It turns out that Logan sells his grapes to one of the most exclusive boutique wineries in Napa. I’m drinking a wine that most people have to go on a wait list for and then pay hundreds of dollars for one measly bottle. Mark, however, opened a wine cellar filled to the ceiling with bottles and popped one open.
I turn the wineglass in my hand, let the light tangle in it. This place is almost too magical to be real, with the sunshine pouring in and the scent of rich earth and ripe grapes filling the air. One level below us, built into the cliffside, the spa bubbles and burbles, waiting for us to soak away the cares of the day. It’s physically impossible for me to be stressed here, which has made my work go all the faster. I’ve become a lean, mean coding machine. And my team is doing the same at the secure site. We’re three days into this, and I’m certain that in three weeks or less, we’ll be ready to pitch to Pixio.
For the first time in a long time, I have hope. This system is going to be done soon, and it will be so amazing Pixio will have to buy it. And while Mark hasn’t told me much, I know he’s pulling strings in the background, making calls, cashing in favors, and finding a team of immigration lawyers.
Oh, and taking care of me as I code my brains out. Turns out that hours of sweaty, mind-blowing sex is almost as restorative as sleep.
I look over at him sitting on the lounge chair next to me. Sometimes it’s hard to believe this is the same guy I knew in college. He’s so confident, so powerful, it radiates from him. And then he’ll smile, a real one, and it’s like we’re transported back five years.
He catches me looking. “Everything okay? Do you need anything?”
I shake my head. Good food, good wine, beautiful view—what more could I possibly want?
Except there is something more that I want. “What did you do after college?” I ask. “I mean really. I’ve read the magazine profiles, but none of them sound like you. Like the Mark I remember.”
“It’s not that interesting. I knew from the beginning I never wanted to work for anyone else. Google, Pixio, Facebook—they all made me offers, but I turned them down.”
A ton of people would give a kidney to work at those places, but he had to be independent, even right out of school. I respect that—I didn’t even bother applying at any big places myself. I picked a tiny start-up with tech I believed in instead.
“What did you want to do?” I ask.
Mark laughs. “Whatever I wanted, although I still wasn’t quite sure what that might be. But no one was going to give me a million dollars to do that fresh out of college, so I did some freelance coding for a while. Nothing major but enough to live on. Paul and I were roommates by then, and we invited Logan to come live with us too.”
“Paul had a roommate?” He could have afforded any house in Palo Alto he wanted. A ten bedroom could have been all his to rattle around in.
“Paul actually likes to live as close to what he calls normal as possible. It’s one of his quirks.”
I guess when you’re born rich, you can afford any quirks you want. “Okay, so you’re all living like slobs, coding by night and gaming by day. Then what?”
“The house was… cleanish.” Mark’s forehead furrows. “Like eighty-five percent clean.”
“You definitely made up that statistic. How did Finn and Dev come in?”
“Finn ended up crashing on our couch for a month while he did a contract job up here. And then he just ended up staying. We were talking about code and hardware all the time then. We had so many ideas, so many ways we wanted to upend the world.”
I can tell from his smile that it was a wonderful time in his life. I can empathize. Those first few months of Ultra, when I was working all hours, frantically trying to get all my ideas out and functioning, were amazing. Exhausting and terrifying but also amazing.
“What happened to all those ideas?” I ask. The stock market predictor was what had made them famous—and rich—but they never sold it. Or anything else. Instead, they went straight from that into the VC world.
“Oh, I’ve got some still rattling around in my head. Not as many as before though.” His mouth tightens. He doesn’t like that.
“And the stock market predictor? You guys never did anything more with that.”
It remains one of the great mysteries of the valley. Who had that code? Were they still using it to make money on Wall Street?
Mark takes a hesitant breath. “I’ll tell you, but no one else knows. And you can never tell.”
I cross my heart. “I’ll never breathe a word.” But my nerves are humming, because he trusts me. Like I trust him.
“When Dev came, everything finally clicked. We became… more than a team.” Mark takes a sip of his wine, and I want to shout at him to go on because he’s getting to the good part. “But Dev’s the one who wrote the initial stock-price algorithm. We all refined it, but without his initial code, it never would have happened.”
Well, that’s one mystery answered. But considering that it’s kind of an open secret at this point—most speculation has already centered on Dev as the brains—I have to ask, “Why can’t anyone know?”
“Dev… he doesn’t like attention.”
I’d gotten that part, but not why. “Is there something in his past?”
Mark shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know anything about his past. I don’t know if Dev even knows anything about his past. He never talks about family—not parents, siblings, nothing. No childhood memories, nothing about school. He really is a blank slate.”
Considering how close the Bastards are, if Dev hasn’t said anything about his past, there must be nothing to tell. “And the program? Do you guys still use it to play the market?”
Mark slides me a look. “You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“You will,” he assures me. He takes a long sip of his wine. “We deleted it.”
“What?” Thank God I don’t have a mouthful of wine or else I’d have spewed it on him. “Why would you do that? That program basically printed money.”
“Exactly. It was too easy. We decided we were going to take those initial earnings and do something else. Something harder. So we deleted the program.”
I fall back into my lounge chair, my mouth hanging open. The arrogance of doing such a thing is beyond me. The Bastards really are a breed apart.
“Holy hell,” I whisper.
“Told you.” Mark’s smugness is both adorable and annoying.
“I didn’t laugh.” Nope, I’m not anywhere near laughing. I’m stunned. I wanted the whole story, but this was a humdinger. “And what about Anjie?”
She might not be a Bastard, but the past few days have proven how integral she is to them. Mark was on the phone with her almost every hour, working on Ultra stuff and everything else he has going on. She must be talking to at least one of them all hours of the day.
“Mmm, Anjie.” Mark’s expression is fond, but I don’t feel any jealousy. I know by now that Anjie is only a friend. “She actually came into the garage right after we hit it big, before we’d even started to look for a proper office space. She’d read about us in Disrupt Dispatch, realized she’d been passing our garage every day on the way to her job, and decided to see if we needed an office manager. The rest is history.”
So I wasn’t too far off in thinking of Anjie as a fairy godmother. “That’s amazing. You’re lucky to have her.”
“I know. We’re all brothers, but Anjie is our glue.”
He comes over to my chair, the heat in his eyes setting my skin on fire. I move my legs to give him room. He’s got intentions behind that gaze, intentions that promise me the ultimate pleasure.
My breath catches in my throat as he sits next to me, reaching out for my bare leg. Sparks fly in the gap between us. When he makes contact, a thousand nerve ends take flight in my skin. It’s such a small part of me that he’s touching, but all of me hums in response.
He leans forward, studying my face. I wait for him to kiss
me, to slide his hand up my thigh… but Mark holds there, watching me as his hand makes slow, small circles on my calf. It’s maddening and arousing all at once.
Our breathing falls into sync, pushing and pulling together. The setting sun is warm, I’m flushed with pleasure and wine, and he’s oh so close…
“Why did you turn me down in college?”
My eyes go wide and my skin goes cold as I rear back. That’s the very last thing I expect him to say.
Mark doesn’t react to my shock, his gaze still hard on mine as his hand softly strokes my leg. I lick my lips, trying to form an answer. “Well, it’s…”
I lift a hand, unable to go on. My throat is tight with all the reasons, too many to spill out at once.
“I’m not asking to be a dick,” he says. “It’s just… your saying no has always lingered with me.”
I’ve marked him then. I didn’t mean to, I was only trying to protect myself, but still, I hurt him.
“It wasn’t personal.” I can at least assure him of that. I take a bracing sip of my wine, trying to clear my throat. “I mean, it was personal though. We were friends, real friends.” I take another sip, bigger than the last. “And actually, I really, really liked you, but I was afraid.”
“Of me?” Now he’s shocked. “In college?”
For all Mark’s wealth and worldly experience, there’s still so much he doesn’t understand. He’s been rich in the valley for too long—and has been a man his entire life.
I know what he’s not saying: I’d never hurt a woman. But like I said before, it wasn’t personal.
“Do you remember Chloe?” I ask quietly.
“Chloe?” He remembers her, but he’s ashamed that he does. “What about her?”
“How she had to leave… What all those boys said about her… And the pictures plastered all over the web.”
The pictures haunted me, things Chloe had never intended anyone to see. Those could never be scrubbed from the internet. And she’d trusted Joe so much, letting him take those pictures. He’d turned them into a weapon against her, punishing her for her supposed crimes against him.
“I remember.” Mark’s voice is cold. “You thought I could do that to you?”
I swallow hard. I didn’t ask if he was involved in what had happened to her. I’m afraid to now.
He saw the pictures, I’m sure. Did he share them with his friends? Did he post hateful things about her online?
I don’t want to know. I’m a coward.
“I had to protect myself,” I say. “You don’t understand.”
“From me?”
“From all of you.”
There’s a heavy moment of silence. I don’t know how else to explain it to him, and with his own trust issues, he should see where I’m coming from. People think he should give them money simply because he’s rich; well, men think I should give them sex simply because I’m a woman.
His face is a study in chilled outrage, all prickly male honor. This is why I didn’t want to say anything. Men always have to make it about themselves.
Then he sighs heavily and rubs at his forehead. “You’re right.”
I blink. “I am? About… your hurting me?” I don’t ask about Chloe.
“No,” he says quickly. “I never would have hurt you. But you’re right that I don’t understand. I’ve never even considered that what happened to Chloe might be the reason. It’s just…” He scrubs his hand through his hair, his biceps taut. “I was so crazy about you. Still am, it turns out.”
That’s when I open my arms and nestle into him. I turn my face into his chest, overcome. Because I’m crazy about him too. The breeze runs over both of us, rich with the scent of ripening grapes and threaded with the calls of the birds.
Finally my voice starts to work again. “I’m crazy about you too,” I whisper. “Always have been.”
There. That’s the last secret between us.
He kisses my hair, my temple, the tip of my ear, telling me without words that he understands.
We haven’t said the L word, but it’s coming. I can feel it sneaking up on both of us. And when Mark gathers me into his arms and carries me into the bedroom, it comes even closer, right on the thresholds of our hearts.
Chapter 23
I’ve overslept.
When I open my eyes and immediately go to check my phone, I realize that January is in my arms.
And then I realize that the bedside clock reads 8:34. I haven’t slept this late since college.
My heart gives a kick, then January snuffles and wriggles closer to me. Everything becomes still and quiet, me most of all.
Peace. That’s what this sensation is, I realize. January brings me peace.
She also makes me laugh, makes my blood sing, and I trust her. I’d say I’ve forgotten what that’s like, but no woman has ever made me feel this way. Except her. Always her.
I could blame it on Napa, on being secreted away together in the winery, but I know that’s a lie. Because as wonderful as it’s been, I don’t want to stay here forever with her.
I want to bring her back to my house, my bed, and make it ours.
Christ, I’ve fallen in love.
I think she has too.
She wakes up then, and her smile is just radiant. My mood instantly lightens at the sight.
And then she stretches and I remember last night, which was anything but light and bright. It was dark and intense and the best sex I’ve ever had. I frame her face and kiss her good morning, putting some of those memories into it. But before long I have to pull away even though both of us are panting. Sadly, we still have work to get to.
January moans in protest. “We have time for a quickie.”
I’m not going to argue with that, especially not when she’s straddling me, her gorgeous breasts swaying as she settles into place. I grab a condom from the sleeve on the bedside table, and in two seconds I’m inside her, exactly where I’m meant to be.
I was wrong about last night. This is the best sex of my life, with January riding me hard and quick, her cheeks flushed with sleep and her hair a wild tangle. This is how I want to wake up every morning, first with her in my arms and then with the two of us entangled together.
I’m chanting her name as I come, and she’s chanting mine. I’ve never had a moment more perfect in my life.
Once we release Ultra and defeat Fuchs, I’m keeping her by my side. Forever.
But first we’ve got to finish the damn system.
An hour later, we’re hard at work in the workspace we’ve set up in one of the guest rooms. January’s decided it’s time to do a test run of Ultra. We’ve got Fuchs’s spyware running on a phone we’ve taken apart, and I’m installing the chip in it. The idea is we’ll use Fuchs’s spyware to activate the phone’s camera and see if Ultra can encrypt the images.
At least that’s the idea. She’s put me in charge of installing the chip, and it’s not going so smoothly. Not that I’m going to ask her for help. I used to do stuff like this in my sleep, and in a few minutes, it will all come back to me—
“Wow, you’ve gotten so terrible at soldering,” January says as she looks over my shoulder. “It’s actually cute.”
Besides the Bastards, there’s no one in my life who’d dare talk to me like that. And I love her for it. “It’s not terrible.” The connections are sound, if not exactly pretty. “You’re the one who wanted me to get back to my roots.”
Which she’s right about. I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to wire up circuits, to get my hands dirty with hardware.
“I guess you just need some practice,” January says, plugging our jerry-rigged phone into her laptop. “Maybe I could get you one of those my-first-electronics kits from a toy store.”
I roll my eyes, which makes her giggle. “I know you remember that I always had the highest score on our electronics lab assignments.”
She shakes her head as her fingers fly over the keyboard. “Nope, we tied for first. It seems that your m
ind is slipping.”
I nip at the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, soft and succulent. When all this is done, I’m flying her to some private island for a month of nothing but relaxation and sex. “We tied in algorithms. And you kicked my ass in compilers.”
Her fingers slow as she leans into me. “Yes, I did.” She turns her head and gives me a long, drugging kiss. “But you still need to brush up on your soldering.”
I’m still laughing when she announces, “It’s ready.”
The atmosphere in the room is suddenly heavy. I can tell she’s nervous, but I’m not at all. I know Ultra will work because she designed it.
I set my hands on her shoulders and squeeze. “It will work. You know it will.”
She takes an unsteady breath. “I’ll test the spyware first. I definitely know that works.”
Seeing the images and sounds being recorded from a phone that was supposed to be powered down, its screen completely black, has haunted me since she demo’d it for me.
I haven’t told January because she doesn’t need to worry, but the Bastards and I have sworn to bring Fuchs down. He’s not getting away with this. And it’s personal for me since he went after January.
Soon enough, the entire valley will know she’s mine and completely untouchable.
The spyware window pops up then, the screen blank because the camera isn’t active. My skin tingles anyway, as if there are eyes on the back of my neck.
January’s fingers began to tremble slightly. I kiss her hair, reminding her that she’s safe with me.
“Okay,” she says softly and hits the Enter key.
The screen splutters with white noise for a few moments, trying to acquire the feed from the phone camera.
But the image steadies and footage of the office ceiling appears on the screen, pulled out of the phone’s camera by Fuchs’s spyware. The phone itself is quiet and dark, giving no indication that it’s doing anything at all.
Seeing the spyware in action once again gives me the chills. Who is Fuchs spying on right now? Someone I know?
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter. Fuchs’s going to pay for this.
Secret Acquisitions Page 15
