Worth Any Cost: (Adam & Mia #4) (Gaming The System Book 6)

by Brenna Aubrey

  The next day, Monday, when I got home from labs, Adam was sitting on the bed with the TV on. He’d had an enforced—by me—day off. But I quickly noticed the laptop on one knee, which he promptly slammed shut when I came in. His phone sat right beside him, and a remote to the TV was on the nightstand next to him.

  I raised my brows. “Working?”

  He sighed. Damn, he looked pale. “Checking emails. I really need to hire a new IT director.”

  “But not today. And probably not until the new year.”

  He shook his head, his eyes gravitating to the TV screen, which was blaring the news—a special report. There were shots of the International Space Station and mentions of NASA and astronauts.

  “I’ve mostly been following this. Did you hear?”

  “I’ve been in class all day—heard nothing.” I turned to the TV. “Did something happen?”

  “There was an accident. Two astronauts were doing an EVA—a spacewalk. There was an accident. One astronaut’s suit was breached, and he was killed.”

  “Oh, shit.” I sank down on the bed, staring at the screen. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, the other astronaut on the spacewalk, Ian Tyler—I know him. He was on the station the same time I was and even helped me with my training. Real kickass astronaut. A heroic sort of guy.”

  Sadness tightened like a cold fist in my chest. “This is awful. I don’t think anyone’s ever died in space before.”

  Adam shook his head. “Nope. Only on the way up or the way down…or in training.”

  I listened as the newscaster repeated the known facts of the accident while saying a lot was still unknown, and they were waiting for a spokesman at NASA to start a press conference within the hour.

  “It sucks,” Adam muttered. “I wish I could do something to help Ian. I can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now. Of course, the news outlets are going to spread hearsay and repeat rumors that will be harmful to the space program. It always suffers after accidents. Programs get canceled, and people will forget that going into space is important for everyone’s future.”

  “Maybe the future of going into space shouldn’t even be in government hands, then.” I turned back to him. “Maybe it should be for visionaries with the means and the motivation. Someone said it’s going to take a bunch of smart billionaires banding together to accomplish major changes in practically every field. I happen to know a very smart billionaire.”

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you referring to my little investment in XVenture?” he asked. XVenture was the private space exploration company I’d seen on the disclosure document.

  “It didn’t look like a little investment, but yeah, that’s what I mean. Like…maybe it will take a visionary billionaire with motivation to do something more than the government is willing to do.”

  “Maybe.” He rubbed his jaw and continued to stare at the screen, but I was convinced that he was listening closely to me.

  “You remember what Spider-Man said: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

  “Spider-Man didn’t say that. Uncle Ben did.”

  I shrugged. “I simply mean that you have the power to change things.”

  He nodded, still watching the television with a troubled expression. Without asking him if he needed a hug, I leaned over and gave him one anyway. After the press conference, I finally convinced him to turn off the distressing news, and we had a quiet dinner alone and tried not to talk about it.

  But the wheels were turning inside that brilliant mind of his, and I wondered what the result would be.

  Adam had his doctor’s appointment and ultrasound for his all-clear tomorrow, and I hoped he’d feel better with some good news. The countdown to our wedding had begun. Only two weeks now.

  In the bathroom, before bed, I noticed the telltale dark spot on my panties. After months and months of being AWOL, it looked like I might have a normal period.

  Best not to count my chickens before they hatched. It could vanish as quickly as it had come. I cleaned up and took care of it, but didn’t mention it to Adam.

  He’d find out soon enough.

  Chapter 17

  Adam

  Inside my closet that night, as I dressed for bed, I reached into the back and pulled out my dark blue flight suit from the Soyuz mission I’d flown from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan over four years ago. Running my fingers around the mission patch and my name, A. Drake, stitched over the right breast pocket, I remembered that euphoric feeling of weightlessness, of the importance of the things being accomplished on the International Space Station.

  In the news, talk of scrapping the station had started based on the dangers inherent with an aging facility that circled the earth every ninety minutes. A real possibility existed of pulling all astronauts and cosmonauts from their missions and bringing them home.

  People forget so soon that what they were doing affected all of humanity and was important for its future.

  I couldn’t get the news out of my mind, nor that urgent call inside myself to do something to help. Maybe this was the next step for me. The next move beyond where I was. Something important for humanity’s future. A new purpose.

  Already in my head, a list formed. A lengthy to-do list that didn’t involve wedding stuff for once. The first thing would be to send Ian Tyler my condolences.

  Then I’d get on the phone with my friends at XVenture and start proposing some ideas. If it weren’t on the back of such sad news, I’d feel elated to have a new project to work on.

  Instead, there was muted hope. A hope that I could have a hand in helping change the world.

  Maggie, my assistant, promptly set up the appointment for me to meet with the CEO of XVenture in the New Year.

  ***

  The next day brought the best, albeit expected, news. I delivered it to Emilia with a wide grin when she got home—late—from her last study session before her winter break.

  “Clean bill of health,” I murmured into her ear after I’d grabbed her around the waist in the kitchen and kissed her soundly.

  She turned in my arms, pressing her front to mine and throwing her arms around my neck. “Oh, man. I’m so happy. Just in time, too.”

  “Yep, just in time for my suave advances.” I winked.

  “You and I have a different definition of suave, I think.”

  I shrugged. “Hey. It’s been six weeks. I’m off my game. Cut me a break, would ya?”

  She went up on tiptoes and kissed me. “I would absolutely love to cut you a break except I, uh, have an issue.”

  “Uh oh.” I braced myself to hear it. What could it be? Had she failed a test? Forgotten some important wedding detail? Oh God, had she found a lump? My heart began to race. “What?”

  She shot me a tentative glance. “Uh…wrong time of the month?”

  Relief and frustration mingled together, making me at once glad and annoyed. I relaxed my arms, dropping them from around her. One hand went to rake through my hair. “Well…fuck.”

  She reached over and smoothed my cheek. “I’m sorry. But I think I could make you happy tonight, regardless.”

  I stared at her. “Like how bad are we talking here?” Since her chemo treatment, her periods had been light, and except for a day here or there, they’d hardly hampered our sex life before this.

  “It just started, but isn’t pretty.” She quirked her mouth. “Let’s say this one is restoring my faith that my fertility might return. It’s like a murder scene. You don’t want to go there.”

  I grimaced. “Murder scene? Ugh. Don’t make me nauseated again.”

  “Nauseated?” Her jaw dropped, and she faux-punched my arm. “Oh my God. You are green around the gills. Stop being such a boy.”

  I held up an arm to fend off her attack. “I am a boy. We don’t come with that equipment.”

  She folded her arms across her chest—tightening her shirt over her magnificent chest. I couldn’t tear my eye
s away. Leaning a hip against the counter, she huffed, “Well, you live with a girl. You’re about to marry a girl. And girls get periods. It’s a natural part of our lives. So get used to it.”

  I looked away with a resigned sigh.

  “Wait…” She pushed off the counter and walked slowly toward me, arms still folded. “You’re not…afraid of my vagina, are you?”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “No, I’m not.”

  “You are! You’re afraid of my vagina.”

  I held out my hand like a traffic cop trying to halt her advance. “It’s the murder scene thing. I am not CSI Newport Beach. I don’t need to know about the murder scene.” She made a scoffing noise, halting mere inches from me. “I am not afraid of your vagina.”

  She swung on me again, and I blocked it easily as she tried gamely to keep from laughing. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I like your vagina. I give it five-plus stars on Yelp. One of my very favorite places to hang out.”

  That got me a few more hits on the chest before I wrestled her into submission, pinning her arms to her sides. Then I kissed her deeply. By now, I was feeling exhausted and not caring much that I wasn’t getting laid that night.

  Also, I realized how relieved she must be. She’d expressed anxiety before that her periods were not “normal—which, being a guy, I was clueless as to what, exactly that meant nor did I want to know. But given the recent conversation we’d had about babies, I knew that the possible loss of fertility was upsetting to her, and that this was a good sign. She seemed happy about it, too.

  And so, instead of pouting that it was hampering my sex life, I was happy for her instead.

  “Look at the bright side,” she began.

  “There’s a bright side?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. At least I won’t be on my period while we’re on our honeymoon.”

  I nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly that was a good bright side.

  The timing would work out perfectly.

  Unless, of course, our crappy luck interfered again, which was definitely a possibility.

  ***

  Days later, I was back to work after my rest break—the last one I’d take before the wedding—when the news hit.

  On the eve of the release of our newest expansion of Dragon Epoch, to coincide with the Christmas rush, our data center suffered a distributed denial of service attack from an unknown source. For hours—which threatened to stretch out into days—our servers were completely crippled and unable to run the game. Our website and forums were also down. We were very limited in how we could communicate with our players.

  How do you spell disaster for a gaming company? DDoS.

  Jordan wanted to call an emergency BOD meeting, but I was too busy for that. We lost millions of dollars for every hour the servers were down. And if we did manage to get them up again, it did not prevent another DDoS hitting quickly thereafter.

  Attacks like this usually came in waves, and our IT security firm was inadequately equipped to handle them. And with Alan gone and no IT director to replace him, I had to do the heavy lifting.

  Jordan paced my office. “Someone needs to go to the data center.”

  I massaged my forehead at my desk. “Yeah, I know. I’ll get Emilia to pack me a case.”

  He blew out a long breath. “She’s going to eviscerate you. You’re supposed to be on a plane the day after Christmas. We will get someone else.”

  I blinked at him. “Who?”

  Jordan looked stumped. “I can try to supervise it.”

  “Do you know how to implement protection on the last hop IP?” I asked.

  He stared at me like I was speaking Martian. I might as well have been.

  “Uh. No. You probably should go.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “I swear to God, if I had a decent IT guy, I would not be going. But we have five days until Christmas.”

  He whistled. “You’re the one who’s going to have to explain it to the soon-to-be wife. I want no part of that.”

  “Goddamn it.” I rubbed my eyeballs through closed lids.

  Jordan gestured dramatically to the phone. “I’ll handle the board here. Call her and get your ass on a plane.”

  I called Emilia and hedged a lot. To be honest, I had no idea when I’d be home. It could be tomorrow or it could be the wee hours of Christmas morning. Things like these were hard to tell. I’d know more once I got up north to deal with our data center.

  “What is a DDoS, and why are they attacking Draco?” she asked over the phone.

  “DDoS means distributed denial of service. Someone is using a bunch of zombie computers to flood the servers with data so they can’t function.” I paced a circle around my office, stopping at my desk every so often to jot a note down for my assistant.

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “No idea. Bored hacker kids or an organized effort from outside the country. It could be anyone. They might not even be purposely targeting us, but someone who uses the same data center or network. Hopefully, we’ll be able to tell more after we get it up and going again.”

  She sighed. “Okay. When do you leave?”

  “As soon as possible. Can you send me a bag of stuff?”

  “I’ll bring it myself. I can meet you at the airport in twenty minutes.”

  Maggie found me a charter flight that was ready go to within the hour. As I’d only be flying a short distance to Northern California, I’d be there quickly. As promised, Emilia met me at the airport with a packed bag. “Good thing I’m on winter break. Of course, you could have Cora do it for you. Does a billionaire even need a wife, anyway?”

  I smiled. “I do.” I kissed her and bade her goodbye, hardly wanting to let her go. But I left her with a promise: “I’ll be back for Christmas.”

  Except I wasn’t. At least not for more than a few hours. And she flew out the next day. Without me.

  Chapter 18

  Mia

  I was practically certain that every bride’s dream of an exotic destination wedding did not include flying to said destination without her groom. But here it was, six short days before our wedding, and I’d seen Adam for a total of six hours—most of which were spent sleeping—before flying out without him.

  After spending five days in Silicon Valley cleaning up the data center mess, he still had work to do at the office to close out “everything I had to skip by going up there.”

  To say I was irked was an understatement. But what could I do?

  If I hadn’t been joking about that workweek hours clause in the prenup, I could have invoked it, but I thought any reasonable person would acknowledge these extenuating circumstances. And reluctantly, wedding or not, I did.

  But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him hell for it anyway.

  Him: I slipped my sweaty workout t-shirt from this morning into your luggage so you have something to cuddle tonight.

  I tucked my phone away without reply, face flaming with embarrassment. I was so exacting my revenge for that. Besides, I’d already grabbed something of his to take with me—not that he’d ever know if I could help it. But damn, how that cockiness needed to be brought down a peg or two. Or maybe two thousand.

  Men.

  Me: Not necessary. I’m finding myself a new bridegroom upon arrival in St. Lucia.

  I smiled smugly to myself when he didn’t reply immediately. Let him stew on that as we boarded our flight—only the second time ever I’d been on a private plane. The last time had been a surprise trip that Adam had sprung on me. This time, we’d planned it well in advance and were flying the entire wedding party straight to St. Lucia.

  The plane was much larger this time, carrying our thirty-ish closest friends and business associates to the Caribbean. Mom and Peter were snuggled together on a couch, reading. April, Jenna, and Alex all sat around with champagne flutes while William, beside Jenna, carefully looked around the plane, as if staking out the exits. Then he grabbed an emergency procedures
card from a seat pocket and began studying it. Lindsay was sitting beside Adam’s cousin, Britt, and her husband, their heads bent together in a tête-à-tête.

  Yes, everything had been perfectly planned. Everything except for leaving without one of the main participants in the wedding, that was.

  Even Jordan was on the flight with us, steadily getting hammered.

  Drunk Jordan was fun, though. It took the edge off his usual abrasive cockiness. And I thought he felt sorry for me, which would have been insufferable any other time, but was a welcome distraction now.

  “Hey, Mia,” he greeted as he plopped down on a couch next to me. I threw a glance around the plane to locate April in case I needed her to take her man in hand. People were sitting in clumps talking giddily about the experience, or, in the case of Heath, stretched out on the back row of seats, snoozing.

  It was going to be a long flight.

  And no Adam. That thought made my blood boil. What if he missed the wedding?

  “Hey, Jordan,” I replied between my teeth, then downed the rest of my wine, and set the glass aside.

  “I hope you aren’t too bummed about your sweetie being left behind.”

  “Huh. Why would I be bummed? It’s not like it’s some ordinary vacation. Like we aren’t getting married or anything.”

  He frowned. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged, suddenly wishing I had more wine to drink. Jordan noticed me staring wistfully at my empty glass, called one of the two flight attendants over, and asked for a refill for me. I thanked him when she left to fill the order.

  “Why didn’t you stay and handle it, then?”

  “I think you know the answer to that already.”

  I quirked a brow at him and nodded, happily taking the next glass of wine from the flight attendant. I sipped deeply. “Control freaks gonna control.”

  He shrugged. “Well, in his defense, without an IT guy, Adam is the man for the job. I don’t know shit about that part of things. I’d only know who to yell at to get it done.”

  “That’s the difference, though. You’d let other people handle it. He insists on doing it himself.”