Page 5 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)

CHAPTER

FIVE

JULIUS

“What’s this?” Ethan looked up from the report he was analyzing as I set the cardboard takeout container on his desk.

“Lunch.” I tapped the lid.

“A grilled chicken Caesar salad wrap with a side of fruit, if you wanted me to be specific.”

“You didn’t have to buy me lunch. Again.” But he pulled the takeout container closer and immediately bit into the wrap, sighing a little as he chewed.

It was weird, but I liked watching Ethan eat.

It made something deep in my core feel content, like I was taking good care of him.

Since the first time I’d brought him coffee and a muffin the morning after he’d completely broken my heart, sobbing in my arms as I held him close, I’d made it a point to make sure Ethan was eating.

It wasn’t much, but it was something small I could do to make sure he was taking care of himself.

In the week since that first coffee, I’d noticed there was more color in his cheeks.

His clothes still hung too big on his frame, but he looked healthier, and I really liked that.

“I know I didn’t have to, but I was out, so it made sense.”

“Thank you.” He spoke around the bite he’d just taken and grabbed the napkin I handed him to wipe his mouth.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” I pulled a bottle of water out of the paper bag I was still carrying and set it on his desk too.

He grabbed it and twisted the cap, then proceeded to down a third of it.

I made a mental note to make sure Ethan drank more water throughout the day.

Ethan wiped his mouth again and popped the lid off the fresh fruit cup nestled in the box.

“Thank you for this. Seriously. I need to review this data before my two o’clock, and there’s no way I would have had time to grab anything.”

“Not a problem.” I returned to my spot at the conference table and extracted my own lunch and water from the bag that I then neatly folded and set aside.

I smiled a little to myself.

One thing I’d learned about Ethan since I’d started working in his office was that he never put himself first. He didn’t take a break for lunch unless he had a lunch meeting.

He barely took a break at all, working nearly nonstop.

It wasn’t healthy, and I was a little worried he’d burn out if he kept going at the pace he was going.

The Grove Core board had been breathing down his neck since the last board meeting, and according to Ethan, the calls for him to step aside as CEO were getting louder.

Some of the board members were even threatening to involve his father, but instead of giving in, he just put his nose to the grindstone a little harder and pushed himself a little more, trying to figure out how to reverse course and honor his sister’s legacy.

I looked up from laying out my lunch to see Ethan staring at me, a plastic fork with a piece of pineapple on it poised halfway to his mouth.

“What’s up?”

“I—” He cut himself off and shook his head.

“Thank you.” He lifted the forked pineapple in a toast and slid the bite into his mouth, his tongue peeking out to lick away an errant drop of juice, and my cock twitched, suddenly imagining Ethan’s plump lips wrapped around it.

His eyes were already back on the report laid out on his desk, so he didn’t notice the big breath I took to get my head on straight before I dug into my own lunch.

As I ate, I felt his eyes on me more than once, and I could have sworn he’d taken a breath like he was about to say something, but no words came.

I kept my eyes on my phone, scrolling through the news apps I liked until Ethan’s phone vibrated on his desk.

“Shit. I’ve gotta go.” He stood, dumping the packaging from his lunch into the recycling bin by his desk, and scooped the documents he’d been reviewing into a file folder.

Tucking it under his arm, he walked toward the door, straightening his suit.

I watched him go, my eyes drawn to him like a magnet, but I was still surprised when he stopped at the door, took a big breath, and turned around.

“Will you have dinner with me Friday night?”

“What?”

He closed his eyes, like he was steeling himself for rejection, then opened them and leveled me with the look I’d come to know as his CEO stare.

“You’ve brought me enough coffees, snacks, and lunches that I feel the least I can do is reciprocate with dinner. I’d ask if you were free tonight, but I don’t think I have time to find a babysitter. I should be able to find someone to watch the twins for a couple hours on Friday night.”

“You don’t need to do that, Ethan.” I stopped myself before I could admit how much I liked taking care of him in the small ways he seemed willing to allow.

“I know I don’t, but I’d like to spend time with you outside these walls.” His eyes scanned over the conference room turned office, and when they landed back on me, the CEO stare was gone, replaced by a look of vulnerability.

“Of course, I totally get it if you’d rather keep things professional between us.”

“So, not a business dinner then?” I tipped my lips up in a half-smile.

“I’d prefer if it wasn’t. If that works for you.”

“That works perfectly for me. I’d like to spend more time with you too.”

A smile so bright it was almost blinding lit up Ethan’s handsome face.

“Great. Let’s say seven? I’ll make a reservation and text you the address?”

“Sounds like it’s a date.”

Ethan’s cheeks went the tiniest bit pink, then he turned back toward the door and strode into the hall with a noticeable spring in his step.

I was still smiling like a lovesick fool, watching the door like he might come back through it and blow me a kiss, or something equally cliché, so it took me a second to realize my phone was vibrating on the table.

Felix’s name lit up the screen, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

If he was calling while I was still at Grove Core, whatever he had found wasn’t good.

Mentally crossing my fingers that whatever it was proved Ethan wasn’t involved, I picked up the call.

“Jules, we found something… well, several somethings you need to see. When can you get here?”

There was an off-note that sounded a little bit like pity in Felix’s voice, and just like that, the little bubble of happiness that had inflated in my chest when Ethan had asked me out popped and disappeared.

“What have you got?” The second I got back to the estate, I went directly to the basement, bypassing Cal’s questions about how things were going and completely ignoring Nero’s reminder that it was my night to cook for everyone.

I was a little shocked to see that Felix wasn’t alone.

My cousin Marcus was leaning back in the desk chair next to him, absently rolling a mechanical pencil through his fingers while he looked at one of the monitors in front of him.

“Hey, Julius.” Even more surprising than seeing Marcus was the fact that his human mate and Seattle PD cold case detective, Eli Mercer, was sprawled out on the leather sectional playing some game on his phone.

He peeked his head over the back of the couch just long enough to say hello.

“Hi, Eli. Marcus. What are you doing here?”

Marcus was too deep in thought to be bothered with human niceties like responding, so Eli did it for him.

“Felix called and wanted Marcus to take a look at something before he called you. We’ve been here since.”

“And how long ago was that?”

Eli looked at his phone.

“Three hours and forty-six minutes.”

“But who’s counting?”

I slotted myself in behind Felix and looked over his shoulder.

“What am I looking at?”

“It took me a while, but I found ghosts on the Grove Core servers. Someone tried to delete a ton of outgoing transactions, but they were still lingering on the server. I called Marcus to help me figure out if they are the kind of transactions we’re looking for.”

I pivoted to glance at Marcus, who was still staring at the screen, the pencil moving more rapidly over his knuckles before it stopped suddenly, and he finally looked my way.

“Jules, when did you get here?”

Eli laughed, and I shook my head.

“Only a few minutes ago. Felix was just filling me in.”

“Good. Before I say anything, I want to cross-reference the full financials. You have access to those, right?”

I nodded, but Felix was already a step ahead of me, using the remote access he’d set up on the Grove Core laptop Ethan had issued to me to log into their system.

“What do you want to see?” Felix asked, his fingers flying over the keys.

“Bring up the activity logs for the two weeks since Jules started hanging out at Grove Core HQ. Felix traced the ghosts to the offshore accounts we’ve been watching, so we know for sure that money has definitely been funneling out of Grove Core, but I want to know who’s been doing it. My money’s on Ethan Lin since the most recent batch of deleted transactions happened about a week ago, which was after you met with him but before he asked you to look at the full financials.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and my voice came out a little strained when I confirmed what Marcus had said.

“Yeah, that timeline is correct.” I had wanted so badly to believe that Ethan wasn’t involved, but given what Marcus had just revealed, it was looking like there wasn’t another option.

Marcus was leaning over Felix, looking at the data he’d pulled up while Felix scrolled.

“Stop. Right there.” Marcus pointed to a line of code that showed all the activity done on the server.

“That’s when the transactions were deleted. Last Thursday at eleven thirty-four at night.”

“Wait, last Thursday?” Something niggled at the back of my mind.

“Yes.” Felix zoomed in on the line, and I saw Ethan’s credentials next to the event detail.

“Can you tell if this was done from Ethan’s office or over a VPN?”

“Duh.” Felix opened a command screen and entered several lines of code.

We waited until another line populated, showing the IP address.

“Looks like this was done from his office.”

“That’s not possible.”

Marcus and Felix looked at me, and Eli’s head appeared over the back of the couch again.

“Explain.” My cousin started twirling the pencil again.

“I was with Ethan until he left the office last Thursday. He had a board meeting that ran late, and I picked his niece and nephew up from the on-site daycare and brought them back to Ethan’s office. I walked out with them at six thirty.”

“Could he have come back?” Eli asked from the couch.

“I guess he could have, but he wouldn’t have left the twins alone, and I can’t see him dragging them back to the office in the middle of the night. That’s also the exact same day he asked me about looking at the financials.”

“I dunno.” A little crease formed between Felix’s brows.

“I’m not sure that helps. It’s his building. He definitely could have come back, and the fact that he asked you to look at the financials on the same day these transactions were deleted just seems too coincidental.”

“Can you pull the security logs? See if he swiped into the building that night.”

Eli stood from the couch and came to join us.

“That’s a good place to start.”

Felix was already working on it.

“This is going to take a minute because I haven’t accessed that part of their system yet. I have the access I need, but I have to figure out where they store that data. Give me an hour.” He glanced over his shoulder.

“Isn’t it your night to make dinner anyway? Go do that while I do this.”