Chapter 20
Connor hardly slept that night, thoughts racing through his head at a breakneck pace. Saving himself, saving Nate, burying Berkshire. Getting revenge.
Well, he knew he couldn’t accomplish all of that, but he could start somewhere.
Saving Nate.
As Thornton advised, he’d saved every single email in his Outlook, every memo he’d ever made, every note to himself. He had hundreds of files to comb through, but he found what he was looking for.
If there was one thing Connor wasn’t, it was disorganized.
Nate woke up somewhere around 6, stirring beside him, rolling over to find Connor hard at work.
Not the first time, either.
“What–what are you doing?”
“Putting together documentation,” Connor answered, like it should have been obvious.
But he could tell Nate wasn’t following.
“Documentation? Docu–for what?”
“Every time Berkshire came in and pushed something by you without the Board’s approval,” he said, clicking to his folder of saved documents. “Every abuse of his authority.”
Nate was quiet for a while as Connor worked, like he was still half asleep.
And when he spoke, he sounded so small beside him.
“Why?”
“Leverage.” Connor clicked back into his Outlook, shaking his head in disbelief that his access hadn’t been cut off yet.
“Why do we need leverage?”
“Because if Berkshire wants to oust you, he’s not doing it without getting dirty.
And this shows him you’re willing to fight just as dirty as he is.
” Connor cracked his wrist in a rotating motion before he started typing out descriptions under each email in his Word document.
“I love you and I’m not going to let you go defenseless here. ”
“You love me?”
Nate’s voice sounded so small beside him, Connor’s typing paused as he took in what he said.
He glanced over at Nate, still naked and disheveled and the both of them in need of a shower, and he nodded.
“I love you,” Connor said again, not asking, because he didn’t need to.
Because Nate said, “I love you, too,” so quickly that Connor wondered just how long he’d been wanting to say it.
He walked into Alarie’s corporate building alone around 9 AM that morning, the latest that Connor had ever come to work. No Nate waiting in his office for him–he ended up heading home around 8, hugging Connor tight before he did.
“Don’t run out on me again, okay?” He breathed into Connor’s hair.
“Not a chance.” And Connor meant it, fingers curling into the cotton of Nate’s shirt.
Whether Nate had any idea what Connor was planning, he didn’t know. But he would find out, certainly.
Under his arm, Connor carried a nondescript binder, something that might have seemed entirely ordinary to anyone he passed by.
But inside that binder was everything he managed to find that morning–email exchanges, IM conversations, notes to himself, and the incriminating briefs and forms bearing Nate’s signature.
Forms that never would have had his signature on them, if not for one person’s pushing.
Connor smiled pleasantly as he passed by Ramona’s desk, offered a polite, “Good morning” to the legal secretaries he crossed paths with, walking that familiar path to the elevator.
He thumbed the Up button, watching it flash twice before the elevator doors slid open. Inside he stepped, turning, and pressing the button for the seventh floor.
Up, up, up he rode, catching sight of his reflection in the metal elevator doors.
Blue pinstripe suit, tie as perfect as he could muster. His hair slicked back with a new pomade Junie had recommended.
He took a slow breath.
There was no room for error here.
The elevator doors slid open with a chime and Connor exited with purpose, heading straight towards Isaac Berkshire’s office at the end of the hall. Surprisingly, the double doors were open, and Connor stepped inside without much preamble.
To the right was Benji, perched behind a glass-top desk as he worked between his three oversized monitors. He didn’t notice Connor right away, pursing his lips as he stared unblinkingly beneath those horn rimmed glasses, the trio of screens reflected in those tinted lenses.
Mia’s desk sat empty, but he could hear her voice coming from behind an oversized wooden room divider.
“I spoke to Ms. Trembley on that this morning. She suggested we’d be seeing a need for greater oversight–”
“Oversight is unnecessary, and she ought to understand her position will be untenable unless she remembers her place.”
Berkshire.
His voice was sharp, cutting as ever.
“Of course, Mr. Berkshire.”
“You tell that woman that my expectations are that she conform to what was previously agreed upon, per her concerns with the independent functioning of the Board.”
“Yes, sir.”
As long as Connor worked at Alarie, he had never understood just how Mia and Benji could stand working in such close proximity with this man.
And then he realized, he’d always been weak when it came to his executives, easily intimidated, easily swayed into silence.
How shameful.
He thought for a moment of Nate, the way he would flinch when Berkshire started in on him, retreating into himself like a threatened turtle.
How Nate had unraveled just before his presentation at the conference.
That look in his eyes when Berkshire had asked, “Why do I bother with you?”
No wonder Nate had broken down, reached for the one thing he could think of to make it stop.
Connor’s gaze narrowed, his jaw set as he cleared his throat, catching Benji’s attention.
“Uh… Connor? Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah.” Connor didn’t smile. “I need to see Isaac Berkshire.”
“I think–erm–he’s in a meeting right now, Connor.”
“I’ll wait.”
The baffled expression Benji wore bordered on irritating to Connor.
“Okay. I can go get him for you.”
Connor didn’t move from where he stood, while Benji gave him a questioning look before slipping out of his chair, hurrying around the room divider.
“Sir, Nathan Santos’ assistant is here to see you.”
“He needs to leave,” Berkshire said curtly.
“I’m not leaving,” Connor cut in, voice raised. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Footsteps, then Berkshire stepped out past the room divider, his glare like venom as he zeroed in on Connor.
“Your principal is currently facing disciplinary action, Hayes. Miraculously, you’ve not been implicated.” The way Berkshire spoke suggested he did not think it was such a miracle. “I suggest you leave before I have security escort you out.”
“Fine by me. Then you won’t get to see what I have in this binder.”
“I have no interest in your half-baked proposals-”
“I have documentation,” Connor cut in with a snarl, “Of every time you walked into Nate’s office and used him to bypass Board approval. You were using him as your vehicle for insider trading, weren’t you?”
Silence had never felt so dangerous as it did now in Berkshire’s office, Mia’s hand over her mouth, Benji’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and Berkshire’s blank expression, those gray eyes revealing nothing.
“Moore. Gomez. My guest would like coffee,” Berkshire said, speaking each word slowly. And like someone had shocked them both to life, Mia and Benji scurried out of his office as quickly as their legs could carry them.
Leaving Connor alone with Berkshire.
Alone, and somehow still with his resolve.
“Insider trading,” Berkshire began, “Is a very serious accusation.”
“Yeah. It is.” Connor scowled. “If I remember correctly, that’s why Devore was ousted. You remember that.”
“Your official statements during the investigation were that you did not recall what Curtis was doing during your time with him,” Berkshire said coldly.
It was bait, and Connor didn’t take it.
He flipped open the binder and tossed it onto Berkshire’s desk.
“You’re going to drop the accusations against Nate. You’re going to let him come back, and you’re going to leave him the hell alone.”
“You’re in no position to be making demands of me, Hayes. You remain in your role because of your value to Alarie, which I feel is rapidly diminishing.”
“Then this goes to the Board. You’ve got, what, barely majority support? What would you do if someone like Elle Thornton found out about this? What kind of campaign would she lead against you?”
That got him to shut up, a pinched expression on his face.
“Do you really think you’d come out of that unscathed?”
“Nope,” Connor said flatly. “But it’d be worth it. So you get to decide what happens next.”
Looking the way Berkshire did now, it was easy to see his resemblance to Nate. But he'd too often been the cause of that expression for Connor to feel much sympathy in seeing that familiar way his lip curled, his gaze darting downward, his shoulders twitching.
Whatever he was going to say next, Connor didn't give him a chance.
“Why don't you take the afternoon, go over this,” Connor said without irony. “Nate's going to be back in on Monday.”
And he left with his head held high, closing Berkshire's door behind him. Maybe he won. Maybe he'd just gotten them both fired, but for the moment, Connor didn't care.
He took the stairs on his way down, only stopping once in Nate’s office so he could make a phone call.
“Office supply, what do you need?” Asked a chipper young woman.
“Hi, could I put in an order for a new name plate?”
“Sure thing, and the name?”
“Nate Santos, MBA. That's N-A-T-E–okay, you've got the rest?”
“Yup, it'll be delivered tomorrow.”
And just like that, something that Connor had meant to do since Nate started all those months ago, finally corrected.