ve already told you the painting we have is a fake. It’s a damn good fake, even Dimitri says so, but it’s still a fake. If you give this fucker the fake and they find out it’s not real, that paints an even larger target on all our backs.”
“And assuming this is the same person we were dealing with in Amsterdam and who hired Rogan Holt to kill your sister and us, we have to assume their criminal connections run deep and retribution would be swift. I’m not willing to risk it at this point.”
Ethan sighed, the breath blowing his bangs off his forehead.
“Fine, so what do we do?”
Felix drained the last of his energy drink and gave Ethan a look of sympathy.
“We do what we’ve been doing. We wait.”
By Saturday afternoon, Ethan had had enough of waiting, and he was tired of being in the house.
The twins had been bouncing off the walls since they’d barged into our room at seven that morning, and we were all feeling a little stir crazy.
“Let’s take Lily and Jude to the aquarium.”
Ethan, who had been trying to read, looked up from his book.
He hadn’t turned a page in over twenty minutes, but I didn’t bother pointing that out.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s late enough in the day that the tourist crowds have dissipated. We need to get out of the house for a minute.”
“Okay. If you think it’s all right.”
“It will be fine.”
Lily and Jude got ready in record time, putting on their shoes and jackets the first time we asked and getting into the car without an argument.
“Are there sea pandas at the aquarium?” Lily asked once we were on our way.
Ethan rolled his eyes, but I put my hand on his thigh to stop him before he told her again that sea pandas weren’t really a thing.
“Nope, but there is a touch pool where you can feel a starfish.” I turned in my seat in time to catch her pout.
“I don’t like starfishes.” She crossed her little arms and poked out her lower lip.
“How do you know? Have you ever met one before?”
She just harumphed and turned to look out the window.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.” Ethan’s hands flexed on the steering wheel.
“She’ll relax once we get there.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
And for the most part, I was right.
We made our way through the exhibits, and I got a kick out of watching the twins watch the animals.
Jude had a thing for the stingrays, and even Lily’s bad mood couldn’t stop her squeals of delight when she put her little hand in the touch pool and stroked her fingers over the starfish she’d claimed not to like.
She touched everything she could reach, and her shirt was soaking wet by the time we finally pulled her away from the touch pool.
“I like starfishes,” she exclaimed as she washed her hands outside the exhibit, her grumpy mood a thing of the past.
“Me too.” Jude had been more apprehensive, and Ethan had had to guide his hand through the water.
“But stingrays are better. Can we go see the stingrays again?”
“Sure, buddy.” Ethan took Jude’s hand, I took Lily’s, and we made our way back to the tanks with the stingrays.
The twins stood as close to the glass as they could get, watching the rays and sharks move within the tank, and I casually reached for Ethan’s hand, twining my fingers with his as we watched Lily and Jude from a few steps behind them.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say, you guys and your kids are so cute.” Ethan and I both turned to see a mom pushing a double-wide stroller with two young boys around the twins’ age in it.
Both of the kids’ shirts were wet, presumably from the touch pool.
“Uh, thank you.” Ethan gave her a warm smile.
She beamed back at him, and the two kids jumped out of the stroller and ran to where Lily and Jude had their noses pressed against the glass.
“We were across from you at the touch pool. I’m Kelly, and those two menaces are Wyatt and Gavin.” She held out her hand, and Ethan took it.
“I’m Ethan.”
I shook Kelly’s hand too.
“Julius. The twins are Lily and Jude.”
“It’s nice to meet you, and not trying to rope you into anything, but we come here a lot, especially during the week because they have an amazing preschool program. You should bring your kids. They’d love it, and the boys are always wiped out afterward, so”—she did jazz hands—“huge plus.”
Ethan responded, but my mind had gotten snagged on her calling the twins our kids.
I knew it was easier to let her assume than to correct her, but I liked the idea of us as a family, and when we finally had time and I claimed Ethan as my mate, that’s exactly what we would be.
But this was the first time I was really thinking about the fact that Ethan and the twins were a package deal.
I wanted all three of them to be mine, but I was suddenly unsure if Ethan wanted the same thing.
Maybe despite the fact that we had both fallen hard and fast, he didn’t want me to be part of the twins’ lives that way.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
I’d been so lost in my head, in the fantasies of my little family, that I hadn’t noticed Kelly had walked away.
After starting our relationship tangled in a web of lies, I’d vowed not to lie to Ethan again.
“I love you, E, but I think I’ve been a little bit of a dick.”
“What? Why?”
“I feel like I’ve pushed you into this without considering how you feel about me being in the twins’ lives too.”
“Jules, am I being pranked? Is this a joke?” He pretended to look around for a hidden camera.
“No, why?”
“Because you’re an idiot if you think those kiddos don’t love you as much as I do.”
An uncomfortable lump formed in my throat.
“You are already part of our family.”
All I could do was nod.
And say yes when Lily and Jude asked if we could hit the gift shop.