“Yes, Boss,” he acknowledges, pulling himself back to his desk, typing away like I asked.
A rough hand clasps my shoulder, but I refrain from letting it jolt me out of my skin like it usually does. Arden may be my father, but he elicits the same reaction from everyone when he’s in boss mode.
His deep, interrogative voice accelerates my pulse. “What’s going on here?”
From this angle, only I can see the way Brody’s eyes are blown wide. My father has a view of the back of his head.
Brody doesn’t say anything.
Good.
He knows the real reason I brought Kate here and is aware that under no circumstances can Arden discover the truth.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I muster up a lie. “I’m having Brody pull up all communication records transferred between us and the Virginia location, trying to see if there’s any digital footprints from someone who might have hacked the system.”
Brody’s shoulders stiffen further. To an outsider, his typing might seem like the kind of speed that suits a hacker and security expert. But I hear the inconsistencies. Namely, that backspace button he keeps jamming with his finger. I just hope my father doesn’t.
When my father drops his hand from my shoulder, I turn to see him nodding. My gut twists at the cynical look pulling at his features. “Conference room, now. There’s been a new development.”
My heart hammers in my chest. “About the ambush in Virginia?”
His golden-brown eyes study mine, the dim sconces on the wall in the nearly black room casting shadows across his face. His stoic expression causes me to shift uncomfortably on my feet. I’ve never lied to him. At least not when it comes to the Megalley Syndicate. It would be foolish to underestimate him and believe I wouldn’t find myself subjected to his wrath.
“Brody, won't you join us?” My father isn’t requesting his presence; he’s ordering it.
Arden struts back out of the tech and security room. I follow him down the dark concrete hallway under Lachlan Park, with Brody hot on my heels. My father slips a hand into his gray suit pocket and pushes the door to the conference room open. Amassive television is mounted on the wall, positioned in front of a long mahogany table, with chairs and a scarlet carpet beneath. Even the amount of red dye coloring the threads wouldn’t amount to the blood we have on our hands. It would drown this room.
Carter is already here, lounging back in one of the chairs with his arms knitted across his chest. I take a seat across the table from him as Brody sits in the chair next to mine. My father takes the head of the table. He doesn’t sit; he stands, like he always does, since I started coming to these meetings long before I was thrust into my role. But at that time, I was a young boy watching my father command attention and lead with respect.
The tendons in Arden’s jaw flex under the fluorescent lights, his eyes shifting to Brody, then cutting to Carter.
“What?” I demand harsher than I intend to. Why am I the only fucking one out of the loop?
Arden braces his hands on the table. “If you weren’t so distracted lately, you’d remember that, yesterday, I told you that I had Brody go through records on all our communication channels.Allmessages back and forth between every location from the time we discovered our first shipment of missing product three months ago up until the attack in Virginia.”
Brody’s frame hardening shifts the air in the room.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!
Somehow, I manage to keep my face straight as my father’s untrusting eyes bore into mine.
There’s no pushing past the transparent lie that fell from my mouth, but for now, I avoid it. “And? Did you find a digital footprint someone left behind?”
“Yes.” Arden blinks, something darker injecting into his glare. “Someone hacked into the communication channels between the New York and Virginia locations.” My brows furrow. “From Lachlan Estate.”
Shit.
My dad gestures across the table. “Want to elaborate, Brody?”
I turn to glare at him. He doesn’t look at me. Can’t say I blame him, not when he knows that my father is the one he fully reports to.
Does that mean he knows about Kate?
She flashes across my mind, flooding me with images of her from around the estate over the last few days. We have fallen into a state of comfortable coexistence when we cross paths. The electric snap in my fingers always wants to reach for her when I’m not working, and she’s not at the medical center. It’s taking all my sanity not to give my cock and soul what is craving since I didn’t indulge the other night. I left her and went straight to my room, settling for my hand that was still covered in cum from her climax, imagining my fist was her tight pussy.
I’ve been so busy dealing with this fucking Luciano mess and this war on our hands that I’ve barely spent five minutes with her. So, I have no excuse for ignoring my father yesterday when he told me Brody was checking all of our communication data.
I’ve been working a lot; I’ve just been...distracted.
