Kelly shook his head. “No. I found Ron downstairs and pitched in to help him.
I stepped toward Ron. “How did you know I needed my coffee fix?”
“The XSS attack is all over the tech blogs. I figured you might need a little extra caffeine this morning.”
I threw my arms around him and gave Ron the biggest hug before noisily smooching his cheek. “You’re the best. Like—seriously. Today you just might be my savior.”
Face aflame, he looked so uncomfortable, and I silently cursed myself for forgetting that he didn’t like to be touched. To his credit, he tried to play it off with a smile. “Well, I don’t know about that.”
“I do. Let’s drop most of this in the kitchen and take the rest to my office.”
We segued into the kitchen, picked out what we wanted, and headed to my office where Winn and Sully waited.
“We should make this delivery a regular thing, Ron.” I noticed the way the scent of coffee and the promise of free pastries was pulling people from their desks. “But you have to bring those sprinkle cookies I love so much.”
“The ones I brought to the housewarming party?”
“Yes!”
“Not a problem. I’ll be here bright and early tomorrow.”
“Fantastic.”
Once inside my office, I leaned back against my desk and sipped the hot coffee loaded with creamer and sugar, just the way I loved it. Winn and Sully were spreading out files atop the long table at the far side of my office. I used it for brainstorming sessions and smaller meetings. Today, it seemed to be the space they’d claimed as their command center.
Ron wandered over and earned an annoyed look from Winn. Not easily daunted, he scanned the table. His face lit up with recognition. “Hey! This guy? He was in the coffee shop four or five times over the last few weeks.”
When he held up the photo, I nearly choked on my coffee. My reaction didn’t go unnoticed. Kelly frowned. “Baby, what is it?”
Swallowing my mouthful of steaming hot coffee, I explained, “Right before you showed up, Amita pulled me into her office to show me some of this malicious code she’s isolated. Most programmers leave a signature when they want their work to be recognized. The one left on this shit-storm belongs to Trevor Cohen.” I pointed to the picture Ron held. “That guy.”
Kelly snatched the photo from Ron’s hand. “What’s the story, Bee?”
“He’s extremely talented. I met him at a hackathon right after I’d first launched LookIt in beta among a small group of friends. When I got funding from Yuri to go big, I needed more hands on deck, you know? So I approached Trevor, and he accepted my offer.” I took another sip of coffee. “Amita pegged him as trouble from the first moment she met him. She begged me not to hire him, but I thought I could handle him. Clearly, I couldn’t.”
“What was the problem?” Winn asked.
“He had that brogrammer mentality. Everything was a joke or a game. He didn’t like having tasks delegated to him, especially by women. He spent all his time working on an app that he called ReadIt instead of working on the projects assigned to him.”
“ReadIt?” Kelly’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“It was a bookmarking app that never went beyond beta,” Ron answered. At Kelly’s strange look, he held up his hands. “Sorry.”
“Don’t mind him, Ron. He’s grumpy this morning.”
“Maybe he needs more coffee,” Ron suggested.
Smiling at my friend’s remark, I continued with my tale of woe. “When I decided it was time to let Trevor go, he wanted to take ReadIt with him, but he couldn’t. His employment contract didn’t allow him to claim ownership of anything he built on my time.”
“That’s harsh,” Sully commented.
“He built that app on my framework while I was paying him to do another job. He used my computers, my office space, and my temps to do his coding.” Realizing I sounded overly defensive, I reined it in a bit. “Look, I made sure that he was compensated for his product. Frankly, he was overpaid. It was buggy as fuck and never worked. He accused me of sabotaging him—and then he took ReadIt and built an identical product for Richard. Hence the lawsuit.”
Kelly turned to Ron. “You said he was in your shop multiple times? Did he say anything?”
“I assumed he was a contractor.” Ron winced. “He asked about your new building, Bee. I thought he was thinking of bidding on the renovation project. I told him he could find you at the coffee shop in the evenings.”
“It’s all right, Ron.”
“No, it’s not.” Kelly spoke through gritted teeth. “You told a man that he could find a single woman who rides her bike after dark back to an empty building how to find her and stalk her.”
“Kelly!” Aghast at his tone, I gaped at him.
“Bee,” Winn carefully interjected, “Kelly has a point. I’m sure your friend didn’t mean to put you in harm’s way, but that doesn’t change the facts. You said yourself that you started finding photos in your backpack after you’d been to the coffee shop. What if this Trevor fellow was able to hide in the background and slip them into your bag?”
“Well…”
“I’m sorry, Bee.” Ron looked so guilty. “I should have been more careful.”
“It’s fine, Ron. Really,” I added before Kelly could interrupt with some rude remark. “I share way more blame in this mess. I’m the one who didn’t pay attention to my bag. I’m the ditz who rides her bike at night and lives alone in a big, empty building.”
“You are not a ditz.” Ron scowled at Kelly and Winn. “Don’t let these guys make you feel guilty for living your life. You have every right to do what you please.”
Kelly narrowed his eyes at Ron. “Don’t you have a coffee shop to run?”
“Kelly!”
Ron waved his hand. “It’s okay, Bee. He’s right. I need to get back.”
After shooting Kelly an ugly look, I walked Ron out of my office. “I’m really sorry about that. Kelly can be a bit testy.”
Ron glanced back toward my office. “He cares about you.”
“Yes. Very much,” I said. “That doesn’t excuse his rudeness.”
“I’ve taken worse from customers.” Smiling at me, he said, “I’ll be here in the morning with your coffee delivery.”
“I’ll make sure to put my Rottweiler on a leash.”
With a laugh, he waved and pivoted on his heel. When I re-entered my office, Kelly offered a contrite smile, but I glared at him. “Dimitri swore that you guys had taken sensitivity training, and that you were skilled in handling the public with finesse.”
Kelly’s jaw tightened. “I could have handled it better.”
I arched one eyebrow. “You think?”
“Come on, Bee. Don’t make me grovel.”
“If you’re going to make him grovel, let me get my camera,” Sully said, already digging in the front pocket of his jeans. “We’ll use it for our company Christmas card.”
The wisecracking guard killed the tension with his funny remark. Kelly sent a smoldering look my way that promised he would make this up to me. I planned to wrangle a huge apology to Ron from him first.
“So,” Kelly crossed his arms, “Trevor Cohen, huh? Looks like we have our prime candidate for the stalker sending you threatening messages.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any safer?”
He held out his hand, silently bidding me to join him. I let him drag me into his protective embrace. He brushed a tender kiss to the crown of my head. “We’ll deal with this Trevor asshole as quickly as possible. Then we focus on stalker number two.”
He made it sound so simple and easy. Sully and Winn’s confident expressions encouraged me. If the three of them concurred, that had to be a good sign. I trusted these incredibly skilled men knew what they were doing.
While the trio stood around the table strategizing, I returned to my desk with my coffee. Hourly updates on the crisis were popping into my inbox, so I triaged the mess
ages waiting for me.
A certain email address caught my eye. Certain I was hallucinating, I read and reread the name of the sender. I gulped nervously and sneaked a stealth glance at Kelly, Sully and Winn. With their heads together, the three men had their backs to me and were totally unaware of my panicked state.
Trying to convince myself this was just some stupid spam email with a spoofed address, I clicked on the message. My stomach pitched violently as I skimmed the email. Somehow that rat bastard Trevor had hacked into Jeb’s old email account and gained access to thousands of his messages—and very private photos.
ReadIt and weep, bitch! I know all your brother’s dirty secrets now. If you don’t want me to share them, I suggest you pick up your phone and make me a deal. Seven days—or these go live!
The message had been written under a snapshot of my brother, cuffed and collared, wearing lacy panties, fishnets, and heels while kneeling at the feet of his Master.
With a click of my shaking, clammy finger, I closed out of the window and stared at the ominous message still fouling up my inbox. I thought I had deleted every single photo in the account, but obviously I’d been wrong.
Regret punched me right in the stomach. Why the hell hadn’t I closed Jeb’s email account? At first, I had left it open so I could receive and reply to messages from his friends and fellow Marines. Later, I hadn’t been able to close it because of sentimentality.
I tried to ignore the gut-churning terror ripping at my belly as I spared another glance toward Kelly. He remained blissfully oblivious to my personal hell. The weight of Jeb’s secret life weighed so heavily on me. The things he had done—and the people he had done them with—were not the types of things that anyone wanted publicized.
It wasn’t embarrassment or disgust that kept me from acknowledging publicly who Jeb had been. He was my brother and I loved him—all of him, even the fetishes and kinks that he had indulged in secret and on the side for years and years. The pain and anguish his unorthodox desires had caused him had been so great. He’d never been able to fully mesh his life as a heroic Marine with the man who enjoyed wearing women’s clothing or following his Dominant lover around on a leash.
As far as I knew, Jeb’s secret sexual life was the only thing he had ever kept from Kelly. Sometimes I wondered if Kelly hadn’t suspected that Jeb was…different. If he had any suspicions, he’d always kept them to himself. Of course, Jeb had been extremely good at keeping his two lives separated from each other. Maybe Kelly truly didn’t know.
I couldn’t let him find out like this. Fury burned hot in my chest at the idea of that asshole Trevor blackmailing me like this. If he’d been able to access and recover this photo, he may have been able to find others where Jeb’s lovers’ faces were visible. A couple of internet searches would yield him even more blackmail material.
His Master—his longtime lover—was still in the Marine Corps. I hadn’t spoken to Peter in years, not since a few months after Jeb’s funeral, but I didn’t know how I could avoid him now. He had to be warned, just in case I couldn’t get Trevor to stop his threats.
“Bee?” Kelly’s concerned voice cut through my troubled thoughts.
I tore my gaze away from my screen. “What?”
Kelly uncrossed his arms and gestured to the door. “Lena and Ty are here.”
“Oh.” I popped out of my chair and hurried to greet my guests. The duo of PR experts hovered just inside the doorway.
Dapper as always, Ty wore a two-button blazer in the softest dove gray layered over a plaid shirt. He’d paired the ensemble with dark jeans. Beside him, Lena looked so incredibly beautiful in her exquisitely tailored dress. The bright pinkish orange color popped against her warm brown skin. I wondered what they called that shade. Probably something exotic like papaya.
Wishing I had her fashion sense and the body to carry off the peplum dress and killer heels, I welcomed her. “Hi, Lena. Thank you so much for coming.”
She air-kissed my cheek. “We’re happy to help.”
Ty gave me a hug. “How you doing, sugar?”
“Okay,” I lied. Looking over at Kelly, I asked, “Would you guys mind moving to the conference room while I chat with Lena and Ty?”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed fractionally but he didn’t argue. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” I gestured for Lena and Ty to join me at the table Sully and Winn were clearing. Kelly caught my hand and dragged me toward my desk. I fought the urge to look at my computer monitor lest it draw his attention.
He cupped the back of my head and brushed his knuckles along my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“It’s stress. I’ll be fine once this whole thing is over.”
“I’m taking you to see Jack this evening while I’m training. He’s got a self-defense class with an opening.” Kelly touched the tip of my nose. “It will be good for you to knock the crap out of some dummies tonight.”
“I can’t think of a better stress reliever than punching and kicking a dummy.”
Lowering his face, he grazed his lips across mine. “I can.”
Blushing, I let him give me a sweet kiss. His smoldering eyes warmed me right through to the core. I had a feeling tonight might finally be the night.
“Don’t leave this office without calling for one of us.”
“I won’t.”
Backing away, Kelly accepted an armload of files from Sully and left the room. I followed them out and shut the door. The sound of the lock engaging drew Ty’s interested gaze. “Everything all right, sugar?”
With a sigh, I fell back against the door and rubbed my face. “How good are you two when it comes to blackmail?”
Ty actually chortled. “Sweetheart, how long have we known each other? I made my first million peddling gossip online. It’s a very subtle line.” His mood turned somber. He must have realized that the only thing I knew worth blackmailing were my brother’s secret penchants—details Ty knew only too well. “This isn’t about your business, is it? It’s about Jeb.”
We shared a private look as Lena asked, “What does that mean?”
Ty exhaled loudly and retrieved his phone from his pocket. “It means we need to clear our schedules for the afternoon.” He started to dial a number, probably that of their receptionist. “It also means we might need help from some of those rather interesting contacts that Yuri has.”
Lena didn’t even bat an eyelash. “That bad, huh?”
Pushing off the door, I sank down into a chair across from them. “It’s a really long story.”
Lena settled into her seat. “Then let’s start at the beginning…”
***
Kelly checked his watch and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Glancing around the parking lot of the bar where loan shark John Hagen operated the illicit side of his business, he wondered where the hell his brothers were. His agitation increased with every minute that passed. More than anything, he wanted to return to Bee.
Every time he left her, a knot formed in his stomach. Right now, it throbbed angrily and made his chest ache. He hated leaving her. Sure, she was safe with Sully and Winn, but he didn’t like it.
Something else was eating at him. He couldn’t prove it, but he felt certain she wasn’t telling him everything. When Lena and Ty had arrived at Bee’s office, she’d looked almost panicked. He’d squashed the instinct to confront her because he trusted her to confide in him. He hoped she wouldn’t take too long to come to him. Standing on the sidelines while she was hurting wasn’t easy for him. His urge to protect and help her was so strong.
Needing to get back to her, Kelly reached for his phone, but spotted Jack’s truck rolling onto the lot. Annoyed by their tardiness, he climbed out of his vehicle and gruffly greeted them as they spilled out of Jack’s truck. “You’re late.”
“We had a run-in with Pop.” Jack didn’t elaborate but gestured to the bar. “Let’s get this over with.”
Kelly fell into step behind his older brothers. While he’d handled the
Besian connection, Jack and Finn would deal with Hagen. The gym and the building were their livelihoods, after all.
Inside the bar, they were greeted by a couple of goons who escorted them to a back office. There were no chairs for guests in the small but tidy space. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood in front of the desk and waited for the behemoth loan shark to acknowledge them. Kelly had to wonder how much a bespoke suit like the one Hagen wore cost. It couldn’t be easy to fit a giant like that.
“Gentlemen.” Hagen leaned back in his chair and studied them. “Unless you’re here to settle the debt your father owes in full, I’m not sure that we have much to discuss.”
“Pop didn’t have the right to use the building as collateral without my consent,” Jack stated.
“He only used his half of the building as collateral,” Hagen corrected. “So, when he defaults, you and I will be partners.”
“I have a feeling we have different definitions of the word partner.”
“You could always let me buy you out,” Hagen offered.
“Like hell,” Jack said. “We’ve put everything into that business. We’re not going to lose it now.”
“Then I would highly suggest you bet smart on the upcoming tournament,” Hagen replied. “I hear Nikolai’s man has good odds.”
“We don’t bet against our own.”
Jack’s remark seemed to soften up Hagen. The loan shark’s gaze drifted to a picture frame on his desk. From Kelly’s vantage point, he had a clear view of the pretty, smiling blonde. Whoever she was, she had a surprising effect on Hagen.
With a forceful breath, he sat forward. “Fifteenth of June, all of this,” he motioned around him, “goes to Jackie Riccio’s nephew. I’m out.”
“Out?” Jack echoed Kelly’s shock.
“It’s been in the works for a while now. I’m tying up loose ends before I go totally legit.”
For the blonde? Kelly’s interest in her increased. She must be something special to make a man like Hagen walk away from the only life he’d ever known.
“Good for you, man, but what does that have to do with us?” Jack asked the question they were all thinking.
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