Chapter 25 #2
Cypress. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And now I have to say his name out loud.
Kelley.
The TV glow spills into the hallway as I stop outside his office. The steady thump of a basketball hits the floor again and again, unbothered. I listen for a beat.
Bounce.
Swish.
Bounce.
He doesn’t know yet.
I step inside.
Kelley’s at his desk, sleeves rolled, posture loose, shooting hoops like the ground beneath us isn’t already cracking. He looks up and grins.
“Auggie,” he says. “You look like a man who needs a drink.”
I don’t smile.
“Kelley. We need to talk.”
The ball rims out this time. He catches it, studies my face instead of shooting again.
“…Okay,” he says slowly. “That serious?”
“Yes.”
He sits. Not casual. Intentional.
I tell him.
I don’t rush it. Numbers. Accounts. Duration. Pattern.
The silence thickens with every detail.
When I finish, he exhales through his nose. A humorless sound.
“And you’re sure,” he says. “Because Cypress isn’t some random idiot. He’s been here since we were duct-taping presentations together.”
“I wouldn’t bring this to you if I wasn’t sure.”
“How much.”
“Two hundred fifty-one.”
The ball slips from his hand and rolls across the floor.
“…That’s a lot of money for a man who looks like Professor Eggman after a divorce,” he mutters.
I almost laugh. Almost.
“Are you kidding me?” he goes on, pacing now. “That squat little lint trap of a man? With the damp handshake and the constant smell of burnt coffee? That’s who robbed us?”
“Kelley—”
“Hold on.” He rubs his face. “Let me process the fact that a five-foot-five human beanbag with a Norwood-seven hairline and the sexual charisma of a couch cushion managed to siphon off a quarter million dollars.”
His jaw tightens.
“That backstabbing son of a bitch.”
“We’ll handle him,” I say. “But first, we stop the bleeding.”
He nods once, then sharpens. “Where did this come from?”
I hesitate.
“Harlee found it.”
The room shifts.
“Harlee?” he repeats. "The new girl?"
“Yes.”
“You asked her to audit our books?”
“I asked a competent employee to investigate discrepancies. Yes.”
The laugh that leaves him is short and dry.
"It was her wasn't it?"
"Was who?" I ask, confused.
“You asked the girl you fucked in your office to dig through our financials—and didn’t think I deserved a heads-up?”
Well, this escalated quickly.
“You don’t get to talk about her like that.”
“I get to talk about the decision,” he snaps. “And that decision affects me.”
He stands now, pacing. “Cypress betraying us is one thing. That’s rot inside the walls. But you?” He stops, eyes locking onto mine. “You broke the rule. You brought someone you were sleeping with inside the palace, gave her access to the bones of this place, and told me after.”
The words land clean.
“You didn’t just miss something, August,” he continues. “You opened the gate.”
For a beat, I can’t argue.
The panties. The meetings. The access. The timing.
This isn’t about sex.
It’s about me deciding alone.
“This doesn’t change what Cypress did,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “But it changes how we got here.”
We refocus. Security. Legal. Accounts frozen. No spectacle.
Eventually, the noise settles.
But the silence between us doesn’t.
Kelley exhales, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We’ll deal with Cypress first. After that…”
Over the next few days, we moved quietly.
Evidence first. Then patterns. Then confirmation stacked on confirmation until denial wasn’t an option for anyone—least of all Cypress.
I watched Kelley shift in real time. The jokes vanished. The charm flattened. What remained was something colder and far more dangerous: focus.
By the time we called Cypress in, the decision had already been made.
He walked into the conference room smiling, all confidence and habit, until he clocked our faces. Something flickered behind his eyes—calculation giving way to instinct.
“What’s all this about?” he asked, dismissive. Performative.
Kelley didn’t sit.
“Cypress,” he said evenly, “we’ve uncovered serious financial irregularities.”
Cypress scoffed, waving a hand. “Clerical error. Happens all the time. Let me pull the reports—”
I leaned forward. “Save it. We’ve reviewed everything. Line by line. This isn’t a glitch. You’ve been stealing from James Wilde Media for almost two years.”
The color drained from his face.
“You can’t prove that,” he snapped, voice already cracking.
Kelley met his gaze. Didn’t blink. “We can. And we did.”
Cypress’s composure collapsed fast after that. Excuses tripped over each other. Loyalty. Tenure. History.
“I was here when this place was nothing,” he pleaded. “You can’t do this to me.”
Orlando appeared at the door, flanked by security. Calm. Final.
“There’s nothing left to discuss,” I said. “Please gather your things.”
Cypress stared at us like he was still waiting for the punchline.
Then Kelley stepped forward.
“You really didn’t think about the fallout,” he said quietly, “from draining our company to bankroll some Instagram fantasy?” His lip curled. “You look like Professor Eggman on a bad day and somehow still managed to fuck this all up.”
Cypress opened his mouth.
Kelley didn’t let him finish.
“Get him out of my sight.” He left through the side door, already biting into an apple, jaw working hard enough to splinter bone.
The emergency staff meeting was worse.
Shock moved through the room like a current. I explained Cypress’s dismissal and the financial breach without spectacle, without blame. I apologized—for the oversight, for the breach of trust—and took responsibility where it belonged.
Kelley followed, steady and controlled, outlining the safeguards we were putting in place.
But the distance was there.
Palpable.
We didn’t look at each other.
In the days that followed, the office felt different. Quieter. Watchful. Kelley and I spoke only when necessary, our easy rhythm replaced by something formal and brittle.
The work continued. The systems tightened. The music played.
But the silence between us stayed.
And for the first time since we built this place together, I wasn’t sure if the fracture was temporary—or structural.