“God.” Ellie held in the rest of what she wanted to say. She held back the flood of how much she hated Warren for his snide comments and his constant gaslighting. For making her friend—her bright, capable, beautiful friend—doubt herself. For making her believe she had to do something so reckless to prove her love. And for working so hard to drive a wedge between them.
Vic’s fingers closed around hers and for a moment, Ellie had hope. But then Victoria spoke. “We can still fix this.” The harsh red had faded from Vic’s cheeks, leaving her pale and tired-looking. “Sell the company, Ellie. Take the cash. Set us all free.”
Hell. Just do this one thing for Vic. Like Vic had just done one thing for Warren. Prove her love to her best friend, just like Vic had proven hers….
Where did that end?
How many people could be hurt? Her staff. Her game. The community of players she’d nurtured and loved; that beautiful group of people creating character art and writing fanfic and bonding over plots on social media.
Ellie shook her head. There had to be another way. “I’d be happy to loan you?—”
Vic tugged her hands back, her mouth turning down at the corners. “I don’t want to borrow money from you. I want the money I’ve earned.”
Ellie sucked in a breath. She hated everything about this. The conflict. The fear of losing her friend. Everything. But she was finding a new kind of strength. The strength to sayno.
She reached across the table, holding her hand out palm up, and tried again. “Please don’t ruin our friendship over this. We can work together. I’ll help?—”
Victoria stood up, pointedly ignoring Ellie’s open hand, and stalked to the door. “All I want is my share of the company that I helped build.” And then she left.
Chapter Nineteen
Ellie openedher eyes at the discordant beep, blinking slowly as she tried to work out where she was. The lights were bright, almost glaring, contrasting with the darkness at the windows, and other than the sporadic beeping, her office was silent. A cup of cold coffee sat half drunk beside a stack of papers that she still hadn’t read. She had fallen asleep with her head on her desk.
She pushed herself up, wiping the grit from her eyes. A quick glance at her laptop clock showed it was almost 2:00 a.m.
After Victoria left, she’d taken a minute to get herself together, and then gone to do the worst job of her entire career: speak to HR about how to handle Vic’s breach of confidence and start an investigation. When she got back to her office, she’d planned to spend some time working out what to do about the trouble her friend was in… and how far she should go when Vic had been clear she didn’t want help. But it had only been a minute before the first of her staff arrived and the floodgates opened.
Everyone needed her. Her accountant wanted her to go through month-end spreadsheets, the designers had reams of concept art, the story team wanted to share the improvementsthey’d made, marketing had ideas for a teaser campaign…. On and on and on until she was spinning.
It was after eight by the time the last person had left her office. Ellie had ordered Chinese food and gone back to her desk, planning to catch up on some of her own work before heading over to a local hotel to get some sleep. But her exhaustion had caught up with her first.
Her mouth was dry, lips cracked, and her eyes still felt as if they were still half glued together. She took a sip of the ancient coffee and winced. It was bitter, and the milk had started to separate.
She pushed it away and dragged her hands through her hair, pulling it back into a ponytail out of her face. There was no point in sitting there for the rest of the night. She needed a shower and a bed.
A cold bed. A bed without Josh in it. She rubbed the ache in her temples and sighed. The desire to speak to him, to hear his voice, was visceral. But it wasn’t as if he had a phone. Or an e-mail address. Assuming he was even still… there.
Ellie stood slowly, easing the kinks out of her back and shoulder, and began packing her things away. But then her laptop chimed again.
She glanced at the screen, and then looked again, properly. There was a string of security warnings.
She sank back into her seat, pulled her keyboard and mouse closer, and scrolled down. There were multiple alerts over the last twenty minutes. All coming from her firewall. Someone was making repeated attempts to get into her private system.
She was used to seeing hacking attempts on her IP address. That was just standard. But this was different. This was a relentless, coordinated attack.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she followed the digital signature of whoever was trying to get onto her system. It wasweirdly easy. Too easy. They were making no attempt to hide themselves at all. They were…
Her body filled with ice. They wereher.
Someone was trying to hack her system using her login. And if they got past her firewall, they would have everything they needed to steal the game design document for the new game—concept, characters, gameplay, easter eggs, even her own personal notes—everything.
All new staff signed an NDA when they joined, and it was to protect the GDD. If a thief got hold of it, they could sell it to anyone. Everyone. Her launch would be over. Hell. Her business might be over.
She’d invested too much already. She’d invested too much before Vic had sunk tens of thousands of pounds into a server room they didn’t need.
But where…? Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Searching. Tracing the person pretending to be her.
And… crap.
