Page 20 of Secret Revenge
I stroked faster, spreading my legs as my knees weakened. I could taste her full lips again and feel her round breasts. I smiled a crazy smile as I sorted through the memories of our one night together, one after the other. The way her walls squeezed on me, the way she arched her back before she released, and the way her moans rang in my ears, soft like chimes in the wind.
I could feel Emily as physically as if she was with me. Finally I came, my long, winded moan bouncing off the tiles of the bathroom walls. I slumped on the shower wall, struggling to regain my breath. I stayed in the shower long after I finished, savoring the taste of sweet memories and the ecstasy of orgasm.
I dried off, got dressed, and arrived at work feeling more relaxed and refreshed than I had in days. My session in the shower left my mind crisp and sharp. But I needed to keep Emily out of my head for a few hours. I had a lot to take care of and I needed to be on top of my game.
I stepped off the elevator to find my assistant waiting for me with a cup of coffee and a worried look on his face. I narrowed my eyes at him as I took the coffee. I wondered what had him looking so shaken that early in the morning.
“Good morning, Mr. Ross,” he said, falling in step beside me. “Mr. Anderson wanted to let you know to come straight to conference room four as soon as you got in. Err… sir.”
I glanced at him with irritation etched visibly on my face, and he squirmed under my scrutiny. “What’s going on?”
“He didn’t say, sir,” he replied nervously. “He just let me know it was urgent.”
I rolled my eyes.Grow some spine, man.
I changed direction and headed toward conference room four. It was a dark spot for electronic devices, except those on a private, guarded network. If Victor wanted to meet me there, it was probably a crucial matter. I handed my bag to the assistant and continued on briskly.
I pushed the door of the conference room open and was surprised to see a small army waiting for me. I shut the door quietly behind me, then checked my watch to make sure I hadn’t overslept. It was a few minutes past 8am, which was earlier than I had arrived at work in centuries.So, I’m not late. They’re all early..
A seed of worry took root in my mind. What could be so bad it could bring all these people hereearly?
I took my seat at the head of the table and leaned back in the leather swivel seat. “Well? What’s with the stern faces? Anyone care to tell me what’s going on?”
Victor Anderson, the CFO of the company, stood in the far corner of the room. His hushed conversation with Brendan ended as soon as I entered. Jackson was seated a few spots from me, to my right. Surprisingly, Alexi and Leo were in attendance as well.
Brendan cleared his throat and walked towards me. “We have a problem.” I hated how almost every sentence he made at work began with that exact line. He set a tablet in front of me and tapped on the screen with his index finger.
“We discovered a security breach over the weekend,” Brendan continued. “Jones picked it up and fought back the breach with Carlos. They logged it and informed me about it last night. I came in early to assess the severity of the hack.”
Brendan was in charge of our tech department and cyber security. A graduate of MIT, and the most capable tech leader among the three of us—an exemplary genius in technology. He’d built the cloud software we currently used and was in charge of its security. He hand-picked members of his department, and put them through rigorous monthly testing to keep them sharp and above the curve.
“And?” I asked impatiently.
“Dangerously severe.” He swiped the screen in front of me. “Whoever the hacker was, he was no pushover. He was exceptionally good. It seems he breached our cloud using your account as an access point. We were able to stop him before he got anything useful. But this is the important part—he’d somehow gotten access to your private data.”
Alarm bells started ringing in my head.
“We tried a backtrace to find him, but he disappeared as fast as he entered. This should not have been possible. Your access point requires biometric access, as well as several redundancies. Anyway, I’ve been working on the team to beef up our firewalls, but until I have faith in our structural integrity, I implore everyone to be careful and watchful.”
I listened to Brendan’s report quietly. Having him in charge soothed my mind. I had learned to trust my brothers in their fields, even when things looked shaky. I was great with finance related matters, Jackson was an expert administrator, and Brendan was a tech genius and had earned the faith I had in his abilities. Together we were almost unstoppable.
“This looks to me like a continuation of the attacks we’ve been experiencing for months,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s related to the smear campaign against us. Someone looking for dirt for an article.” I turned to Victor. “Where are we with the PR hires?”
“We created a list of the most suitable journalists who we believe are honest and perfectly independent.” Victor dropped a clipboard in front of me. It was a list of names of independent journalists. I glanced through it cursorily.
“How can we ensure the integrity of these people?” Jackson asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting started. “I mean, if they can hack our servers, it’s a small matter to plant a spy in our company as well.”
“Actually, it would be much more difficult than that,” Victor replied, adjusting his coat. “Every name on that list went through a rigorous vetting process. Every single article, comment on social media and liked post was checked to assess their views on matters similar to ours. Those were the best we found.”
I glanced up from the clipboard at Jackson to see how he responded. He nodded at Victor and let the matter go. The conversation in the room went on as I flipped the page on the clipboard, but something near the bottom caught my eye. Surprised, I went back to the page and read the list more carefully.
Close to the end of the document, I saw the name EMILY SKYE.
What? Did she change her mind?
She had told me she had no intentions of working for me without mincing her words. But….was that why she left the way she did? Did she already plan to accept? If so, she would have wanted to keep what happened between us minimal, to prevent it from becoming a conflict of interest.
I stifled the urge to laugh out loud. She’d told me she was giving me a chance to convince her to accept the invitation.Looks like I did just that. I suppressed excitement to see her when she and the other journalists started the next day.