Page 22

Leonard

I stare at the two small square pictures in my hand.

We look like we are going to fuck each other’s brains out.

What was I thinking when I dragged her onto my lap?

The truth is, I didn’t think at all. My body took charge and I gave in to my desire to have her close.

Since the boat trip and after carrying her to bed the other night, my body has been craving her skin against mine.

And this is a very bad urge to deal with.

I stare at Roxanne, biting her lower lip slightly, my mouth just a bit open, and the desire to kiss her returns, crashing like a wave against all my resolve to stay away from her.

Every single reason I told myself about why it is the worst idea ever to give in to my desires has lost its significance.

For every bad reason, I can find a good one to strike it down.

Yesterday, for the first time since college, I spent a day enjoying life without thinking once about work. It was refreshing. And she was responsible for that miracle.

For some unknown reason, two workaholics together are very good at enjoying their free time. Who knew I needed someone with my same toxic approach to work to find a way to turn off my brain?

“Why are you smiling like that?” Roxanne’s amused voice startles me. I hadn’t even noticed her coming into my office.

“I’m not smiling.” I totally am, and didn’t even realize it.

“Keep telling yourself that, but I saw it. You can’t fool me anymore with your mogul charade.” She plops into the chair in front of my desk and crosses those long legs, showing off her sparkly pink shoes.

When I finally move my eyes from her inviting legs to her face, I notice her reddened cheeks.

“Did you put on after-sun cream like I asked?” I’m surprised by the concern in my voice.

I feel a strange grip in my gut. Since when did I start caring about her?

I know I’ve rescued her a couple of times since meeting again, dancing with her after the creep molested her, or giving her a ride when her car broke down.

But I chalked those up to something I did to protect Raphael’s little sister-in-law.

This time hits differently. I care about her on a level that has nothing to do with my friend.

The brat rolls her eyes. “Yes, Daddy.”

My cock twitches in my pants. Why should I stay away from her again? Difficult to remember the reason right now.

“Don’t say that again,” I growl.

A smug smile appears on her face. “Why? Does it turn you on?”

“You don’t want to find out,” I tease.

“Maybe I do,” she challenges, and I need to change the topic of this conversation before I bend her over the desk and fuck that attitude out of her.

The stare contest lasts for a long moment, but she’s the first to look away. I smile. I decide to drop it and steer the conversation toward a safer topic: work.

“I think we should ask Oliver to work with us on what we discovered about the money,” I suggest, and her smile immediately drops.

“Why should we do that?” She frowns.

“What do you mean why? He built this company with me. He knows the ins and outs of every single file in our systems,” I answer even though it’s pretty clear the reasons behind my decision.

She abruptly gets up and begins pacing my office, disrupting my train of thought. Her resistance to the idea puzzles me. Why is she so opposed to this suggestion? Three minds working on this problem could yield better results than two exhausted ones. A fresh perspective might be just what we need.

“We don’t know if it was an inside job, and you want to spread the word? I don’t feel comfortable with this turn of events,” she says bluntly.

Is she serious? She thinks someone inside my own company could do something like this, and the mere thought of it is offensive.

“Don’t even think something so twisted,” I warn in a stern tone.

She turns around, crossing her arms under her boobs, making them stick out even more. Damn! I need to focus on this discussion, not how good her tits look!

“Why not? Are you so sure of their loyalty that you trust them blindly?” She raises an eyebrow like this would be the most stupid thing in the world.

I feel the anger boiling in my gut and make a huge effort to keep it down, avoiding making a scene. I assume she’s used to untrustworthy people, considering she’s a hacker. But even she should have some people she can rely on, or she will become paranoid.

“Yes, especially the ones who started this company with me. We have more than twenty years behind us trying to grow this—” I gesture around with my hands. “No one wants to throw it away,” I point out with a finality that leaves no room for argument.

She stares at me for a long moment, studying my face. I don’t back down from her evaluation, and I feel almost reinvigorated by how she challenges me. It’s the first time I’ve been around a woman who isn’t trying to appease me just because of what I represent.

“Fine, but I’ll hold you personally responsible for any fuck-up related to this decision,” she concedes, sitting again in the chair in front of my desk.

I can’t hide a smile. “It won’t be necessary, but you have my word,” I assure her.

She nods, and her mood seems to lighten again, though I know she disagrees with my decision.

“So, what’s next?”

“I’m calling Oliver, and we’ll figure out together how to dig deeper into what we found out.”

Half an hour later, when Oliver walks into my office, one glance at Roxanne changes his mood completely. Tensions rise as he mutters under his breath, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Roxanne raises an annoyed eyebrow at me, and I look at her, trying to convey all my prayers not to make this moment worse with her sharp tongue. Luckily, she gets the hint and humors me.

“Hi, Oliver. We need to talk to you about what we discovered about this missing money.” I smile at him, trying to be as accommodating as possible.

It’s always a gamble these days with him.

One day, he’s nice and kind; the other, he is grumpy and shouting at everyone.

I honestly find it impossible to gauge what his mood will be, but today I have a good clue from his pissed face. I prepare for all hell to break loose.

“You are obsessed with this freaking money. You’re a billionaire; get over yourself and start to think about the people who work for you! You’re wasting time and resources for nothing,” he growls.

Roxanne scoffs, and I stare at him in disbelief. “We found out they’re not stealing money but information, and you think it’s nothing?” I raise my voice.

He shrugs. “Do you have proof? Maybe it’s just a mistake by the bank. You just said they’re not stealing money; maybe it’s just that: nothing. You’re so wrapped up in her that you can’t see beyond your nose!” he spits.

“Excuse me?” Roxanne’s outraged tone forces him to turn toward her.

He sneers at her—an actual creepy sneer that I’ve never seen before on his face.

“You play the big bad hacker but you’re just a kid who knows nothing.

You came here, stuck your nose in our systems, and God knows what you’re doing with that information.

You bat those pretty eyelashes, wriggle your young ass in front of him, and get him to do whatever you want. You’re good at it, I’ll give you that.”

“This’s enough!” I shout, getting his full attention.

He looks at me with sad eyes. “You’ve become so greedy that you don’t even care about this company anymore. You want to get bigger and bigger, losing focus on what our initial goal was.”

“That’s not true, and you know it. Don’t play this card with me because it won’t work. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I haven’t forgotten where we came from and where we’re going. If you can’t see that, it’s not my fault. It’s yours,” I fire back and he looks like I slapped him in the face.

I feel bad for him, but I’m tired of sugarcoating everything because he snaps at the least inconvenience. He turns around and walks out of the room without another word, and I clench my fists, glaring at the door closing behind him.

Roxanne studies me with worried eyes. Neither of us breaks the silence for a long moment.

She speaks first with a stern expression. “I would say ‘I told you so,’ but I think his behavior speaks for itself.”

I don’t say a word because I’m so dumbfounded by Oliver’s outburst that I can barely think. I’m missing something, and I can’t put my finger on it. It seems like I’m doing that a lot lately and this realization is concerning enough.

“Are you convinced there’s something off about this situation? Oliver included?”

Her implication snaps me out of my dizziness.

“Don’t even think about it. He’s my most trusted partner, the co-founder of this company, and I don’t want you spreading completely baseless rumors,” I bark out with more bitterness than I intended.

I don’t want to be rude to her, but the turmoil rumbling in my chest makes it challenging to be levelheaded.

“Are you serious? He just freaked out because we’re digging our noses into the problem, and you don’t find it even slightly suspicious?” She presses the subject.

Anger and discomfort mix in my gut, making me boil. “No! I’ve known him forever. He’s under a lot of pressure because of a big step we’re taking with the company, and he just doesn’t have time for this.”

She scoffs. “Your relationship with the people around you blinds you. You haven’t even considered it’s one of them fucking you over, have you?”

It’s my turn to be offended. If there’s anything I’m proud of, it’s the fact that I can read people better than anyone else.

I surrounded myself with the smartest and most loyal people I had ever met, and I would bet my life on their integrity.

Especially Oliver, who is the most idealistic of the bunch.

He would never stoop so low as to damage his own company for some petty reason I can’t even imagine.

“How many companies did you build from scratch? How many people do you work with? How many people can you count on? You know nothing about this kind of relationship because you’ve never experienced anything like this.

You can’t understand what loyalty or integrity mean because your job is full of distrust, trying to hack other people’s systems. Trying to fuck other people’s lives,” I spit, and immediately regret my choice of words.

Her face hardens as she stands up and grabs her things.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that the people you love the most will make decisions that most fuck up your life, and you can’t do anything about it.

They’ll do it because they have the most personal motivation.

Until you understand that, I can’t help you,” she says with a coldness in her tone that chills my spine.

I don’t stop her as she turns around and walks out the door with a calm I should have.

I stare at the point where she left for a long time, mulling over what she said.

It can’t be true. She had a rough life growing up, but that doesn’t mean ordinary people react like she does.

She didn’t have a normal childhood, and what she experienced scarred her deep down to her bones.

She’ll always be distrustful of everyone.

How the hell did this go so wrong so fast?

I grab my phone and call the only person I can talk to.

“Can you come to my office, please?”

After he agrees, I put my phone on the desk and stare at the door, leaning against the chair.

When Benjamin comes in, his face instantly becomes serious. His frown deepens the lines on his forehead. “What happened?” he asks, worry dripping from his words.

I take a deep breath and tell him everything. I need to get this off of my chest, it’s crushing me. He studies me with a concerned gaze and doesn’t breathe or move, as if either could worsen the situation. After I finish, he stares at me for a long moment, aggravating my already bad mood.

“It’s worse than I thought,” he murmurs as though to himself.

“That’s not exactly reassuring,” I point out.

He shakes his head and takes a deep breath, raising his gaze to the ceiling before lowering it back to my face. “He’s going to lose his mind between the acquisition and the divorce.”

“Divorce? What divorce?” I feel my stomach squeeze in a tight grip.

He stares at me, surprised. His frown deepens even more, fraying my already tense nerves.

“You don’t know? His wife asked for a divorce a year ago. I thought he told you about that.”

My heart drops. How did I miss something so crucial in the life of one of my oldest friends? The fact that he didn’t come to me for support like we always do for each other is concerning.

“He didn’t say a word,” I whisper, and Benjamin’s gaze softens.

“I’m sure it’s because he doesn’t want to add more stress to your life right now.

He knows how much you’re caught up with everything going on here.

” He tries to explain away something that is way simpler: Oliver didn’t want to tell me.

For whatever reason, he’s lost faith that I could understand what he was going through.

Maybe because I never had a wife or a relationship, but it doesn’t matter.

He decided to keep me out of this part of his life. And it hurts.

“One year. He decided to keep it from me for one year, and I didn’t notice anything unusual. I mean, he was difficult to deal with, but I never stopped to understand why. What kind of a friend does that make me?” The words are like fire in my throat. How could I have missed something so massive?

Benjamin doesn’t add anything. It’s difficult even for him to find an explanation that doesn’t sound like an excuse. I’m a shitty friend, and I have to deal with it.