My jaw tightens. I replay every meeting. Every time he leaned back too casually and said,probably nothing, right before something very much was.
I feel sick now. Angry. Violated, even.
“I pulled a few favors and dug into his connections,” Anastasia says, queuing up the next screen. “People who owe me. People who don’t get curious when I ask them to follow money tied to corporate bullshit.”
Numbers flood the screen. Accounts. Transfers. Too clean.
“Cache Elite?” Timantha asks, recognizing one of the logos.
Anastasia nods. “Your largest competitor, who also happens to have deep pockets and zero shame. They planted Reese six months before your valuation talks went public.”
She highlights a column. Wire transfers. Regular. Substantial. Direct deposits routed through three intermediaries before landing in Reese’s personal account.”
“He wasn’t freelancing,” I say. “He was employed.”
“Yes,” Anastasia replies. “And he delivered exactly what they paid for. Behavioral intel. Defensive patterns. Weak points that aren’t actually weak, just waiting.”
Timantha swears, low and lethal. “He sat in this building. Ate our food. Smiled in our faces.”
“Tried to touch my booty,” I add.
“And tried to steal your company out from under you,” Anastasia finishes.
I exhale, but it does nothing to even my breaths or my temper. “So every time I felt like someone was testing me, it was because they were.”
Anastasia holds my gaze. “He underestimated you by trying to flirt with you like you were simple. That’s where he fucked up.”
I grin. God, I love her. Such a boss.
“Good,” I say. “Because now I know exactly where to aim when I fuck his four-eyes up.”
“Where the police will aim,” Timantha cuts in. “We’re letting the authorities handle this. Because we do not need you going back to jail, Max.”
That gets us all laughing.
Anastasia glances at her smartwatch, then snorts at whatever just came through. “Autika wants to know if either of us will bring her chicken and waffles and come over to put lotion on her feet. Apparently her belly’s blocking her view and Justice is out of town for a soccer match.”
“An emphatic hell no,” I say immediately. “She was your friend first.”
We crack up.
Timantha shakes her head, laughing. “I’ll take her the food. But I am not putting lotion on her damn feet. Iwill, however, take her to a nice, friendly nail salon and let them hit those things with a Brillo pad.”
Anastasia packs up a few minutes later, sliding her laptop into her bag, and somehow even that looks tactical. She wears a sleek bob and polished business clothes, the kind of woman who could walk into a boardroom or disappear into the shadows without changing her expression. She also has a literal license to kill, which feels worth noting. I’m just grateful—deeply, sincerely grateful—she’s a friend.
Timantha and I thank her at least three times for coming in on such short notice, on a Sunday evening no less. She waves it off, already halfway out the door, because that’s who she is. Ride or die, with receipts.
Once she’s gone, the room settles into a quieter kind of tension. Timantha turns to me, studying my face the way she does when she already knows the answer but wants to hear it anyway.
“Have you heard from Eli?”
“Yeah. I have.”
Timantha’s expression softens, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I told myself I was being practical. That I needed to come home because of work. Because of this.” I gesture vaguely at the conference room, the logs, the mess. “But if I’m honest, I was also preserving myself. I didn’t want to sit around waiting for him to remind me that whatever we had was temporary.”
“And then?” she asks gently.
