I sit straight up. No, they’ll tear apart my ideas. I had to fight to get Logan to go along with this—will he fight for me to continue it?
That was part of our deal, but those are his brothers. They might be able to talk him into anything. If he abandons the idea…
I could leave again, but I don’t want to. I want my website, and I want my husband.
I’ve never attended one of their meetings, never wanted to, but I want to fight for my plan. Fight for my place in Logan’s life, when it comes down to it. I have a right to be at that meeting if they’re discussing my ideas.
“Mrs. Martell?”
I jump and spin on the stool to find the housekeeper standing behind me.
“Mary!” I smile widely with relief. “You’re still here.”
She nods, her answering smile uncertain. “I’m so glad you’re back. Your things arrived today.” She discreetly clears her throat, her discomfort at my messy marriage situation almost getting the better of her. “Would you like to unpack them today? I’ll help.”
It’s what Cinderella would have done, taken the day to reclaim her castle and fill it with her things. It’s what I should do instead of poking my nose into the parts of Logan’s life where I don’t belong.
“Actually, I have a meeting I have to get to,” I say. “You can leave them for now.”
“Of course. Is there anything else you need?”
“Yes.” My mind is spinning with ideas, things I want to get done right now. “Could you arrange for a caterer for a late-afternoon meeting here? I’m going to have some people over to discuss a venture I’m starting.”
“You are?” Her eyes widen as she realizes how skeptical she made that sound.
I can’t blame her. Logan is the venture capitalist, not me. I don’t have meetings here, because what could I possibly be doing that would require meetings?
“Yep.” I smile to let her know I’m not offended. “It’s unusual, but there are going to be a lot of changes around here.”
“Well…” She pulls herself a little taller. “I’m glad. Things were not so good when you were gone.”
They were not so good when I was last here. Logan coming home so late and disappearing this morning doesn’t give me hope that they’ll change this time either.
“Thank you for taking care of the house,” I say. “It looks wonderful.”
“He wanted me to keep it exactly like you left it.”
I know that, having seen it last night, but hearing her say it makes my chest tighten. “Thank you,” I say with quiet strain.
“Should I make you something for breakfast?”
I blink, grateful that she’s changed the subject. Things were getting too painful there. “Maybe.” I glance at the clock, then start. “Oh no, I have to get going.”
I wave to her as I race to my bedroom, then tear into my closet. It’s going to take some time to pick out what I want to wear, then do my makeup.
If I’m going into a business meeting as a partner, I need to look the part.
Chapter 15
“Look who the cat dragged in.”
I glance up from my computer screen—I’ve been staring at the damn thing for almost three hours—to see Mark standing in my office. Mark’s smile is wide, but then that asshole’s been nonstop grinning since he and January got together.
I wonder if this is how the rest of them felt when I married Callie. Surly and jealous and wishing I didn’t have to rub it in.
“Fuck off,” I say in greeting. “I didn’t see you here yesterday.”
“That bad?” Mark’s voice drops to a gentler, more understanding register. He knows I found Callie and about the legal papers I took with me.
It’s definitely not bad, but… Yes, Callie’s home with me again, which was my goal—seriously, fuck those divorce papers—but she’s not happy. Her reaction when I came home last night made that clear. But what happened after…
“She’s home.”
Mark picks up on my lack of triumph. “What happened?”
“Fuchs fucking with us again is what happened. Elliot told you about TidBytes?”
Mark’s nod is grim. “Not in detail, but yeah. Using a gossip blog against us is some pretty weak shit.”
“Wait until I tell you my plan to stop him,” I say dryly. “The partners’ meeting is going to be a blast.”
“If it gives Fuchs a black eye, I’m all for it.”
Convincing Mark on the gossip site won’t be hard—Fuchs went hard after January a while back, and Mark’s still pissed he couldn’t bury Fuchs. Like literally.
I can totally sympathize. If we get our wish, we can take turns with the shovel.
My computer dings—it’s time to assemble in the conference room. And then it shifts to howling, then an alarm, and finishes off with a siren. Anjie used to have to corral most of us into meetings, like a mom waking up teenagers for school. Then she came up with the alarm, and now nobody’s late.
“Finn disabled his,” Mark says, looking like he’s eaten the audio equivalent of some rotten socks.
“It is fucking embarrassing. We’re Bastard Capital.”
“Alarms? We don’t need no stinking alarms!”
I exchange a glance with Mark. “Are you going to disable yours?”
“Hell, no. I’m not going to piss off Anjie.”
“Me either.” I clap Mark on the shoulder. “Speaking of which, we’d better go.”
As we walk to the conference room, Anjie pops her head out of the staff kitchen. “Logan? You’re back!”
She hugs me, hard, and I let her. Anjie is our office manager, den mom, and the one person who keeps us all on track. Without her, we’d have never made it out of that garage and into this building on Sand Hill Road.
Anjie takes my shoulders and studies me. She’s into retro styles, and today she looks like she should be at the starting line of an illegal drag race.
“I’m glad she came back,” Anjie says, reading what happened in my face.
“Yeah.” I try to be more upbeat with Anjie than with Mark. “We’re trying again.” Because I forced her to.
This is a hell of time for my conscience to reappear. I tell it to take a flying leap.
Mark says nothing, his face blank.
“I’m so happy for you.” Anjie squeezes my shoulders. “Tell her to come visit me when she gets a chance.”
“Sure,” I say. But Callie isn’t likely to come back to the office anytime soon. She never liked coming in after we were married.
Anjie claps her hands, her expression going teacherly. “Okay, everyone in the conference room.”
Within minutes, Anjie’s got everyone corralled in their usual seats, coffee and tea and fruit and pastries sitting out. Seriously, the woman is magical. Maybe even a goddess.
Elliot, who’s got a bug up his ass from yesterday, sits next to me, his mood like a rain cloud over his head.
Paul shoots his cuffs as he looks between the two of us. “Everything okay?”
“I’ll let Logan explain.”
I roll my eyes. Elliot can do pissy like no one else. “Thanks, baby bro.”
The table breaks out in laughter as Elliot shakes his head in exasperation.
“Sooo.” Finn adds a million o’s to that. “What did happen?”
“There was a misunderstanding. But Callie’s home now.”
Elliot snorts while the rest of them look completely unconvinced. They’re all still pissed that Callie left me without a word. What they don’t understand is that that didn’t make her my enemy.
And they never really got to know her, which didn’t help. She was uncomfortable with them, and they were uncomfortable with her, so we never really all spent time together. Keeping your home life separate from work is what a lot of dudes do. It never struck me as something to fix.
Maybe this time around I should. I was the first one of us to have a really serious relationship, the first to get married. In my defense, I had no idea what w
ould happen.
The Bastards still aren’t saying anything, although Anjie is glaring daggers at them. She’s definitely rooting for forgiving Callie.
I grab Elliot’s shoulder and squeeze, although I address all of them. “Be happy for me.” I make that a command. And a plea. I need these guys on Callie’s side, because if they’re not on her side, they’re not on mine. “Shit happened that neither of us could control. It’s not her fault.”
“Whose fault is it?” Paul breaks the too-long silence with that question.
“Fuchs,” I say. And mine.
Seriously, my conscience needs to shut it.
“Again?” Finn asks. “What’s that motherfucker’s problem?”
Dev, at the head of the table, steeples his fingers. He’s the thinker, the philosopher. Mark’s our dealmaker, Finn’s our genius, Paul’s our money guy, and Elliot’s our lawyer.
I’m the details guy. I catch shit that other people miss. Unless it involves my wife, I guess. I missed all that shit, including a goddamn pregnancy scare.
I’m not going to miss anything this time. I can do eighty-hour weeks here and still have time for her. She’s wrong, and I just need to work harder to prove it to her. And maybe make it home earlier tonight.
Dev taps his fingers together. “What happened?”
“Well, you all know and love TidBytes,” I say.
Mark pulls a face like he’s about to puke.
“Fuchs owns it. All those pictures and stories they run on us? Yeah, that’s all Fuchs. Trying to fuck with us. With Callie and me.”
“Aw, man,” Finn says. “I thought they actually liked us, that that’s why we’re in there all the time.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Anyway, Callie saw all those pictures of me at parties, the ones where other women so conveniently happened to be in the frame, and it upset her.”
There’s another long beat of silence, again broken by Paul. “Because of that, she left you without a word, only communicated through Julian, and was missing for months?”
“There were some other things,” I say blandly, chilled. “But we’re working through them.”
The work stuff is just Callie projecting other issues onto my schedule—these guys would never understand cutting back on work hours—and Callie would never forgive me if I told them about the pregnancy scare. Or her hopes for what a baby would mean to us.
None of these guys are even close to getting married except for maybe Mark. It’d be like speaking pig latin to them.
Finally Mark smiles and leans back in his chair. “I’m glad you guys are trying again.”
The tension doesn’t quite dissolve, but it does crack.
“If you’re happy,” Finn says, “then I guess it’s good.”
“Good luck,” Paul says.
Anjie grins like I told her she won the lottery, and Elliot sends a look that says, I’m not happy, but I’m also not saying anything.
Dev still has his hands together, his expression distant. Like he’s meditating or something. “I want to go back to Fuchs.”
“Yeah, I haven’t finished telling you everything. I gave Callie the divorce papers”—Anjie makes a noise like a wounded kitten—“and the next morning TidBytes has the divorce on the front page and Minerva Dyne is on her doorstep, offering to buy Callie’s shares in Bastard Capital once the divorce is final.”
“Son of a bitch,” Finn shouts.
“Don’t worry, the divorce is off the table.”
“Not permanently,” Elliot mutters under his breath.
I ignore him. “Fuchs clearly has an agenda here, and he’s using his stupid gossip site as a weapon. Using it to fuck with my marriage. And to slither his way into our firm.”
Every expression becomes flinty, because fuck that. This is our Alamo, and we’re fighting to the last man. Fuck, I’ll burn the place down before I let Fuchs own a piece of it.
“We need to put this fucker down like a rabid dog.” Mark stabs the table for emphasis.
“Seriously. I know some places in the desert,” Finn says. “Nobody will ever find him.”
Paul laughs while Elliot pretends not to hear. I guess he needs plausible deniability or something.
Dev unfolds his hands. “So he’s declared war on us?” Dev’s clearly skeptical of the theory, probably because he’d never do anything so messy as seek out revenge.
Paul snorts. “Have you met the guy? He’s missing some empathy chips. And some humanity chips. He’s read too much crappy fantasy. He thinks he’s some kind of elvish warrior on a quest and we’re trolls to be squashed.”
“What is it with these guys and elves?” Finn asks. He’s always been for the trolls, the dirtbags, the blue-collar guys.
“What’s not to love?” Mark asks. “Pointy ears, long blond hair, dying race.”
We all laugh. We’re definitely not on the side of the elves or anyone else in this town who thinks they’re supermen, disrupting the world for good.
We’re Bastards. It’s right there in the name.
And Fuchs is about to find out just how big a bastard I can be.
Chapter 16
This time when I walk through the offices of Bastard Capital, I don’t bother to look at any of the associates, not even from the corner of my eye.
Someone who belonged here wouldn’t, and so I won’t. I’m twenty minutes late for the partners’ meeting, but getting myself into this state—hair blow-dried perfectly straight and silky smooth, my makeup noticeably tasteful, and my outfit chic and sleek—took longer than I expected.
I have on a red leather skirt with a heavy buckle and some zippers, just enough to say “Don’t mess with me” instead of “I really like punk rock.” Since the skirt is so much, I paired it with a plain black shirt with a ballerina neckline. My watch is delicate and rose gold, while my earrings dangle all the way to my shoulders, studded with tiny diamonds. I finished the look with high-heeled, open-toed black suede booties, and my manicured toes peep out at me with every step.
No expense was spared with my clothes, and I look it. But as I push open the conference room doors, I wish I had my old sweater instead so I could curl up in it.
The doors swing open wide. Every face turns to me.
None of them are happy to see me.
I set my jaw even as my pulse kicks up. It’s totally fine, because I wasn’t expecting them to be happy. Except for Anjie—she’s already getting up, coming over to hug me.
I definitely missed her. She was the one person in this office I could actually talk to, besides Logan.
“We’re so glad you’re back,” she says. “And we want you to stay.” She whispers that only for my ears.
She says we, but the Bastards don’t want to be included in her welcome. I can already tell from their expressions.
“Callie,” Mark says, all smooth suaveness. I never trusted Mark—he was always too slick, always the dealmaker. “What a surprise.”
Logan rises from his chair, comes over to me. “Callie.” His gaze is dark as it roams over me, and I’m suddenly very glad I took the time to get ready. “You don’t have to worry about this. I’ll handle it.”
His hand comes to my elbow, pulling us into a circle of just us two, shutting out the rest of the Bastards. With the right kind of look—slow, sultry—I could lure him out of here and have him follow me home.
But this place is his real home. And these are his brothers. He’ll only leave me to come back. I have to find a way to fit that into our marriage.
Oh, and we also have a ton of work to do, together.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “Fuchs targeted me too. And I’m involved in this blog, so I should be in this meeting.”
There’s a long beat of silence. And then, “Blog?”
When I look past Logan, they’re all staring with shock. And not the good kind.
Finn was the one who yelled out blog, and he’s not finished. “Blogs are dead. Only mommies blog anymore.”
&nbs
p; Meaning women. And not the hip kind he’d concern himself with. Blogs are only a place for mothers to post charming stories about potty training.
Finn’s never been part of a blog community, never poured out his stories in the hopes of connecting with someone across the internet. That’s girl stuff.
I’m tempted to give him my traffic numbers from The Silicon Wife, just to see the look on his face. He’d say blog very differently then.
I give Logan a gentle push so that he’s not standing between me and the rest of them. “If blogs are so dead, why are you all freaking out about one right now?”
“TidBytes is more than a blog,” Dev says.
“Right.” I set a hand on my hip, straighten my shoulders. I’m wearing a power outfit, and I need the stance to go with it. “TidBytes taps into one of the deepest human impulses—sharing stories about your neighbor. Gossip. That impulse is primitive, centered around communities, so you tech boys reject it. But you need it.”
Finn is spluttering, Elliot looks like I accused him of murder, but Logan is laughing. Dev and Paul join in after a moment.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them laughing together before. At least not at something I said. Usually we search for conversation for a while, and then they pull Logan away while I find something else to do. Or I pull Logan away first.
“She’s right,” Anjie says. “Remember what we used against Fuchs last time? Not just January’s program, but gossip too.”
A look passes between her and Dev, quick and bright as a spark.
Before I can analyze that look, Logan is nudging me. “Tell them the rest of it.”
My confidence wants to leak right out of the soles of my booties as I stare back at the Bastards. They invest in companies that will be worth billions someday, things like self-driving cars and computers that can see into the future and things I can’t even dream of.
Not something as small as what I’m imagining.
But TidBytes is a small thing, and Arne Fuchs tried to use it to ruin my marriage. Which isn’t small to me at all.
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