3. Is Something On Fire?
3
Is Something On Fire?
ALICE
Monday morning, I took extra time contouring my cheeks and styling my hair into a glossy sheet of straight chocolate strands before adding the fiercest winged eyeliner I could manage. I was no Kaia, but it was impressive, regardless. While I sat with my coffee at the kitchen counter, I pulled up Instagram, smiling when the first picture was of Ollie and the kids at what looked like a recital. I gave it a like and a quick comment congratulating sweet Mattie. Perhaps the only thing Hartless and I had in common was how much we adored Matilda.
She was a quirky little kid, but her spontaneous appearances in the office, around Greyson or Ollie’s houses, or whatever resort we piled into when the board had mandatory appearances out of town had become something of a game for us.
When the Harts beat me into estates, I was wise enough to look for hidey-holes, and if I was first into the rooms, I’d wriggle under a bed or behind a curtain like Big Bird. She always found me with a glare at my simplicity but giggled anyway.
I had no doubt she’d end up as the first female President of the United States if that’s what she wanted.
Holding myself a little taller after a night with the latest Lucy Score—a gift from my brother’s fiancé—and a bath hot enough to turn me into soup, I gathered my bag and keys and headed out to conquer Monday.
I couldn’t put the roof down on my Bronco in the morning without destroying my meticulous hair, but I’d packed my beach stuff in the back and would one hundred percent be taking advantage of the sunshine tonight. I put on Weaker Girl by Banks and let her voice guide me through the city until I pulled into the parking garage beside our building.
Car locked, I flipped my pepper spray into my hand to make the walk through the garage and out into the sunshine—a habit my big brother Jameson had insisted I acquire the first time I left home. Thankfully, I’d never had a reason to deploy it. That gratitude faltered a step, although the click of my heels stayed steady as nerves shot up my spine when I spotted the two men loitering around the corner.
It wasn’t all that unusual for paparazzi to linger when big news had broken in the Harts' world, but I had a sinking sensation in my gut. Tightening my hold on the canister in my hand, my thumb flipped the lock when one of them looked up and not-so-subtly nudged his friend when his eyes found mine. Lifting my chin, I eyed the entrance and then decided just to leave a bit of a berth around them. Ollie, Reggie, or Greyson would deal with them when they arrived.
Only, as I went to sidestep them, the first mimicked the motion. “Alessandra Rhodes?”
My eyes flicked to him before I thought better of it, giving me away, and I resisted the flinch that followed. What the fuck did he want with me ? I ran my thumb over the rough edge of the lock on my mace and tried to walk by him, but his friend blocked my path to the door. I was about to step off the curb into the street when the second lifted his phone in my face.
Rearing back, I thanked all that was holy my voice held strong. “If you approach, I will engage. Back. Off .”
“Ms. Rhodes, we’re here with Emerald Daily and thought you’d like to make a statement about the allegations against Greyson Hart.”
My heart leaped into my throat. Turning his way, I scanned his face for a bluff but found a lifted chin, eyes sparkling with victory.
What fucking allegations? I hadn’t heard shit about any allegations. And I all but ran the PR team.
“No comment,” was all I said.
“This is going to be the story of our generation, Ms. Rhodes. The Titan of Emerald Bay embezzling from his own company? You have a unique opportunity to be the first quote to hit the web—you’ve worked with Greyson Hart for about two years now, correct?”
“No comment,” I repeated, stepping into the road and skirting past his buddy as the first one barked a laugh.
“A word to the wise, Ms. Rhodes. Burn the bridge before you go down with the ship.”
Nice jumbled analogies, you idiot.
I sucked down a breath when security buzzed me into the building, my heart booming against my ribs and throat. They were so damn certain, but…
My instincts were reeling.
Roiling.
Revolting.
Nothing about his comment resonated with my intuition.
While Hartless was a complete prick to me , this company was his life—his family’s legacy—and he loved nothing in the world like he loved Ollie and Mattie. He might have the personality of a rattlesnake, but…I couldn’t picture a world where Greyson would intentionally hurt Mattie or the empire he fought to preserve for her. And stealing from Ollie and their shareholders would undoubtedly destroy their plans for her.
She was why he lived and breathed this business. Why he was the first person in the building—second only to me if I was feeling spiteful like I was this morning—and the last to leave. Hell, I’d driven by well after midnight on a Saturday and spotted his illuminated office window—like a lonely beacon in the darkness.
In a full storm of cognitive dissonance, I rushed to my office, dropped my things, and made my way to his, finding it mercifully empty. The thing about being his right hand for the last two years was that there were few aspects of his life I didn’t have full access to. His passwords and accounts were all locked in a vault inside my mind. Bluntly, there were few personal parts of his life I wasn’t uncomfortably privy to.
I just stared at his sleeping computer monitor for a moment, fighting through a tsunami of denial in order to think of this pragmatically. Growing up as the middle of twelve had its benefits—like being able to read situations better than most because I was used to gauging thirteen other people when shit was going down. Years of bruised ego might’ve encouraged me to tell Hartless that karma was a bitch and to kick rocks. The bully on the playground was finally getting laid out by somebody bigger.
But…that honed gut instinct said this accusation was baseless.
God damn my conscience.
Blowing out a heavy breath, I woke the monitor, mentally going through the crisis protocol as I keyed in his password. Never in my wildest dreams over these last few years would I have ever assumed I’d be going into war mode for Greyson.
Three buttons on the desk phone had me ringing up Ollie—we’d need him in here either way—and a few rapidly pressed keys on his computer would have security headed my way. The Harts would need them to get through the paparazzi without an incident. Maybe the Capitol entrance would be a better plan.
Despite gearing up to give him hell today, I prayed for Ollie, Beau, and Matilda’s sake that our only problem would be a brewing defamation case.
Sliding my phone from my bag, I pulled up my best friend’s thread and fired off a text. Never in my life had I been more grateful the man had used his geeky childhood tendencies for good, and now worked in cyber security. Hopefully, it would get me what I needed and quickly.
Alice
Morning, Maxi. I’m phoning a friend.
Max
What game show are we winning?
Alice
Heart Investments. Can you talk? Work your magic and make it a secure line.
Max
Let me get coffee, and I’ll be yours.
Greyson
“This is tremendous news, and I don’t understand why you’re not celebrating,” Reginald—Reggie—Hart was a regal, sixty-year-old embodiment of the term ‘old money’. My uncle could balance an impressive number of hats, but none were labeled subtlety .
He looked like a kid on Christmas morning…sans the silver hair and tube of extra fat around his middle. Closer to suave Santa, I corrected internally. Despite his clear glee, my stomach had been in knots for the better portion of the last thirty-five hours. After leaving the ballet, it wasn’t Jackson or Matilda on my mind, but my own patronizing words hurled at my assistant that weighed me down. I didn’t often feel the need to apologize for the ruthlessness Harts were known for. Only one of those was applauded in our family, and it wasn’t the former.
“I’ll celebrate when the contracts are signed,” I countered flatly, turning the page on my paper as our driver took a gentle turn onto the business strip of the city center. My eyes scanned over black ink on flimsy pages, but I couldn’t absorb any of it. I was too preoccupied with running my own words on a wheel in my brain.
My watch buzzed, and I rotated my wrist to see it as Reggie continued to gush over Paxton Rhodes.
The name made my teeth grind after my conversation with her Saturday night. Everything made my teeth grind after that night.
I may not have put stock in her when she interviewed, but seeing her working was a whole different game. For example, my passcode had just been used to access my computer, and according to the display screen, it wasn’t even seven in the morning. Only one other person knew those codes.
Fetching my coffee.
Christ, I was as bad as Ollie insisted I was.
Irritated, I slammed the newspaper closed and set it aside as Reggie filled me in on our final starting line for the season. His son, and Ollie and my favorite cousin, Eli, was the department head, so Reggie was always up to speed on the goings on. While entertaining, football was way below my pay grade. I plucked a few stray dog hairs from my navy-blue jacket—my four-year-old Shepard was why I had lint rollers stashed in every office, vehicle, and gym bag. His companionship was fantastic, but it came with a perpetual furry sweater I didn’t care for. My watch chirped again, and I glanced at the face.
“Interesting.” I hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud, but…Alessandra was running through our numbers. Hell, that was below her pay grade. I had accountants and bookkeepers for that. Over the years, my mind had concocted at least a dozen fantasies of things she could be doing in my office at the crack of dawn, but none of them would make HR happy with me. Which is precisely why she’d always been—and would always be—off limits.
I tapped the icon for our head of security, bringing my phone to my ear.
His groggy voice told me I woke him. Good. Civilian life was making him lazy. “Is something on fire?”
“Morning, Mike. Can you check the footage of my office for me?”
“Christ, it’s early,” I heard the shuffle of feet and tapping of keys as he yawned, “Everything alright, sir?”
“Just humor me.”
“You got it, Commander.”
“We’ve talked about this.” We had. A dozen times, at least. Which is why I knew what his next words were about to be.
“Old habits die hard, sir.”
“Well, kill it already. I’m not your Commander. I am, however, still your superior.” I’d only just earned the rank four months before the accident. Maybe his perpetual endearing use of it wouldn’t bother me so severely if I’d been his acting Lieutenant Commander for a longer period of time, but as it was, I hadn’t earned it.
A decade served with the Navy Seals—ironically, the more pleasant alternative to submitting to my father—was cut short by some idiot getting behind the wheel drunk. All that work was gone in an instant. One man’s selfish impulse wiped my father and my chosen career off the face of the planet in a heartbeat. I wished it was the first time fate had struck our family, but it seemed in addition to our wealth, we bore a curse to die young.
Which led me here, in the back of a town car with my uncle in his stuffy suit, running the company I never wanted. It was only Mattie that forced me to step into my place. However, I quickly realized I could use the resources two generations had built before me to fight the evils of the world from…a fresh vantage point.
He chuckled and then asked, “What am I looking for, Mr. Hart ?”
“Anything unusual.”
“Alice is busy at your desk. A few photographers out front—I assume for the Rhodes announcement. I see nothing out of place.”
“Good. Thank you, Mike.”
“Feeling paranoid today, sir?”
“Not anymore. Be in soon.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Before I had a chance to question my suspicion, Reggie was asking, “Why are you checking security?”
“Anxious,” I grunted in response, my forehead aching with the depth of the furrow between my brows.
“Get in a good workout. That always helps.”
I pursed my lips and nodded my head. Never mind that I’d been so pissed off after that call that I couldn’t sleep or that I’d woken up today to a message from my source from the local news station telling me they were about to run a story investigating me, but she didn’t know what for. Only that she’d be in touch.
All this on the same day Alessandra was poking through my files? It couldn’t be coincidental.
That was the question that dominated my thoughts as we finished the ride into the office, my fingers tapping over my phone screen as I checked through emails, our chat channel—anything that could indicate what she’d searched for at seven am Monday morning. Nothing. I couldn’t see anything that would give her a reason to inspect our books. But in the last two years, if I learned anything about Alessandra Rhodes, it was that she was as unequivocally intentional as I was.
That’s why I was nodding with a painful kind of resignation when Mike called me right back. Trouble . This spelled trouble.
Swiping to answer, I managed one word. “Yeah?”
“Sir, we’ve got a situation at the entrance. It's on the sidewalk, so we can’t boot them. I can have security escort you past them or?—”
Reading his next thought, I asked, “Is the Capitol entrance clear?” We were positioned in the historic section of downtown, on the network of underground evacuation tunnels leading to and from the Capitol building. Rather inconvenient should the bureaucrats need to evacuate, but fantastic for avoiding the press.
“Yes, I sent Carlos and Wade over to meet you.”
Smiling at how well he knew us, I said, “Thank you, Mike. I’ll see you soon.”
“Heading in now, sir.”
When I reached my office, I expected Alessandra to be sitting at my desk. What I didn’t expect was for Ollie’s glum face to look up at me with a little two-finger salute. My brother never—and I do mean never—was in the office before me.
What I expected even less was that as I leaned against the doorframe to watch her work, she growled, “Your firewall is bullshit.”
“Pardon?” I nearly choked on my saliva. Had I ever heard her curse before? To keep from laughing, I looked at my sleeve and plucked a long black hair from between the fibers of the fabric. Ollie stifling his own certainly didn’t help.
“It took Max under sixty seconds to walk me through it. That’s bullshit , Hart. You, of all people, should have a system that’s ironclad.”
“I’m sorry. Who walked you through what?” My irritation was poorly concealed, but what the fuck was she doing poking holes in our system?
“ Max . He’s a friend. Ollie has his information. He’ll get our tech up to date. Trust him with my life. The same can’t be said for whoever set up your security system.”
“ I set up my security system,” I responded dryly.
The corner of her pink lips pulled up as her eyes flashed to me again, keys slowing. “Like I said.”
What the fuck? Pursing my lips, I stepped inside and closed the door softly behind me. Was she having a stroke?
So help me, if my brother let that laugh escape the hand he had clasped over his mouth, I’d smack him upside the head.
“I suggest you explain yourself, Ms. Rhodes. This is peculiar behavior, even for you.”
“Even for me,” she grumbled. “I’ll show you peculiar.”
“Are you drunk?” I asked, flabbergasted by the one-eighty in her usually reserved personality.
So softly I barely deciphered her words, she grumbled, “On freedom.”
“Freedom?” I repeated, entirely out of the fucking loop. Something I was neither accustomed to nor remotely fond of.
“From you,” she muttered, shrugging her shoulder before turning the computer monitor toward me. “Seeing as all I’ve accomplished in the last two years of dedication is an adequate latte, I no longer feel the need to earn your respect. I’ll be out of here in no time, and you’re clearly not a reference for future endeavors.”
I winced and started, “Look, Alessandra?—”
“No,” she cut off my protest, shaking her head as she held up her hand, “thanks for making it perfectly clear what I’ve contributed to this company. I no longer feel remorseful leaving, as any bimbo with two brain cells will be able to successfully fetch your coffee.”
“Alessandra, I?—”
“Don’t need to explain anything about our conversation, but don’t be offended when I put Oliver down as my superior.”
Ollie shrugged, adding, “You have my ringing endorsement. But uh, let’s move this along, Rhodes.”
“Move. What . Along?” I snarled before jamming my eyes closed and hating myself just that much more. Tone and tact were two skillsets I’d never particularly mastered outside the boardroom.
“You’re going to be real glad you still have me and Tiff both working this week,” she muttered.
“Alessandra, answer my question, please.” The way those gray-blues snapped to me, scowl carving her pretty face at my use of the word please had me feeling like an absolute douche.
“Had an interesting conversation this morning,” she explained casually, leaning back in my chair as she folded her arms over her chest.
In my experience, power lay in silence, so I turned to lean against the desk, sliding my hands into my pockets and feigning disinterest. “Oh?”
“Reporters ambushed me on my way in today to ask if I wanted to make a statement regarding the embezzlement allegations leveled against you.”
Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice. There it was. The niggling anxiety in my chest. “I’m not embezzling.”
“I assumed.” And yet, her eyes were narrowed on me.
“Really?” I drawled, hiding my surprise that she wouldn’t immediately assume the worst in me.
“You’re a shitty boss, but you came home for Mattie.”
“True,” Ollie agreed from where he was now bracing on his knees in the corner.
I shot him a glare before looking back at her and demanding, “Explain.”
“Why would you do all of that just to rob her of her future? You’re not exactly subtle about the history with your father, so you didn’t come back for him.”
“Let me get this straight. You didn’t believe the press, and yet here you are…digging?” What she believed she’d find, I wasn’t entirely sure.
A wry smile stretched her lips. “Trust but verify.”
Unblinking, I flatly asked, “Are we in a Cold War, Ms. Rhodes?”
“You tell me,” she countered slowly before glancing at the screen. For someone who played an impressively convincing doormat for the last two years, she certainly held her ground, her chin raised and shoulders back. It was only the momentary line between her brows as she glanced at the monitor that gave away her uncertainty, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. She knew something.
Jaw clenching, I didn’t respond before Reggie slipped in the door, worry lining his austere features.
“Morning, Reginald,” she chirped as I straightened to my full height, hands still in my pockets. “We’re almost done here.”
Irritation quickly replaced confusion as he looked from Alessandra to me. “What in the hell is going on? You just abandoned me before I’d exited the town car.”
“Ms. Rhodes here had a concerning run-in with some members of the press,” I supplied. When her eyes flew to mine, I gave her a nearly imperceptible shake of my head. Not here , I willed her to understand. I turned to my uncle and added, “She alerted me to the incident during our drive to work, which is why I had Mike hop on security, but I wanted to make sure she was okay myself.”
“Oh, Christ, I thought something was terribly wrong.” Then, he had the afterthought to ask her, “Are you alright, Ms. Rhodes? Did they touch you?”
“No, sir.” Her focus met mine. Which was why the cold bead of sweat dripping between my shoulder blades was the one point of contact I had with my surroundings until she breathed, “I was checking with Mr. Hart to see how he’d like to proceed.”
Relief slid through my veins as my mind spun through options like a roulette wheel. Keeping a monotone, I explained, “Evidently, the scavengers at the Emerald Daily have forgotten how inconvenient a defamation lawsuit is and are looking to sling accusations my way.”
Reggie collapsed into the formal leather loveseat shoved against my office wall behind a deep green leafy plant that I believed Alessandra had dubbed Brenda . With a fatigued sigh, he demanded, “At what point will they find a new target? Haven’t we exhausted them by now?”
“Evidently not,” Alessandra responded, leaning back and crossing her legs primly, eyes boring holes into my profile.
“What are they attempting to hit us with now?”
“Not us,” I corrected. “Me.”
Reggie’s eyes slid to Alessandra as she said, “They were looking for a statement about an embezzlement case against Mr. Hart.”
“What embezzlement case?” He snapped, turning his full focus on me, dripping with disapproval.
“There is no embezzlement case, Uncle Reggie. You can confirm with legal. Nothing’s been served. They’re blowing smoke. My insider gave me a head’s up something ugly was coming down the line, but I didn’t know what.” Admittedly, this isn’t where my mind went. They could be going after Jax’s and my operation, and that idea was somehow worse. Likely, it was that sphere I needed to look at once we had damage control lined up.
Reggie pursed his lips, staring me down for a beat before turning Alessandra’s direction. “Ms. Rhodes, please excuse us. This is a family matter.”
Alessandra lifted her stare to mine expectantly, her shoulders relaxing when I obliged.
“She stays.”
Reggie shifted uncomfortably before shooting a less-than-friendly glare in her direction. “This isn’t a subject I’m comfortable discussing in front of the help.”
“ Reggie ,” Ollie scolded, sounding just as aghast as I was.
My skin heated. Not that I had a right to be aggravated on her behalf when I’d been more heinous not thirty-six hours ago. Her irritated scoff was punctuated by something that sounded a lot like “Apple. Tree .” But as she rose, snatching her discarded blazer as she moved past me, I grabbed her wrist, holding her in place as her face snapped up.
“I trust her,” I declared simply. The words were for our Chairman, but my eyes locked on hers. “My office, my reputation, my right hand. Ergo, she stays .” There was no room for negotiation in my tone—or the implied order that passed between her and me—but just for good measure, I added, “Alessandra has been spinning PR slip-ups and fixing media messes for this company for the last few years, and does it with the brutal, unforgiving finesse of a Hart.” Her eyes widened before she smoothed her expression out. Lifting my gaze to my Uncle’s, I continued, “The Martinson scandal?” I waited for the realization to dawn on his drawn face—one of our clients had made the stereotypical fuck up that resulted in scandalous private surveillance photos with a hooker a year back. “Alessandra was the mastermind behind making that go away. If there’s smoke, she’s the one that will find our fire.”
For the briefest flash, I thought he looked impressed, but that assumption was dashed as he said, “With all due respect to Ms. Rhodes and her finesse for faking a deep fake, I don’t see how her skill set will help diffuse an allegation this serious. We need to call a war room.”
“With all due respect ,” she practically hissed the word, “I already have. Our security, legal counsel, forensic accountant, and PI are due within an hour. The rest of the board will be in by noon. I have a third-party cybersecurity contact on standby who has already signed our NDA. Our contact at the Daily will be here at two.”
It was damn hard not to smile at that. She still hadn’t removed her wrist from my hold, so I gave her an approving squeeze. Someone had been paying very close attention while we put out prior fires. But Reggie wasn’t done.
“As for a PR spin ? What in the hell do you think she can come up with that would overshadow America’s most eligible bachelor being accused of robbing his own company? The only thing that could make a splash big enough to swallow that would be a royal wedding,” he jabbed with a graveled laugh.
I gingerly released Alessandra’s wrist, relieved when she didn’t flee. Her eyes were calculating when I glanced down to where she stood beside me. Not scared. Not accusatory. Like the wheels in that pretty head were turning a million miles a minute. It was mesmerizing to watch, and as those blue-grays landed on me, churning with intensity, I realized I’d stopped listening to my uncle in my attempt to decide if she was truly an ally.
Tuning back in, I heard him jab, “Seeing as the last time you were seen with a woman other than your cousin was before your father died, and those gossip rags have been speculating whether you’re a closet gay, I don’t think you have that option. As for today, if we’re about to have a board meeting, I need to prepare.”
“The last five years’ internal audits are in your inbox, as is the Daily’s salacious history targeting your family,” Alessandra said matter-of-factly. Now, that expression on my uncle’s face was respect. She seemed to see it too, explaining, “If you’re proficient at anything in a family my size, it’s organizing chaos and herding cats. I keep files like my life depends on it.”
“Ours might,” Ollie muttered under his breath as Reggie reassessed my assistant.
“Thank you,” he begrudgingly murmured. Despite his bigoted traditions and distaste for the middle and lower class, there was nothing my uncle took more pride in than our family name. It’s why he kept the bad blood between him and my father under wraps. Reputation superseded justice. That was precisely why I was hoping he would be on my side for this.
“Let’s reassure the board, dot our I’s and cross our T’s, and I’ll get it handled,” I said firmly, shifting away from my suddenly-ballsy-as-fuck assistant and walking to open the door, gesturing for Reggie to cross the threshold. “The board is going to expect you to be ahead of this. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to consult with my head of PR. This is nothing new—certainly nothing we can’t make go away.”
My uncle practically growled in frustration. He shook his head as he pulled out his phone, but he surprised me by getting right in my face as he stepped through the doorway. “You better know what you’re doing, boy. This is no joke.”
“Am I laughing?” My response was pointed. But his perpetual refusal to acknowledge the value I added to this company and treat me like a child was exhausting.
Blowing a harsh breath out of his nose, the man stalked from the room. Hopefully, he’d use a bit of that temper to sort out what the hell was going on.
When I closed the door and turned to lean against it, Alessandra was watching me skeptically from where she was braced on the desk.
“You really called a war room?”
She crossed her arms below her chest. “Am I your barista or your PR wizard? You can’t seem to make up your mind.”
“I’ll take that as a yes?”
“They’ll be here shortly. She CC’d me on everything,” Ollie answered.
Narrowing my eyes on her, I asked, “Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not.”
“Certainly had me fooled.” I stepped into her space, but she didn’t bother to shift. Didn’t so much as glance away.
“I’m helping Mattie. You just so happen to hold the strings to her future. If there are allegations between her and making the impact I know she’s destined for, I’ll squash them before I leave next month.”
Nodding, I studied her long frame, where she was still braced against my marble desk. Nerves in my throat, I asked, “What if I was guilty?”
“Are you?” She challenged below a skeptical brow.
“Of many sins.”
That remark earned a sly smirk and scoffed, “And this one?”
“No.” I ignored the subtle spiced scent that had driven me mad for the last two years and instead studied her, looking for a slip in that harsh mask. Christ, she could guard her thoughts.
“Then I can protect her future with a clean conscience,” she said simply. “Besides, it’s the job.”
“I’m touched.”
“Don’t be. It isn’t for you.”
“Regardless.”
“I need to gather our packets from Paul before the meeting, so if you’ll excuse me,” she said, motioning to the door. I nodded and tracked her movements as she left. Ollie whistled, low and long.
“Sure glad she doesn’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I muttered, slowly sinking into my chair to massage my temples.
“Like she wants to fuck you or kill you, I’m not sure which.”
“Perhaps she’s a praying mantis.”
“Both is good,” he chuckled.
“Not going to ask me if there’s validity to this?”
“Would you ask me?” he countered. I didn’t need to answer—he knew I’d never. “Somebody is trying to crucify you, Grey.”
“Yeah, and I’m going to find out who.” Bringing my phone up, I glanced at the clock. I had a few minutes before I needed to take my place at the head of our table. Clicking Jackson’s icon, I brought it to my ear, relieved when he answered on the second ring. “We have a problem.”