Damon shrugged at his boyfriend as they walked in the door, eyes glinting. “A little denial is good for thecharacter.”
“Hmm.” Cain said, squeezing past Damon to head to the kitchen. He turned his head to smirk back over his shoulder. “We’ll see how you feel about denial when you’re on the receivingend.”
Damon blinked. “But…I saved you cookies!” he yelled as Caindisappeared.
Drew shook his head. “Come on,” he said, giving Damon a consoling pat on theback.
The others were already arranged around the huge farmhouse table that took up one side of Drew’s kitchen, and someone - likely Sebastian - had arranged platters of food and a carafe of coffee in thecenter.
“Thanks,” Drew told Bas, nodding at the table as he took the endseat.
“Yeah, sure,” Bas said. He was looking at Drewstrangely.
“What’swrong?”
“Nothing’swrong. I just found…” A phone chimed, and Bas shook his head, fishing his phone out of his pocket to check hismessages.
Another day, anotherinterruption.
“Okay, first things first,” Cort said from the far end of the table, where he was seated between Cam and Damon. “I think we need to make notes. Kinda consolidate everything we know right now in one spot.” He grabbed a muffin from the platter. “And we can share the info with Sean Cook, my old boss at theFBI.”
Up and down the table, heads nodded as everyone filled their plates with food. Drew stood and grabbed his tablet from the counter, along with his phone. “Okay, I’ll makenotes.”
He resumed his seat, and saw that Bas was scowling at his phone, typingaway.
“I was thinking pencil and paper,” Cort sighed, his hatred of technology clear. “But whatever. Let’s go through everything we know starting with thecrash?”
“I think we should start chronologically,” Drew suggested. “From back in the last millennium, when SILA first started working withSeaver.”
“That makes the most sense,” Cain agreed. “According to my father, their association started back before Seaver Tech was even officially founded. Levi had ideas, but no capital, and Ilya Stornovich offered Levi and my father the money to start the company, at a pretty high interestrate.”
“Loan sharks,” Cam saiddourly.
“Essentially,” Cain agreed. “But Seaver Tech never had a problem making the payments. They were successful right out of the gate, and paid back the initial loanquickly.”
“And in the meantime, SILA grew. The little neighborhood crime gang Ilya Stornovich founded became a huge regional crime organization,” Sebastiansaid.
Damon snickered and Drew glanced up. “It’s just… the parallel is strange, isn’t it? His business grew just like Seaver Tech grew, successful from thestart.”
“If you’re making comparisons between my father and Ilya Stornovich,” Bas said heatedly, but Drew held up a placatinghand.
“Nobody is doing that, Bas. Your dad made the choices he made - choices that Senator Shaw and my own dad were complicit in, by the way, so no one here is casting stones - because he wanted to build something for his family. In his own way, that’s what Ilya did,too.”
Bas’s nostrils flared and he folded his arms across hischest.
“Anyway, yes. Ilya grew his business,” Drew said as he typed. “And then he retired and left it to hisson.”
“Alexei,” Cam spat. “Who wasn’t content with having the loan repaid in full. He decided he wanted to extort my dad, get him to providetechnology.”
“Which he did, if we believe Uncle- I mean, Senator Shaw.” Bas’s voice was heavy, resigned, and so fucking weary. “I wish I knew exactly what he gave them. Projects he worked on for other clients? Or new tech they wanted developed? It’s almost impossible. If dad kept files on this stuff, I can’t find themanywhere.”
“Would they be paper files?” Cort asked, somewhathopefully.
Cam patted him on the knee. “No, baby. My dad was a tech guy. He didn’t do paper and pen if he could helpit.”
Bas’s phone chimed again, and he scowled as he retrievedit.
“Everything okay?” Drew leaned over to whisper, nodding at Bas’sphone.
