And then, despite the race taking place and the fact that I had never seen the man outside of VIP, Julian Marchetti strode in.
The CEO of StormSprint.
His linen trousers and dark blue shirt were cut loose, deliberately oversized, but I supposed it was meant to be fashionable. He always gave the air of nonchalant class.
But now he was red-faced as he pointed at me. “You. You’re needed.”
I swallowed and let my hand slip from the bike.
The forcefield snapped.
That awful, creepy feeling at the top of my spine was so heightened, I rolled my shoulders back as I followed Julian into the tunnel.
“Is he okay?” I asked him, voice low.
“He won’t be, no.” His footsteps were quick, far from theslow, leisurely pace he normally took to the bar if he didn’t call staff to him. “I need you to translate word for word on this…”
He trailed off. He didn’t know my name.
“Fia Bacque.”
He frowned, stopped, and inched his head back. “As in Cris’s daughter?”
I nodded slowly. I’d spoken to him twice this year. Once, in front of my dad.
“You look nothing alike. Not even like Everly,” he said, shaking his head and hurrying us through the tunnel.
I wasn’t about to go into detail on how I wasn’t technically related to either of them, but he didn’t really care, and it was the last thing I wanted to spend energy on.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
He shouldered open a door and waved me into one of the meeting rooms. There, directly in front of me, sat Zoltán, looking down at his hands on the desk, eyes tight in the bright LEDs overhead. His skin was ashen, his expression hopeless, and his wrists were so close together I had to double-check they weren’t shackled.
“Zolt,” I breathed, my voice pure sympathy.
He shook his head and looked to the floor.
I sat at his side, resting my hand on his leather-clad thigh under the table.
Julian sat directly opposite Zolt. In front of me was Dr. Yvette Sannier, and on his other side was someone I didn’t know with a notepad.
“For the record,” Sannier started, and I looked around the room, trying to find anything that could be recording. The table was empty apart from papers. No cameras weretucked in the ceiling. She was talking in idioms. “My name is Dr. Yvette Sannier, this is Julian Marchetti, our CEO, and this is Gracie Roberts, one of our HR consultants. You are welcome to have representation by your manager, but your brother isn’t currently picking up his phone.”
“He’s not his manager anymore. He’s currently between managers,” I offered.
Julian closed his eyes in exasperation.
“This is the beginning of an investigation into your conduct, Mr Farkas,” Sannier finally said.
Oh shit. And my conduct too.
That’s why I had been dragged in here. Because our relationship had been found out andoh my—
But Sannier widened her eyes at me to translate. And so I did.
My voice floated in the space between us, feeling far too airy and not my own.
What conduct?If he was in trouble, I must have been too. If they were exposing our relationship, it made no sense for them to ask me to translate.
