“This is nothing. He cornered me, tried to offer me a job. I said no.”
Brick’s whole body is taut. He runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, wild.
I turn to speak directly to him. “I said no, Brick. You have to believe me-“
“We also traced phone calls coming from Adalwulf Associates’ to your personal line,” Billy interrupts. “Several calls, in fact.”
The weird phone calls I got when Brick was in California. “Those weren’t-“
“You’ve also entered Adalwulf Associates’ building before. Do you do deny it?”
“No, I went in to get coffee. I did nothing wrong.”
“There’s no need to act all innocent,” Billy sneers. “We’ve got you. We know you’re responsible for the breach.”
“I’m not. I don’t know anything about it. Brick, you know me.” I focus on him. Brick, the Big Bad Boss. The man-werewolf-I’m coming to love.
Last night we were together in bed, and he was so sweet. Rough in the best way, but also tender.
Surely with everything that’s gone between us, he knows me. He knows I’m loyal. I would never betray him.
After a long pause, Brick shakes his head. He looks past me to Billy. “Lock everything down. Get her computer to Jake and his top team, look into the breach.”
I sag like I’ve been punched in the chest. I wish it had been a punch, it wouldn’t be as painful as this.
He doesn’t believe me.
“Already on it.” Billy’s smile is triumphant.
“Brick.” I take step forward towards him.
“Don’t come any closer,” he rasps, gripping the chair so hard his knuckles go white. There’s a crack as the plastic breaks. I freeze, trying to comprehend what’s happening. He just broke the chair with his enormous strength.
“This isn’t just Moon Co,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t be with you. I have to choose my pack.
I have to.”
“Hang on,” I say. “I don’t know anything about the security breach. I swear. Occupy Wall Street was a long time ago, and the only reason I was talking to Aiden Adalwulf was because-“
“I don’t want to hear it!” Brick roars. His eyes glow completely yellow. “Somebody get her out of here now.”
My heart thunders with distress. Tears fill my eyes. I had always pictured my last moments at Moon Co, doubting I’d last, and I’d sworn I wouldn’t cry the way that first assistant had. I’d sworn I would never care. Yet here I was not just caring, dying.
“Brick.” I hate the pleading tone in my voice, but I can’t mask it. I can’t hide what he’s come to mean to me. I’m not just losing my job, I’m losing everything.
“I’ll escort her out.” Billy stands from the table, his posture so menacing I flinch.
“Not you,” Brick snaps. He flicks his finger like he wants to left-swipe me right out the door. “Nickel.”
Nickel walks silently over to my side and extends his arm toward the door in a charitable gesture of showing me the door.
I stand on shaky legs. Stand and stare at Brick whose blazing eyes show only his wolf.
“Brick?” I try one more time. This time there are tears in my voice. I don’t even care how much I’m humiliating myself. I want him to know I didn’t do this. I would never hurt him or Moon Co.
“Let’s go, Madi,” Nickel says in his crisp English accent. He takes my elbow and leads me out the door. The first tears fall the moment we cross the threshold.
“Pack your desk,” Nickel clips.
“I don’t want anything,” I mumble, only stopping to pick up my coat before heading straight for the elevator.
The tears continue to slide down my face in the elevator ride down to the first floor. I somehow manage to hold the sobs in and keep silent, but I can’t breathe.
“Give me your employee badge.” Nickel holds out his hand.
I fumble in my purse and pull it out to hand to him.
“I didn’t do it,” I croak when we reach the bottom.
“I don’t care,” Nickel answers.
The elevator doors open, and he walks me all the way to the front door where he tells the doorman that I’m not allowed back in.
I stumble out on the sidewalk. Sleet hurls from the sky like further punishment.
Like God is saying,
This is what happens when you let your guard down, Madi. When you trust a rich man.
This is what you get.
* * *
Brick
Rage storms through me with flashes of red and white. I’m surprised I didn’t already shift, but then, my wolf wouldn’t attack Madi. Not when he believes she’s his mate. I wanted to throw the conference room table through the windows when I found out, but my wolf wouldn’t let me do that either. He wouldn’t even let me hand her over to Billy, knowing how much he hates her.
Now I know how my father felt, to be mated to the enemy. It’s a wonder he survived as long as he did. The impossibility of my parents’ situation has struck me many times over the years but never more fully than now.
Every single time my father looked at my mother’s face, he had to know she wished to betray him. She was the enemy, yet he still couldn’t stop himself from seeing her. From claiming her. From taking her up to his bedroom every week when she visited.
Ultimately she destroyed him. And he accepted his death from her hand. He probably knew it would come one day. He probably expected it from the first night he claimed her.
Once Madi is gone, I overturn the giant mahogany table. I smash every chair against the wall, crumpling each one to the size of a cabbage.
Then I turn and face my team. “Get the breach under control,” I say. “We need to be back up and running today.”
“That may not be possible,” Vance says.
“Make it possible!”
I rage. “And I want every detail about how this happened written up, so we can go over it.”
My friends eye me warily.
“Somebody get me a fucking helicopter right now.” I need to shift and run within the hour or somebody will end up bloodied on this floor.
“I’ll call Acker,” Jake offers.
“I’ll tell Genevieve about the change in personnel,” Vance says.
“I don’t want another assistant!” I shout. “No one-no human-ever steps on the top floor again.”
Brick
I may not survive this.
It’s that thought above all else that eventually forces me to turn back to my human form and get my ass back to Manhattan.
Vance insisted on coming with me to the Berkshires, despite the fact that I threatened to tear out his throat if he wouldn’t leave me alone. I ran my wolf for thirteen hours straight there until I collapsed and Vance dragged me back into the cottage.
Liz and Dane were frantic, trying to feed me, get me in the shower, and make sure I didn’t go back out to run. Nobody spoke a word about Madison Evans, and for that I have to be grateful.
They all fear I’ll go moon mad.
I fear it, too.
This situation was like a human getting a stage four cancer diagnosis. I’d met my mate, my wolf had chosen, and now he was being denied. A wolf with as much alpha power as I carry can’t survive such a blow. I don’t know if I’ll even make it to the full moon. Not with this much rage and betrayal swimming around in my head.
Knowing my pack and company need my leadership right now, especially if I’m going to go feral by the full moon, I am in the office by morning in a suit and tie, ready to take heads.
Getting off the elevator to a silent top floor is too much, though. I stop and stare at Madi’s empty desk with bitterness. The office still smells faintly of her orange and Frankincense scent. I swear I almost detect the scent of her tears from the day she left, but that’s just my brain producing a memory.
The memory makes my chest tight.
I don’t mean to, but I walk over to her desk and stand above it. Not to catch her scent. Just to make sure she’s cleaned all her belongings out.
She hasn’t. Her tube of hand lotion still sits beside the phone. A lip gloss is next to the computer. There’s a greeting card standing behind her monitor that reads,
You’re killing it. I snatch it up and open it.
It’s from her brother. Inside he wrote, “I didn’t get you a graduation present, but I saw this and thought of you. Congratulations on the Moon Co job. You’re killing it!”
My chest hurts even worse. The memory of Madi drunkenly poking my chest that night her band played, telling me she knew I’d paid for her brother’s tuition surfaces.
I want to villainize her. Demonize her. But just like my mother, she’s someone I loved first, before she ripped my heart out.
It’s not black or white. Good versus evil.
She’s a real person with emotions and insecurities and people she cares about-like her younger brother. Her friend Aubrey.
I’d stupidly thought she cared about me, but it turns out it was all a lie.
Still, it’s hard to untangle the love from the hate.
I pick up her desk and hurl it at the wall, then stalk into my office and call Vance. “I want all the execs working on the top floor until this gets resolved,” I bark.
I can’t stand being alone up here. It will hurtle me to madness even faster than I’m already going.
My team streams in and updates me.
The programmers have figured out how to patch the system and Moon Co is up and running again, but our stock price dropped a hundred million overnight. Nickel is working his ass off doing interviews and sending new press releases to try to get it to bounce back.
I sit and listen and then fold my hands. “Okay. What do we know about the mechanics of the breach?”
“We still only know that it came from Madi’s computer. It looks like she loaded it the night of the holiday party, and then it was set to activate at a later date or was remotely activated.”
I blink, hit with a torpedo in the center of my chest.
The night of the holiday party.
The one where I drove her home and spent the night at her apartment. And she broke things off with me.
“Find out which it was. I need to know everything about how this happened.”
“What about the Adalwulfs?” Jake asks.
“What are you asking?”
“They need to pay for this.” His gaze burns with vengeance.
“Yes.” This goes far beyond me scooping up the land they wished to purchase. They tried to take down my entire company, same as they took down my father’s. “They certainly do. But we have more pressing concerns right now. We need contingency plans in place for leadership of the pack and the company.”
“What for?” Nickel asked.
“You know what for.”
Billy goes pale. “Are you saying…”
I nodded gravely. “Madi is my mate. My wolf will drive me to madness for refusing her. I’m already losing control.”
“I told you,” Vance mutters to Billy.
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