Chapter Twenty-One
Vivien looked around her apartment after a long first day back at the office and fought the urge to cry. This time last week, she’d been snuggled up on the couch with Liam and Flynn, watching a stupid superhero movie and laughing at it. It seemed like a lifetime ago. All through the flight home and late into the night, she couldn’t settle her mind. Guilt weighed her down.
She failed.
For the first time in her life, she’d failed at something she set her mind to. She let her uncle win, and she let her parents down. Even though it took him away from them a lot, her mother always supported Jed and MT. She’d been so proud of what he made for himself and loved the company for the sake of the man.
She’d lost the company. She let the company her mom and dad spent years building together go to a man who would destroy the heart and soul of it without blinking an eye. Worse, she’d left her little sister and a man she probably loved to deal with the fallout. Before she agreed to her uncle’s insane plan, she’d at least managed to get him to agree that he wouldn’t fire Greer, Liam, or Eli because of their links to her.
She tried to tell herself she did the right thing. She’d spent years fighting for every inch of ground she gained in her career. Getting past the stigma that a woman could only get so high in business without having sex to get what she wanted took her years. The men she worked with and for finally saw her as an equal. She’d proved her worth, and her uncle would destroy that without a second thought. Moreover, he’d also take Liam down with her, and he mattered too much for her to let that happen.
Liam, who’d kept something from her—again. Part of her wanted to be pissed at him—and she was—but in her more rational moments, she got it. Telling her the police suspected foul play in her father’s death might have been too much, even for her. If he’d told her when she first showed up, she honestly didn’t know what she’d have done. In her less rational moments? She was pissed as hell at his high-handed tactics.
Eli tried to call her once before she got on the plane, but she didn’t answer. She sent him a text to let him know that she was safely back in New York and she’d contact Greer when she was ready to talk.
Greer. Just another example of how badly she’d let her parents down. When she wasn’t missing Liam, Vivien missed her sister. The quiet of the apartment once gave her peace; now it reinforced the loneliness. She missed the sound of Greer rattling around in the bathroom in the morning, of her soft music late at night when she couldn’t sleep and got to sketching.
She resolved sometime late last night that she couldn’t go back to never talking to her little sister. Greer might hate her after the stunt she’d pulled, but Vivien didn’t plan to let things go back to the way they were. She should have said goodbye to Greer. At least she could rest a little easier knowing that Eli and Liam would have Greer’s back, even if their uncle called off the bodyguards.
Picking up her cell phone, she started to push Greer’s name on her favorite contacts list, but stopped herself. It was too soon. Greer probably wouldn’t even answer. Her sister had enough to be pissed about before Vivien left, especially considering that awful dinner at Liam’s mom’s and the debacle with the email; she could only imagine how angry Greer was now.
After eating a bowl of cold cereal, Vivien changed into a T-shirt she pulled out of her still unpacked suitcase. Looking down, she choked a little. A blue shirt with a red-and-white shield on it. She must have taken it from him one of the nights she stayed with him. Burying her face in the collar, she inhaled the citrusy smell that her brain automatically associated with Liam. The sheets felt cool against her bare legs as she crawled between them, but the shirt against her skin felt warm, as if it were Liam’s arms around her.
In the morning, she’d be strong. In the morning, she would work to get back to the life that was turned upside down by her father’s damn will. For tonight, she let herself miss him. Let herself miss the life she could have had if she hadn’t run scared. Giving up her father’s company should have been easy. Giving up life in Dallas should have been easy. But nothing in her life ever went as it should have.
…
Liam stared at his computer, trying to wade through all of the complaint emails he’d received from the other department heads. Even the ones who initially supported Barton as Jed’s successor were rebelling. In the week since he’d taken over MT, he’d changed the chain of command Vivien had worked hard to establish. Barton had also scrapped every game they had planned that hadn’t been officially announced yet. He would have scrapped the others, too, but the public buzz and the amount already spent on their production would have stung too much for his mercenary little cash register of a heart to take.
The thought of the sidelined games set a new wave of anger through Liam. Those games were the last pieces of Jed that the company would ever produce. They were his ideas. Oh, Liam still had a list of concepts he and Jed discussed as possible “someday” games they used to talk about. Most of them were apps that they wanted to work into the new division they’d talked about starting just for app development. Now anything they got approved would be a total rip-off of every other game out there.
He looked over at Flynn, who lay on his bed, his eyes as sad as Liam felt. He missed Vivien. And he hated her for leaving him in this mess. But he still loved her. She’d turned his heart to mincemeat. The last time that happened, he’d easily shut the door on that relationship. After a few days, he’d compartmentalized and moved on. Vivien changed the game, though. He couldn’t just move on from her; she consumed his thoughts no matter what distractions he tried. Every night this week, he’d gotten to the point where he had to lock his phone in his desk drawer downstairs to keep himself from calling or texting her. Even then it was a close call.
Even a week out, he still had no clue what could have made Vivien leave. Yes, they’d had a pretty gnarly fight. But he knew from past experience that she didn’t run away from a fight. If she did, she would have left Haven after the first board meeting. And the second. And the break-in. Did she get another email? A text? Why wouldn’t she say anything to him? Or Greer or Eli or Sophia?
“Um. Liam? Mr. Barton called and says that he’s on his way down…” Antonio, who was usually very tan, looked like a damned ghost standing in the doorway to Liam’s office.
Sighing, Liam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Great. Um, go ahead and send him in when he gets here.”
Shit. What did he want? The last thing Liam wanted was to deal with Barton right now. He was liable to punch him if he got the chance.
He didn’t have long to wait. “Ah. Liam. Good, you’re here. That will make things much easier.”
Hell.
“What things?” Liam asked.
Barton’s eyes were almost gleeful—or would have been except for the malice mixed in there. “I thought your department should be the first to know that I’m implementing some policy changes.”
“Policy changes?” Surprise, surprise. Barton had been itching to make changes at MT for years. He’d honestly expected the outright policy shift to happen the day after Barton took over. Nice of him to wait so long.
Barton surveyed the office like an old-time land baron examining a tenement. “It’s time this place started to run like the professional company it is. That means that all of the childish nonsense my brother-in-law cherished has to go. Tomorrow, I expect everyone to show up dressed in proper business attire. No more sneakers and T-shirts. And definitely no more animals. Is that understood?”
Liam leaned back in his chair, trying to get a hold on this new boss of his. “You do realize that’s what makes this such a successful company, right? It’s not some formula or numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s about attracting the innovators, the people who push for new ideas, new methods, new stories with a work environment that encourages them. The big companies in the tech industry that have stayed around? They’re the ones who retain their unique identities. Google, Facebook, Apple. All of them—they don’t fit in a box.”
“Anomalies. Every other company, as you say, fits in a box. They run efficiently and with decorum and style. And my company shall, too.” Barton’s eyes narrowed. “Now, I want everything in place by next week. I have a new group of investors coming in, and I want them to think that we’re more than some upstart company.”
A new group of investors? What kind of group? Could they be the group behind the copycat games? If so, Barton was a bigger slime than Liam had first thought, and he had balls of steel.
Before Liam could respond to this latest development, Barton stormed out of the office the same way he’d come in. Flynn and Liam stared at each other, perplexed. And just like that, the last trace of Jed Monroe would be erased from his company. “Well, buddy, it looks like you’ll be stuck at home from now on.”
It took a few minutes for the implications of what Barton said to sink in. Shit. Investors? Was that his endgame? Take MT public, sell his healthy number of shares off to the highest bidders and walk away with a mint? Stranger things had happened. And honestly it wasn’t that farfetched. It certainly jived with Barton’s MO. He never stopped climbing, in business or in society. Now that he had MT, the thing that he always wanted, he wasn’t going to just sit back and enjoy Jed’s old office. No, he had to keep climbing. And pushing MT right into its grave.
Locking his computer, Liam went to find Eli, Flynn on his heels. Whatever plan his friend or Sophia had in place, they needed to kick it into high gear, or they wouldn’t have a company to try to save.