“Leave Quincy alone,” I warned him. “I don’t know why you’re going anywhere near him now anyhow. He told me about you showing up at his office, and at his parents’ house.”
“He told you that?”
I would have expected Chester to look angry about another alpha encroaching on what he saw as his territory, but Chester looked nervous instead.
“Leave. Quincy. Alone,” I said. I would have poked him hard in the chest with each word, too, but I didn’t want to touch the bastard.
“I saw him first,” Chester snapped back with the lamest argument known to man.
“You don’t even want him,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” he stammered. “Yes, I do.”
“You don’t,” I insisted. “I do.”
“You…you can’t,” Chester said. “You’re high society. You have to be with someone more worthy of the Salisbury name.”
My dad was behind this. I knew it in an instant. My dad had put Chester up to approaching Quincy again, whether he wanted to or not. He was obviously trying to get Quincy to give up his interest in me and go back to his ex.
I didn’t get a chance to confront the bastard with that, though.
“Mr. Monk, there you are,” Miss Miniver, Quincy’s boss strode up to the booth, wearing a headset. “Your presentation starts in five minutes.”
Miss Miniver noticed me and nodded.
“I have a keynote presentation to make,” Chester said, as superior as possible, then turned away from me and marched out of the room.
He could march all he wanted, but I followed. I followed with a smile. Because I knew something else now that would help unravel my dad’s plans to keep me under his thumb. He was bribing the same man he needed to be on his side.
He wasn’t going to get away with anything now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Quincy
My nerves were completely shot even before Chester walked into the large conference room, where his presentation was all set up and ready to go.
“Do you have the microphone ready for people to ask questions?” I asked Steven as he worked with the control panel at the side of the room, making sure the microphone Chester would wear had batteries and was ready to go.
“Senator Salisbury said he didn’t want questions,” Steven said, not looking very pleased about it.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “There have to be questions,” I said. “I mean, I know people are going to want to know a lot more about this app and its possibilities.”
“I’m sure they will,” Steven said. “I have a microphone here that we can use if Mr. Monk decides he wants a Q&A, but Senator Salisbury was pretty clear that he just wants Monk to do his presentation and get out of his way.”
I tried not to scream. I tried not to burst right out of my skin. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack’s dad knew what we were up to and was one step ahead of us.
Either that or he had other reasons for not wanting people to question Chester’s app too closely, or to question their association. There could have been a million reasons why the two of them wanted to keep everything as innocent and unquestioned as possible.
“Just make sure there’s a way for someone to speak up if they need to,” I said, turning away.
“Quincy,” Steven stopped me with a cagey look. When I turned back to him, he went on with, “We all know something fishy is going on.”
“We?”
“The whole team,” Steven said. He stepped away from the control consol and rubbed the back of his neck. “Word got out that you used to be bonded to Chester Monk.”
I felt like I’d been hit by an electric arrow. All I could do was nod silently and swallow the bile that rose up in my throat.
