I hold his gaze until he breaks the silence.
"Take your audit." He waves a hand at the paperwork. "For now."
I leave his office with the signed paperwork and my jaw aching from how hard I've been clenching it.
Mattaniah spends the rest of the day working from my office. He sits at the small table by the window with his laptop andthe Southeast division files spread around him, his pen tapping against his lower lip while he cross-references account numbers. His focus is absolute. The pen stops tapping every time he finds a discrepancy. He flags each one with a yellow sticky note and moves on, his brain finally doing the work it was built for.
I watch him from my desk. I'm supposed to be reviewing the quarterly projections but the numbers keep blurring because the Omega at my window has tucked his feet under himself on the chair and his curls have escaped their professional taming and his scent has warmed the room into something that smells like he's stopped performing.
"You're staring," he says without looking up.
"I'm supervising."
"You're staring." His pen taps twice. "I can feel your eyes on me. It's distracting."
"Good."
The corner of his mouth twitches but he doesn't look up, and I go back to the projections.
Amos joins us around three with coffees and a USB drive containing updated forensic data. He perches on the corner of my desk and walks Mattaniah through a series of account transfers that don't add up, and the two of them fall into a rhythm of analysis that excludes me entirely. Mattaniah asks questions that make Amos' eyebrows rise, and Amos answers with a patience I haven't seen him use since he started teaching me bridge in college.
The afternoon is the closest thing to normal the three of us have ever had, coffee and spreadsheets and the occasional argument about methodology in an office that smells like all three of us.
By six, Mattaniah has flagged twenty-three discrepancies that Amos confirms are legitimate leads. He pushes back from the table and stretches, his shirt riding up enough to show a strip ofskin above the waistband of the slick panties, and I look away before I do something that disrupts the fragile professionalism of the last seven hours.
I pull out my phone and text the housekeeper.Is my father home?
The reply comes in thirty seconds. No, sir. He left for a dinner function at five. Not expected back until late.
"Go home," I tell Mattaniah. "Father's out for the evening. We'll pick up tomorrow."
His shoulders drop half an inch at the confirmation, a tension releasing that he probably didn't realize he was carrying. He gathers his things and leaves with a "goodnight, firefly" from me and a kiss on the forehead from Amos that makes him flush from his collar to his hairline.
The evening goes wrong at eight fifteen.
Amos and I are in the study reviewing the forensic data when we hear voices in the upstairs hallway. Mattaniah's voice first, tight and controlled. Then a woman's voice, sharp enough to carry through the closed door.
We move without discussing it. The study is on the second floor, twelve steps from the hallway where the voices are coming from, and by the time we reach the corridor I can hear every word.
"—cut my cards." Mattaniah's mother is standing in the hallway outside his bedroom door, her posture rigid with fury. "Richard cut my credit cards this afternoon. Every single one."
Mattaniah is backed against his door with his arms crossed over his chest, his body angled away from her the same way it angles away from Richard. His scent has gone sour with stress.
"I don't know anything about that," he says. "I don't have access to Richard's accounts."
"Don't lie to me." She steps closer and Mattaniah presses harder against the door. "I know about your arrangement withyour stepbrothers. I can smell them on you. Two Alphas, Mattaniah? After everything I taught you about keeping your head down and your legs closed?"
Amos' hand touches my arm. Wait, the touch says. Listen.
"Richard already knows." Mattaniah's voice comes out flat, the terror buried so deep only someone who's been listening to him for weeks would catch it. "He doesn't care. He wants me anyway."
His mother's face flickers. The anger stalls and something scrambles behind her eyes as she tries to recalculate an argument that just lost its foundation.
"Then I'll tell the board." Her voice sharpens. "The press. Everyone. Your stepbrothers, the CEO's sons, sleeping with the CEO's personal assistant. That's the kind of scandal that tanks a stock price, Mattaniah, and you know it."
"Enough." I step into the hallway and Amos follows a half-step behind.
Mattaniah's mother turns. The fury on her face gives way to something more calculated as she takes in the two of us standing in the corridor, close enough to have heard everything.
