Chapter 56
Chapter fifty-six
War
Being back in the office feels good.
Being back with her? Even better.
I sink into my chair, the familiar leather molding to me like it never stopped waiting. Everything’s sharp, humming, under control. Olivia is back under my roof. My penthouse. My office. My life.
I pull up the feed.
Her office flashes onto my screen. The camera isn’t tucked in her bookshelf anymore, I moved it, right above the door in plain sight, angled to catch her desk. She knows I’m watching.
And I fucking love that she knows.
She sits there, head bent, typing fast, her lips pursed in concentration.
Every now and then she brushes her hair out of her eyes.
She pauses to stretch, arching her back.
My lips twitch as I watch her mouth something under her breath, probably cursing at the program I made her use. I could watch her all damn day.
My chest tightens just watching her. She looks so fucking good here, like she was always meant to be part of this empire.
I sigh, content, and pull the small box out of my drawer. The ring. I’d been ready to put it on her finger in Brokenwoods, but the timing was wrong. She needed to come back here first, fall back into the flow of things. In to us. When I do it, it’ll be perfect.
The door crashes open; Wilder saunters in first, Wesley on his heels.
I snap the feed closed, jaw tight.
“Is there another writer’s strike?” I mutter, not bothering to hide my irritation. “Why are you always here now?”
Wilder just grins, drops into the chair across from me, and swings his feet up onto my desk. “Don’t have to be there. You sent Brody over. I’ve got your little lapdog running my errands now.”
“Brody’s supposed to be managing Beaumont Realty,“ I bite out. “Not Wilder Productions.”
Wilder shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “Details. He likes me better.”
Wesley sighs and takes the other chair. “Enough. You two argue like children. Glad to have Liv back, I see. I thought you two would be working from home forever.” His eyes flick to mine knowingly before he looks at Wilder. “You really should do your own work. And we have an issue. The three of us.”
I swat Wilder’s shoes off my desk, hard enough that he curses under his breath, and lean forward. “What issue?”
“Relax,” Wilder drawls. “It’s not that big of a deal. Wes is just pissed it interrupts his little love fest with the chubby girl.”
“Hey!” Wesley and I snap at the same time.
Wilder chuckles, hands lifted in mock surrender. “What? I like them soft. I wasn’t being rude. I just forgot her name.”
“Her name is Evie,” Wesley growls.
I level him with a look. “What’s the issue?”
“With Evie?” he deadpans.
“No!” I snap. “What’s our issue?”
Wesley straightens. “Miranda wants a meeting.”
I blink. “So?”
“I saw her months ago. We had lunch. She’s fine. I talked her off that ledge.”
“Apparently not enough.” Wesley’s tone is grim. “She’s coming for the building. She wants her cut.”
Wilder snorts. “Well, she doesn’t get a cut. She can fuck off to Paris and keep playing the golden daughter.”
“For once, I agree with Wilder,” Wesley mutters.
I lean back in my chair, smirking. “Then let her have her meeting. We’ll say no, as usual. She’ll storm off. In another two years, she’ll come back to bitch about it again. Rinse and repeat.”
Wesley’s jaw tightens. “What if she tells Dad?”
I laugh sharp and humorless. “What’s he going to do? Pull his funding? We haven’t needed him in over a decade. Let him pull it. He wants to play knight in shining armor for Daddy’s little girl, he can buy her her own damn building.” I pause, my smirk sharpening. “Oh wait, he already did.”
Wilder leans back, folding his arms behind his head, his Rolex catching the light. “She doesn’t need a meeting. She needs a man. Someone to keep her busy so she’ll leave us the fuck alone.”
Wesley actually chuckles. “We should pay someone to do it.”
I bark out a laugh, dry and callous. “Do you know how much we’d have to pay for her age?”
Wilder frowns, starts counting on his fingers. “She’s twenty-nine. That’s not old.”
I freeze. “She’s only twenty-nine?”
Wesley nods. “Eight years younger than you. Seven from me. Five from Wilder.”
“Christ,” I mutter. “I thought she was at least thirty-five with the way she complains.”
Wilder smirks. “You’d think she came out of the womb filing lawsuits.”
“Or monologuing about her ‘value in the family business,’” Wesley adds with a groan.
I shake my head, half amused, half exasperated. “Maybe we should pay someone to date her. Get her to latch onto some poor bastard instead of clinging to Beaumont Enterprises like it’s her birthright.”
“She’s still running that makeup line though,” Wilder says, not bothering to hide the surprise in his voice. “What’s it called again? Blood Vow?”
Wesley corrects him. “No that’s just the lipstick line. And it’s actually doing well. I saw the quarterly. Someone must be running it for her.”
“She’s got vision,” I admit. “Just no off switch.”
“Or filter.”
“Or awareness of her lane.”
I lean back, mulling it over. Twenty-nine. Somehow I thought she’d crept further into spinster territory.
I tap my fingers against the desk, calculating. “If she shows up here or corners either of you, just send her my way. She’s never had a backbone against me.”
“Because you scare the shit out of her,” Wilder says, amused.
“She still flinches when you raise your voice,” Wesley mutters.
“Good,” I reply flatly.
Both of them nod, unspoken agreement sealing the matter. Miranda might be our little sister, but she is still a Beaumont—and Beaumont’s always find a way to turn family problems into business strategy.
Wesley’s phone buzzes.
One glance and he pales.
“Fuck. Shit—shit shit shit.”
Wilder sits up straighter, alert.
“What now?”
“We’re being hacked,” Wesley says, standing, fingers flying over his screen.
I straighten. “We, or just WesTech?”
Wesley doesn’t look up. “Looks like both. Someone was in the backend. I don’t know how deep yet.”
“What the hell is happening?” My voice drops an octave. Tight. Controlled.
Then Wesley freezes.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
My heart drops into my stomach.
“Olivia?” I’m already standing. “Is she in danger?”
“No,” he says, slowly, dread rising in his tone. “She is the danger.”
I whirl toward the screen.
Pull up the office feed.
Olivia’s office flashes onto the monitor.
Empty.
I blink. Refresh. Still empty.
“She’s not in her office,” I grit out, already moving for the door.
Wesley steps in front of me, blocking the way. “Of course she’s not. She hacked into my system and left.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snap. “Olivia didn’t hack anything. Someone’s using her login, spoofing her credentials—”
“Uh-oh,” Wilder laughs grabbing a drink from my decanter, shaking his head.
“You didn’t tell him?” he asks glancing at Wesley.
Wesley answers clipped. “Apparently neither did she.”
Now I’m getting pissed.
“Tell me what?”
“I told you she was perfect for the job, before you stole her,” Wesley says, switching from his phone to my desk. “You think I let her into WesTech because she makes a killer coffee?”
He groans, dragging a hand through his hair.
“She’s not just a glorified assistant, War.
Olivia’s a prodigy in my field. Cybersecurity, systems engineering, anomaly detection; she has the credentials and the instincts.
She’s the one who found the zero-day exploit in our old firewall when I first started the company up by hacking it.
Anonymous. But I traced it back to her.”
He shakes his head. “Her design? I still use.”
“She what?”
My mind is whirling.
My Olivia?
“She applied to NovaRael, but I called her in as soon as Brody told me she didn’t get the job,” Wesley snaps. “She knows how to break a system—my system. Which is why I gave her limited access and never let her near the core servers, figured I could use her in case of an emergency. But now…”
He trails off, connecting his phone to my computer.
I’m frozen. Replaying conversations.
When she mentioned Santo Amato, I told her not to speak his name again.
She was the only person to find the information I needed to get the Parker Building renovations back up.
She was genuinely confused as to why I needed her up here…
I thought she was being cute.
I never thought—
“So what?” I manage. “She’s some kind of tech genius?”
“Yeah,” Wesley says without looking up. “And whatever she was looking for, I need to find out before it’s too late. If she stole—”
“She wouldn’t,” I cut him off.
Wilder chuckles.
Wesley lifts a brow.
“She wouldn’t steal. She has everything she needs with me.”
I say it with more certainty than I feel.
Wilder watches me as he sips my scotch.
Wesley doesn’t argue, he just says quietly, “Then let’s find out what she was doing.”
“I’m calling her,” I say leaving my own office and pacing the hall.
I stare at my phone a moment then dial. It rings twice.
“Hi, babe,” she answers, all breathy and casual.
My brow furrows. Babe? She never calls me that.
“Where are you?” I ask, voice low.
“I went to pick up lunch,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “I… I couldn’t wait.”
She’s lying.
I can hear it in the tiny hitch of her breath.
“Oh yeah?” I pace, one brow rising. “Where?”
Another beat.
“Not La Serenata,” she answers.
Smartass.
“Listen, I’m next,” she adds, voice soft. “I’ll see you soon.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at the dead screen for a second longer, jaw clenched so tight it aches. I force myself to breathe.
She’s not a thief. She wouldn’t run. Not after everything.
No.
She’s not leaving. She wouldn’t. Not again.
But if she did…
She’d end up back in Brokenwoods and I’d drag her ass back here, kicking and screaming, tie her to my name, and never let her leave the damn penthouse again.
“Found it!” Wesley’s voice chimes. “She wasn’t just skimming. She tunneled straight into asset registries. She was after something specific.”
I step back in and walk behind him, Wilder tucks in close to look too.
“Here. This is the search history.”
Search Query: Maksim Korsakov
Related Entities: Korsakov Holdings. Gilded Ace. Exile. Smash and Sugar.
My blood turns cold.
Korsakov.
Of all the names in this city—
“She was digging on him?” I ask, voice sharp.
Wesley nods grimly. “For hours.”
My mind races.
The damn Parker Building.
“She has a fucking death wish,” I grit.
I open the GPS tracking app.
Let’s see where you went, little doe.
You like being watched, don’t you?
Good. Because now I’m coming for you.
I pray I get to you before he does.