Page 3 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)

CHAPTER

THREE

JULIUS

“Mr. Hunter. Mr. Lin said you’d be back today. Give me one minute to finish this email, then I’ll take you back.”

“Good morning, Rebecca. Take your time.”

She returned her attention to her computer screen while I looked at the framed black and white photos of Grove Core’s history that lined the wall by the elevator.

By the time Rebecca came over, I’d stopped in front of a picture of a man with two young children, a little boy and a slightly older girl.

Even without a caption, I knew the children in the picture were Ethan and his late sister, Tessa, and the man in the middle had to be their father, Shan Lin, who ran the global arm of Grove Core from the world headquarters in Beijing.

Ethan’s niece, Lily, looked just like her mom, and little Ethan closely resembled Jude.

I wondered if Ethan and Tessa had been as much of a handful as the twins seemed to be.

Rebecca let Ethan know I was there, and I crossed the threshold into his office for the second time in as many days.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Ethan looked worse today than he had yesterday.

“Are you okay?”

He looked up and tried to smile, but it turned into a yawn.

“I’m fine. It was just a bad night. Lily and Jude both had nightmares, and it took forever to get them back to sleep.”

“Can I run out and grab you some coffee or something?”

He held up a paper cup with a familiar green logo.

“This is already my second.”

“Is there anything else I can do?”

Ethan let out a humorless laugh.

“Any latent necromancy powers that can bring my sister back?”

I shook my head.

“Got any black market horse tranquilizers to knock me out for a while?”

I laughed but shook my head.

“Sorry.”

“Okay, fine. Know anyone willing to nanny for two adorable but rambunctious cage fighters, I mean four-year-olds? I’m pretty sure Ellie is one toy frying pan death match away from kicking them out, and the service I used to hire their last three nannies won’t take my calls.”

Another shake of my head.

“Zero for three.”

Ethan’s lips tipped down in an exaggerated faux pout.

“Well, then I guess there’s nothing you can do for me at the moment. Except the audit of our investments you promised.”

I desperately wished there was more I could do for Ethan, but for right now, I could dig into his finances with an outsider’s perspective and see what I could find out while also achieving my own goals.

Maybe this would be a win-win for both of us.

“Sounds good. I just need access to your investment portfolio and any supporting internal funds that benefit from the dividends.”

Ethan nodded toward the conference table.

“Already done. I had IT set up a laptop for you. There is a username and password for our system on a Post-it on top. A link to our investment portfolio should be on the desktop, along with a folder containing the most recent US earnings reports. My father has not mentioned any issues for global operations, so I’m assuming this issue has not spread to the global arm of the business and it’s isolated to US operations, but if you suspect differently, we can cross that bridge. If you need anything else, let me know, and I can help you find what you need through our internal systems.”

It couldn’t be that easy.

Had Ethan really just given me unfettered access to his company?

He either had nothing to hide or he thought he’d covered his tracks well enough that no one would ever know he was skimming off the top.

Which was true still remained to be seen.

“I just have two requests.” Ethan was studying me intensely, almost like he knew I wasn’t really there for the reasons I’d laid out for him.

“Name them.”

“First, I trust you, Julius. I don’t really know why, but I’m trusting my gut on this. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, maybe it’s desperation to make sure I honor my sister’s legacy, or maybe I want to prove to my father that I can lead like she did, but in any case, I am trusting you with information that only a handful of people get to see. As such, I don’t want that laptop leaving my office. When you’re done for the day, please leave it on my desk so I can lock it up.”

His trust was humbling, and again, I felt bad for lying to his face.

“Understood, and not a problem. What else?”

“I don’t want to believe anyone in the Grove Core family could be influencing our financials without my knowledge, but if you believe you’ve found something that indicates otherwise, I want you to bring it to me first. I’ve invited you into this without my father’s knowledge, and I’d like this to fly under the radar for as long as possible until I have something concrete to present to him.”

“Of course. What do you think I’m going to find?”

Ethan sighed.

“Nothing, I hope. But I can’t shake this feeling that I’m missing something. There have been some board members who’ve been pretty vocal as of late about my ability to lead the company. They want me to be replaced. When I was CFO, some of them were my staunchest supporters, and I’m not sure what changed, but I don’t like it.”

“I’ll start with any investment dividends or capital gains payouts and make sure they were routed to the right places, then we can go from there and dig deeper if we need to.”

Ethan nodded.

“Okay.” His eyes narrowed a little.

“And you’re sure this is all part of your initial consultation?”

It wasn’t.

We both knew that, but like Ethan trusted me, I wanted to help him.

I could see how much pressure he was under and how he was starting to fray at the edges.

I wanted to fix whatever was broken.

If it turned out he was in on the plot against my family, I’d deal with it.

Somehow.

Even if thinking about Ethan working against my family made my heart crack a little.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

If he was innocent, then maybe the future I’d spent the previous night dreaming about, the one where we raised his sister’s twins together, surrounded and supported by my family, could be real.

There was only one way to find out.

“Let’s just say I’m trusting my gut on this too.”

Ethan inclined his head in acknowledgment as his phone rang.

He looked at the display, then up at me.

“I have to take this. Are you good to get started?”

“Go ahead. I’m set.”

Circling the conference table, I settled into the seat with the laptop in front of it and dropped my bag on the floor.

It had been easy to agree with Ethan’s request not to take the laptop home with me because Felix had given me a flash drive with a program he’d created to spy on the Grove Core systems. All I had to do was plug it in and run the program, then he would have complete access to everything housed on their servers.

I liked to think I was a decent hacker.

As part of my extracurricular activities—robbing from corrupt organizations and funneling some of their money into charitable donations they would never make—I’d hacked my way into some of the most secure banking systems in the world, but Felix made what I could do look like child’s play.

He was a genius, and I was glad he was on our side.

Using the credentials I found taped to the laptop’s track pad, I logged into the computer and immediately found the shortcuts Ethan had promised had been set up.

I slid on my blue-light-blocking glasses and got to work.

An hour into digging into Grove Core’s finances, Ethan stood.

“I’ve got to run to a meeting. If you need anything while I’m gone, dial four six zero on my desk phone to get Rebecca. She’s been told to help you with anything you request.”

“Thank you. Have a good meeting.”

Ethan gave me a strange look I couldn’t quite decipher that morphed into a smile.

“It’s going to be a long one. Strategic market planning for the next fiscal year.” He let out a humorless laugh, and my heart ached to hear him laugh for real.

“It’s funny. When I was CFO, the strategic planning meetings used to be my favorite. I got to sit back and listen to how all the other departments were going to increase our profits and increase market share. I only had to participate when asked if we had the cash flow available for the proposed activities. Now I’m expected to have an opinion on everything. Everyone is looking to me to make sure everything we do is efficient and seamless. Every decision I make affects every member of the company.”

“I’ve never run a company like this, but I’d grappled with similar things during my time on Wall Street. I think you just have to make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time. You can always make changes later. As long as you are doing the right things for the right reasons, given the data you have, no one can fault you.”

Ethan smiled, but it didn’t reach all the way to his eyes.

“That’s good advice. Maybe I need to figure out my goals for Grove Core and stop trying to do things the way my sister would have.”

“Sounds like a good place to start if you ask me.”

This time, Ethan’s smile was genuine, and my heart skipped a beat when he looked back at me over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

“Is it working?” I headed straight home after leaving Grove Core, anxious to find out if Felix’s program was running the way it should.

While Ethan had been in and out of his office throughout the day, I hadn’t wanted to chance texting or calling Felix to find out if everything was going the way it was supposed to.

Unsurprisingly, I’d found Felix in what used to be my lair in the basement.

I wasn’t exactly sure when it had happened, but Felix had co-opted my space, and now I was lucky if I got to sit at my desk at all.

Not that I minded all that much.

Felix and I had hit it off right away when my brother Nero brought him to our family estate for the first time, though I did have to have a serious conversation with both of them about fooling around in my den.

As far as I knew, it hadn’t happened since the time I caught them, and I didn’t want to know if I was wrong.

“Are you really asking me that question?” Felix didn’t bother to look up from his monitor.

“So sorry. I forgot I was talking to the master.”

Felix laughed and kicked out my old desk chair.

“Don’t do it again. Sit.”

Without being asked, Felix handed me several Twizzlers from the bag that was open on the desk, and I bit into the licorice as he tipped one of the screens in my direction.

“What am I looking at?”

He bit into his own piece of candy and nodded toward the monitor.

“I’m currently combing the Grove Core servers for any mention of AB Holdings. And over there, I’m downloading the company’s financial records. Once I have them downloaded, I’ve created a program I can run to see if there are any transactions going to or flowing from the various shell companies we’ve traced. Marcus is going to help me work through that data since he’s got an eye for tracking money people think is untraceable.”

My cousin Marcus was frequently called in to assist the Seattle PD and occasionally the FBI when their own financial crimes teams were tied up, and Felix was right, he had a sort of sixth sense for seeing patterns most people would miss.

“Nice.”

Felix nodded, turned the monitor back, and pushed back from the desk, his gaze landing squarely on me.

“So, what are you thinking? Is Ethan Lin our big bad?”

“It’s too soon to tell, but I hope not.”

My brother’s mate narrowed his eyes.

“Why?”

I blew out a breath that ruffled my bangs.

“If I show you, you cannot freak out. And you can’t tell Cal.”

Felix’s brows rose skeptically.

“Okay…”

Popping another button on my shirt, I shifted the collar aside to show him my saddle patch.

For a second, he just stared like he didn’t get it, but the second understanding dawned, his mouth dropped open.

“Shut the fuck up! You’re lying!”

“Shh.” I rebuttoned my shirt.

“I can’t lie about this. You know that.”

“Are you seriously telling me the guy we think might have something to do with this whole mess with the painting is your fated mate?”

“Seems like it.”

“Damn.” Felix grabbed the bag of licorice from the desk and tossed me a few more pieces.

“Sorry. I feel like this requires alcohol, but I don’t have any down here, so this is the best I can do.”

Taking the offered candy, I shrugged.

“So, how are you feeling about it? Like, does he know?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so, but he’s a panda shifter, so I’m not sure if they do the fated mates thing. And he’s stressed as fuck. Like, you know those pictures of him you pulled up when we discovered AB Holdings was linked to Grove Core?”

Felix nodded.

“Yeah.” He swung back to his computer, and his fingers flew across the keyboard until a picture of Ethan in a tux filled the screen.

“He doesn’t look like that right now. He looks tired and worn down. Like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and it’s driving the life from him. I get the feeling the twins aren’t helping. They are cute as hell, but definitely a handful.”

Felix choked on the piece of licorice he’d been chewing.

“Wait. You’ve met the kids? How? Why? When?”

“Yesterday. His nephew kind of barged into our meeting, and then wouldn’t let me put him down.” I told Felix the whole story about how Jude had clung to me like a spider monkey, and as I remembered the feel of his chubby arms around me and the fierce determination to get his way in his eyes that were so much like his uncle’s, I said another silent prayer that Ethan wasn’t involved in stealing art or trying to hurt my family.

“Do you want kids?” Felix’s question came out of left field.

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. Ethan’s niece and nephew are adorable. I actually think they’d get along really well with Cal, but kids of my own? I’m not sure. What about you?”

Felix’s eyes went a little dreamy.

“Before I met your brother, I never thought about it. Now, though, I think I do want kids someday.”

“If you want to give it a test drive, Ethan is looking for a nanny for the twins. Three of them have quit on him.”

His eyes widened.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for that right now, but Dimitri and I were walking earlier, and he said Athina is looking for a job since she can’t start school until the spring. You might want to ask her.”

“That’s a good idea. I will.”

Maybe I could solve one of Ethan’s problems after all.