“You chose to work with my brother.”
“Actually,” I began to correct him, “Gareth placed me with your brother when I requested to be transferred from your team.”
“And I bet you jumped at the chance,” he said, scathingly. Grayson straightened up and sniffed indignantly before adding, “I won’t work with anyone else.”
“Why not?”
His anger surfaced quickly. “I don’t need to give you a reason!”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Holden move towards us. I looked at him and raised a hand before he stopped in his tracks. This was between me and Grayson.
“This is my job, Grayson. I take it seriously,” I told him calmly. “I’m not interested in playing games with you and having you make my life difficult. I asked to be moved so that I could get on with what needed to be done.”
“You and I both know that without me, your job is left undone,” he retorted.
He took a step closer, but unlike last night, I stood my ground. He was in my domain now. The lab was where I felt most confident. It was clinical and analytical and logical. It was where I’d built myself in the form of late nights and early mornings and missed weekends. I refused to be destroyed in my kingdom.
“It irks you that you can’t get me to do what you want,” Grayson continued. “It bothers you that I'm an unfinished project.”
What irked me was the fact he could read every thought, even when I didn’t choose to voice them. There was no running from the truth. I never left projects unfinished, and the fact I couldn’t finish his case left me feeling unsettled, even when the transfer was what I’d wanted.
“Come back and I’ll give you what you want,” Grayson said. “I told you yesterday that I’ll work with you to give you your proof.”
“How can I trust you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“You can’t,” he told me honestly. “You just need to decide what matters to you.”
A thousand alarm bells blared in my head. I couldn’t trust him. I never would, and he’d just told me as such. But all I needed to do was to tolerate him long enough to get the required sample. I wasn’t a physicist that would need Grayson to be present for the experiments.
I knew I couldn’t trust him, but there was an unfinished project — my project — and the way Charlie had said that Grayson had run me out made my blood boil. Is that what people truly thought had happened? Idle gossip twisting the narrative so that I was the damsel in distress rather than taking charge of my own life.
A black tendril wrapped itself around my wrist and I knew Hunter’s ward had worn off and left me at Grayson’s mercy. I couldn’t let him do this again.
“Gareth is going to be sick of seeing me,” I said.
The words were like magic. Grayson’s aura dissipated, and I turned back towards the others.
“Get him back to the lab,” I ordered, walking down the corridor. “Ask James to prepare some heparin vacutainers and butterfly needles. I’m going to see Gareth.”
I didn’t wait for a response before taking the stairs down to the offices, giving myself a chance to prepare for my second meeting of the day.
When I walked into Gareth’s office unannounced, he looked up with a small frown. This was not the impression I wanted to give my boss.
“What now, Scott?”
He appeared stressed, and I knew it was because of the situation I’d brought to his door this morning. There was no one else willing to take my place on Grayson’s team, and even if Gareth could find someone to replace me, it wouldn’t matter because Grayson would refuse to work with them.
“If you want me to work with him, then there are a few things that need to happen,” I told him.
Gareth sighed and stood up from his desk. “List them and I’ll see what I can do.”
An hour later, we’d agreed that I would work with Grayson once again, with no option of a transfer, my salary renegotiated, and I held a single copper cuff in my hand. The last bit was more of an insistence from Gareth, but I didn’t argue. It would be nice to have peace of mind that I was safe in my home. Then again, Grayson had got under my skin perfectly fine last night without too much help from his powers.
The corridors flooded with people who were starting their lunch break, and I pushed against the tide to get back to work when I bumped into Charlie.
“Are you coming?” she asked me.
“No. I just want to get things set up so we can start as soon as everyone’s back,” I explained. “This has already taken longer than it should.”
