Chapter 50
Lydia
What are the signs of sexual frustration?
I woke up to an empty bed and groaned at the messages on my phone. Becca sent me updates on what was happening at Vale and told me to sign the employment agreement and NDA that her HR Manager emailed me.
Bit late for an NDA, but sure.
I could hear Daniel talking with someone in the kitchen, but it was too far away and he was too quiet to make out the words. I took a shower and got dressed in the new clothes he bought me, unsure if it felt weird or nice.
What I was sure of was that I wanted to know what Daniel was like when he let go and acted on his desires.
Sure, there were things I wouldn’t be willing to do, like anything that limited my movement, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to know what he was into.
Maybe he was a romantic and a gentle lover, or maybe he was controlling and dominating…
I just wanted to know and give him the space to feel comfortable exploring that.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t hiding what and who I was.
So far, it did seem like he enjoyed a little bit of pain.
It was clear from how his body reacted when I scratched him deep enough to break the skin on his neck and back.
I shook my head at the memory of trying that with Nick.
The first time I scratched him, he had two long bloody streaks on his back.
I didn’t mean to, but he kept taunting me and wanted to pretend he was a bad boy who played rough, so I played rough.
He regretted it, complained about me being crazy, and then flaunted the marks to his friends like he was some badass.
I wouldn’t have minded if he just said he didn’t like it—that would have been perfectly fine.
I just hated the fakeness of it all. Besides, I was usually careful about showing that side of me.
Previous experiences taught me that even the smallest violent act during sex could trigger some people to extreme violence, like opening a door and giving them permission to do what they wanted.
I trusted Daniel not to do that. I knew that even if we discovered he had a violent side in bed, he’d stop the second I told him to.
I just needed him to let go and stop tip-toeing around me because I had no intention of being in a relationship and having sex with him like that.
I heard the coffee machine’s loud grinding while I got dressed and smiled at the sight of him holding out a cappuccino mug for me when I walked into the kitchen.
Before I could grab it, he pulled me into his arms with his other arm and kissed me, ending it with a gentle bite on my lower lip.
Someone’s learning.
“Mmm, I like how you say good morning.” I grabbed the coffee from his hand and sat with him at the kitchen island.
“Do you have plans for today?” He pulled my barstool closer to his.
“Work out, do my nails, run a few errands maybe.”
“You can do that later. I want you to come with me to meet Nat’s old roommate.”
“You found her.”
“Jessica Taylor. She’s a nurse now. She lives about an hour away from here and told me we could stop by her place this morning before her shift. We’d have to leave now though.”
“Let’s go.”
“You okay with the bike? We’ll get there faster.”
I smiled and nodded.
“Thought you’d be. Your gear is on the couch. Suit up.”
Riding sneakers, gloves, a helmet, mesh pants, and a mesh jacket were laid out on the couch—the exact gear he sent over to my apartment.
“Daniel, did you duplicate my key when I gave it to Jake to search for bugs?”
Daniel put on his jacket and grinned. “No, but I love that that’s where your mind went. I bought you another set.”
I needed to get used to how easily he spent money.
“On the topic of keys, though,” he added with a wide smile, “your biometric data from Mason Corp was copied to the building’s security system, so you can always get in the elevator and my front door if I’m home. I usually only use the key when I leave. ”
I nodded. Becca, Cole, Jake, and Terry were all able to get into his apartment, so I didn’t feel like it was a big deal. It wasn’t like we were exchanging keys. Yet.
I put my sneakers in my backpack and wore everything he laid out for me except for the helmet, which I put on when we were in the parking lot.
It took us forty minutes to get to a quiet neighborhood with a row of small one-story houses.
Jessica probably heard the bike because she was waiting with the door opened by the time we took our helmets off.
We sat in her living room and heard everything she had to say about Natalia.
Daniel was right—they weren’t very close.
Jessica said that Natalia didn’t really confide in her, but they did chat and gossip sometimes over a glass of wine about their bad dates or hot guys on campus.
She knew that Natalia was seeing someone rich because a driver would pick her up for her dates, but she never told her his name.
Natalia told Jessica how charming he was and how much she enjoyed spending time with him, and promised that her reason for secrecy wasn’t because he was married or anything that would make the relationship wrong.
Jessica smiled when she recalled Natalia’s exact words: ‘I want to keep it a secret for a little while. The mystery makes it fun.’
There was no way to know for sure at that point if it was really Langford, but it all fit too well to be a coincidence.
After we left, we rode in silence for a few minutes until I heard his voice over the helmet comms.
“Who did you ride with?”
“Why?”
“The way you lean with me or brace on the tank…”
I smiled and held him a little tighter. “It’s an ex. You don’t want to hear about him.”
“Just tell me he was boring and easily forgotten.”
I snorted at the thought of Daniel comparing himself to Nick. “Not boring, but a piece of shit who ate my helmet before I left him, so you’ve got nothing to be jealous about.”
“Ate your… you hit him?”
“He hit me first.”
Daniel’s body stiffened. He stopped the bike on the side of the road before getting off and standing over me.
“Tell me.” I could barely see his eyes behind the visor, but his voice sounded cold and on edge.
Great, another story to shock him about my past. I hadn’t even gotten to the guy I killed when I was a teenager… Nick was nothing. You grow up around criminals, shit happens.
“He was my boyfriend. I hung out with him and his biker friends and he taught me how to ride. I got good at it, loved it. Not the wheelie stuff, but the speed and turns made me feel alive. We were out at an old lot with his friends and he and I raced. I beat him, easily, and it pissed him off. When we got back to his place with everyone, they started teasing him about it.” I shrugged.
“He lost his shit. Said I should know my place and punched me in the face and stomach. He wasn’t going to stop, and his friends, who I thought were my friends too, weren’t going to stop him, so I grabbed my helmet from the floor and hit him in the face as hard as I could before running out of there with my stuff. ”
“His name.” Daniel’s shoulders moved up and down quickly.
“You’re not going after him. He hit me and paid the price. His friends hurt me more than he did anyway.”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing. They stood there and watched him hurt me. It’s why I stayed away from people after that.”
Daniel rested his head against mine for a moment before getting back on the bike. We were almost at my place when he spoke again.
“For the record, Cole, Terry, and Jake would beat the crap out of me if I hurt you like that, and Becca would definitely try.”
“As they should.”
He was reluctant to leave me at my place, but I needed time alone, and we couldn’t spend every waking and sleeping moment together.
His anger radiated off of him. He was clearly trying to keep it at bay around me by using one-word responses and talking too slowly.
I wasn’t sure why hearing about Nick would get such a possessive reaction from him.
It wasn’t that big of a deal compared to what he found out from Kernel and what had happened at the bar with Becca—just two punches from a guy who paid with at least a badly broken jaw from the disgusting crack I heard on impact.
Either way, I needed to clear my head, and he needed to expend the extra energy he had from being so wired and pissed off.
I threw a portion of frozen lasagna in the oven on low heat to defrost and spent the next hour doing my nails—matte black this time for my new role on Monday.
I usually went grocery shopping on Fridays if I had time after work, but the entire week threw me off, and I was all set on frozen meals for the next week, so once my nails were dry, I had lunch and cleaned the apartment with my thoughts running wild.
I was convinced that Langford loved Natalia and was in a relationship with her.
There were plenty of opportunities for them to meet, she was seeing someone wealthy, and her birthday was used in his passwords.
I was accepting that as fact. So, if they were together, he hired Becca and gave her a huge opportunity at his company because he knew how close Natalia was to the Masons.
Cole said that he wasn’t a big deal at the time, so it must have been before Condukt went public.
As his company grew, Natalia was recruited by the Agency and eventually killed. He continued to treat Becca well. When did it change?
That was important.
I sent Becca a text.
?? When did Langford start being an ass to you?
She typed for a long time, but her response was short.
?? A few months after Nat died. He started to distance himself, then he was short-tempered, which I thought was just work stress, and he turned into a full-on ASS after Howard.
If Langford had nothing to do with the op that killed Natalia or the one with the stolen device, how would his relationship with her play into this?
Putting aside those two ops, something happened that made him hate Becca enough to try to take Vale down.
Being enemies and a sore loser, especially a spoiled rich brat, would easily explain that.
But then there was Vince and Luthor. Kernel didn’t send them, and it was unlikely that Kernel’s client knew that Daniel was investigating the hack, or he would have said something.
So, that leaves either Langford or something to do with Becca’s big brother’s dealings as the big, rich, famous guy managing Mason Group.
I had zero information on her brother or what he was into that would lead anyone to target his sister as retaliation or leverage. Daniel only mentioned that they weren’t really close or in the spotlight, making it unlikely.
And that brought me back to Langford. Again.
My head was spinning, I was pacing my tiny apartment, and it was already dark out when loud banging on my door brought me back to reality.
Shit, how long had I zoned out?
I opened the door to a very panicked-looking Daniel, who was borderline panting. He grabbed me and pushed me in, slamming the door behind him.
“I thought—fuck! You’re okay.”
“Yes.”
He was shaking. I pushed back to look up at him. “I’m guessing you called and I—”
“I texted you hours ago and called—I don’t know how many times.”
“Sorry. I’m fine, I was just in my own head cleaning, and then kind of pacing.”
He pulled me back into his chest. “You can’t do that, Lydia. Not now with the attack on Becca and everything that’s going on. Don’t do that.”
I pulled him to the couch to sit and straddled him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry. I can’t really help it when there’s a lot of information I don’t understand.”
“I know. I freaked out. I just… I thought about what those guys did to Becca and—”
“It’s okay.” I ran my nails through his hair, increasing the pressure at the base of his skull and lightly scraping the back of his neck.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Terry had news.”
“He found something with your algorithms?”
“Yeah, secure military communication between Langford and an unknown. Files were sent to Langford, but they weren’t digital.”
Shit. That potentially connects Langford to the military operations.
“So we need to break into his office and find them.”
Daniel smiled and pulled me into a kiss. “You came to that conclusion really fast.”
I shrugged. I figured since we killed people, whether they deserved it or not, suggesting a little B&E wouldn’t be a big deal. “Wouldn’t be my first time. Will that be our next date?”
Daniel’s eyes widened in what I thought might have been horror. “I just realized I haven’t taken you out on a date.”
“I’m pretty sure we had pizza and shots last night. That’s counts.”
“No, that’s not normal.”
I laughed—full on, head thrown back, eyes tearing up, belly cramp laughed. I didn’t even recognize the sound. I may have wheezed at some point when I saw his shocked expression.