“We could be billionaires, you idiot!”
“I’m already a billionaire, remember? I have money. A lot of it. And that is why I don’t care about the money, and I do care about the research, and it is also why I have a controlling share on the board, and why I own the fucking building that you’re trying to hold me hostage in, and frankly, I’m probably paying the salaries of the men I just knocked out.”
It’s Veronica’s turn to smile. “All of that is true,” she says. “But that changes nothing. You might have money and power, but you don’t have your phone, and you have no idea how anything is run in this company because I have done all of it for as long as you or anyone else can remember, so when I show up to the board meetings as your surrogate, nobody is going to question it.”
She’s right.
“You can stay down here and sulk,” she says. “But I have all the time in the world to break you, and the only person in the world you have ever let care about you is absolutely powerless to help you now. Unless you count sitting in a car like a puppy to be a power.”
She smirks and nudges the guards awake with the toe of her pink high-heel shoe. They rouse themselves and follow her out groaning and limping, but for the most part unscathed.
As the door closes behind them, and the LED lights flicker in ways LEDs aren’t really supposed to, I feel a hollow sensation opening up inside me.
She’s right. I’ve been focused on my work all my life. I’ve never bothered to take an interest in things that people told me I needed to care about. I’ve been laser focused on this one project. And now there’s nobody to miss me, nobody to save me, nobody to even notice I’m gone.
CHAPTER 13
Simon
She’s back the next day, and this time, she’s not alone.
“General, this is Simon Seek,” she says. “He’s the scientist responsible for the breakthrough who is currently withholding his work.”
The general is a man in his mid-fifties. Salt and pepper hair, chiseled features, hard eyes from years of making hard decisions. He looks like the sort of man who thinks mercy is a sauce. He’s wearing a civilian suit in rock gray. I suppose he’s conventionally attractive.
I notice a faint blush across Veronica’s nose and cheeks. She finds him attractive. He’s not wearing a wedding ring. Interesting.
“So you’re the genius,” he says.
Strong opener, I’ll give him that.
“I’m not going to share my tech with the military, sorry.”
“Don’t you love your country?”
“Oh, he’s stupid,” I coo. “Is this your pet soldier, Veronica?”
“Stop it,” Veronica hisses.
The general looks at me with the expression of a man who has spent his life breaking men.
“We’ll put you in a hole in the ground until you beg to come out.”
“Good idea. Break the brain of the man who has the thing you want… in his brain,” I say. “For your next trick, you could streamline all your airplanes by removing the wings. Veronica, this guy is a fucking clown. If this is who you’re dealing with, I feel sorry for us all.”
“He’s resistant,” she says. “But there are pressure points yet to be entirely exploited. There’s a woman still at large. If she can be captured, he can be forced to do whatever is asked of him.”
“You haven’t been able to track her down?”
“She’s escaped our teams, but I’m sure you have resources that will make her capture inevitable.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “One little girl against a team of crack hunters is not exactly a fair fight.”
Veronica wants me to lose control. I can feel the influence of the moon upon me, a steady pressure now. It was coming in slow waves before, gentle washes of animal impulse that receded before anything too terrible could happen. But now it is starting to feel more like rough waves and imperious commands.
I could tear the throats out of the both of them before either of them could do anything to stop it, and they have the nerve tostand in front of me, swaggering and bragging and threatening the only person I love in this world.
“Or we could leave her alone, and you could give us what we want. You’re making a simple thing very difficult,” Veronica lectures. “You don’t have to be a part of it once we have the formula. You just have to be willing to share.”
